??? POV
I woke up, or rather I was woken up, by guards banging their batons on the bars of my cell, as usual. I’d wanted to keep sleeping for a bit longer, but I had learned very fast what happened to inmates who didn’t get up and I did not want to go through that experience ever again.
Sleep and especially dreams helped a lot, which was probably why the amount we got each day was limited. Still even in dreamland, the cold never left me alone.
“BREAKFAST IS READY YA FAILURES!” a guard yelled, before starting to shove some plates of gray mush, supposedly containing nutrients, into the window of each cell door that were meant for food-delivery.
Of course since he was a guard, he got to wear a nice thick and warm blanket, a luxury I would - at this point - kill to obtain. Instead I was forced to wear the prisoners uniform: some bland and colorless rugs that covered only the bare minimum, and did nothing to help protect against the cold.
The ‘food’ tasted awful, as usual, but I had long since gotten used to it. After finishing my breakfast, I washed my face, shuddering as the cold water touched my skin.
I had to give it to the empire, they had managed to create one hell of a mind-break fabric. I would refuse to give in, but I had been here the longest out of every inmate by far. Most people lasted a week, some tough ones maybe a month.
It was hard to tell for sure, given that we weren’t ever allowed to leave our cells, so keeping track of who left and who came was a bit of a struggle.
It kept me distracted from the reality of my situation though, so I tried my best to keep track.
I stiffened as I suddenly felt another presence. My magic had never really been trained and I had to use whatever limited supply of mana I could get in here to stop myself from freezing to death, so it wasn’t really available for use, but even still I did use it to sense other people's presence.
When I looked up, there was no one there, but I’d definitely felt a presence. It wasn’t the first time either, as it kept happening at seemingly random intervals.
I couldn’t interact with that presence, nor could I feel its thoughts, but it gave me this strange sense of comfort. Like there was someone watching over me, someone who knew how horrible it was in here.
I had given up on escaping this place long ago, but maybe if I had outside-help…
“No! Stop having hope. That’s how they get you. For all I know this is some guard with magic that allows the user to become ethereal,” I told myself.
I ignored the presence, like usual, and finished cleaning my face. I dried myself and sat on my bed, to meditate, like every day, because there was nothing else to do.
I was interrupted when I heard someone banging on the bars of my cell once again. I opened my eyes to see my least favorite person.
“So how’s our most loyal customer doing? Changed your mind yet?”, the warden asked me with her smug grin.
“I’d say go to hell, but then you’d just come back here..:”
“See, this is why you’re my favorite subject! It’s fascinating. You’re under so much stress, much more than people were ever meant to be under, yet you refuse to break! But don’t you worry, I WILL figure out what’s wrong with you and I WILL break you, like everyone else.”
I hated her cheerful attitude. I wanted nothing more than to punch her in the face right now, but I had a hunch that nothing good would come of that.
“You done?” I tried my best not to show my annoyance.
“Well I guess so. Was fun catching up with you! See you next week~”
She waved me goodbye before skipping away. Gods, the woman was infuriating. But she was gone now, so I could resume my meditation in peace.
Draco POV
After confirming with Cynthia that the vehicle I had attacked did indeed have our target inside, I released my wings and started chasing after the rest of the convoy. It was vital there would be no survivors, and I would make sure of that.
Once I caught up, I dug my claws into the rearmost transporter and threw it at the car leading the chase. The impact probably instantly killed everyone inside either of those, and whoever survived would be taken care of by the exploding ammunition within the wreck.
Two down, three to go. I wasted not a second and went after the next closest car. While I could have just thrown it like I had with the other, I did pride myself in having standards. One of which was to avoid using the same trick twice – that was simply repetitive and boring.
So instead I ripped a hole in the armor of the vehicle and jumped inside. I was met by machine-gun fire, but that didn’t really do much beyond mildly annoy me, much to the shock of the poor imperial soldiers.
I spread my claws, cutting through the chassis on both sides and simply started running forward. Once the car and everyone inside was cleanly cut in half, I moved on to the next car.
One of the two remaining vehicles had started to shoot me with their mounted weapons, in particular the heavy gun on the roof, so I did the only logical thing and caught the projectile before throwing it back.
One shot, one hit, one explosion, about 12 dead soldiers. One vehicle remaining. It had stopped and the soldiers were scrambling for cover as they abandoned their post. I couldn’t really blame them, they were in a pretty awful situation and coms were down, but it did make my job a bit more annoying.
One of the soldiers started channeling mana through his origin and fired a bolt of lightning at me, which I easily dodged by tilting my head slightly to the left.
And just like that he had given me an easy way to get rid of everyone here. Diving down and landing right in front of him, I copied his origin and started using magic myself.
“I’ll be taking that, thanks”, I taunted him, before taking flight once more.
I charged up the attack a bit, knowing I would only get one since the owner of the origin I had copied was dead, before unleashing a flurry of lightning bolts in every direction, scorching the ground, splitting the rocks, and killing every sign of life as I covered the entire area with a sheet of glass.
My work here was done.
Crimson POV
“Oh really? What could I possibly know that you would have any interest in?” Bob smugly said.
“Omega.” Draco had landed behind Bob. “We’re looking for intel on Omega.”
Bob stumbled forward and scrambled away from Draco.
“HOW ARE YOU ALIVE?! I SAW YOU DIE IN THAT SUPERNOVA!”
I pointed at my ears and, with an annoyed expression, and asked, “Could you keep it down? It’s very unpleasant to hear your yelling.”
Draco took a step forward and grabbed Bob by his shirt with his right hand and lifted him off the ground.
“I think you’re misunderstanding. WE are the ones asking questions. Your role is to answer them and then when we have what we want, die.”
Draco had said that like it was a fact, which to be fair, it basically was. There was no way Bob would survive today. Well unless Blue really could erase specific memories.
“Blue, do your thing!”
Blue, who had stayed hidden until now to avoid being hurt during combat, approached Bob and after concentrating for a few seconds, he had formed an almost ethereal sword and stabbed Bob with it.
“That should force him to tell the truth.”
“What did you do to me, lady?!” Bob yelled with a mix of panic and fury.
“I’m not a lady. I’m a man. And I simply cut away your ability to lie, refuse to answer a question or omit details. Now what does this Omega-Persons origin do?”
“I… I don’t know.” I could tell that Bob was putting up a big effort to not actually say anything. “I only know that Draco’s was supposed to be a replication of his, but that it failed.”
Draco narrowed his eyes. “I know this sounds weird, coming from the person who singled you in particular out for questioning, but how do you know that?”
“Of course I know that. I was the one who made your origin. They told me to replicate Omegas origin to the best of my ability without even telling me what it does! All I had was a DNA-sample. Do you know how ridiculous that is?! Hell, I can’t even tell you if your origin is similar to Omegas but weaker in some form or if it does something completely different.
Fucking hell this bitch really made me unable to shut up. That’s one nasty power she’s got…”
A metallic clank-sound echoed through the valley, before me or Blue could react to anything Bob just said. Draco had thrown Bob at the vehicle, leaving a sizable dent in the armor-plating.
“Misgender my friend one more time,” Draco said calmly, before cleanly punching through the hull of the vehicle, millimeters away from Bobs head, “and I’m going to identify as a fucking problem. And I don’t think you need any more problems right now…”
Bob, still processing what had just happened, gulped before doing his best to nod. The dent he had made in the plating was probably the only thing holding him upright. There was no way he could have used reinforcement magic in time to prevent damage.
“So you don’t know anything else about Omega’s origin?” Draco was very quick to get back to business, however it was a futile effort, as Bob had passed out.
“Well better than nothing I guess… Blue, you said you can erase his memories?”
Blue stood dazed for a second, before confirming that and getting to work. While he was doing that, Draco removed the UPS from the car and threw it as hard as he could into a random direction.
I couldn’t tell if it burned up in the atmosphere, but if it survived the trip to space, it most certainly wouldn’t end up at this place again for a very long time.
I collected Bob’s sword in the meantime and once we were all done we returned to our ship and left.
and I’m going to identify as a f*cking problem.
Yay you did the joke❣️❣️❣️🤣
Also bleh I can't wait for them to get the sister out of there
The next arc will focus on that. Also the next arc is when the gay starts happening
@LucyKitsune yay gay
I’m going to identify as a f*cking problem.
Me likey sassy dragon girl
She will not be staying a dragon unfortunately. But I will write/am working on a story where there will be a sassy dragon girl
@LucyKitsune awwwww well that's fine, definitely will read that one though :D
Loving the story so far, ive really enjoyed it!
When does girl get to girl?
After accidentally ripping her body apart at a subatomic level. And then she will spend way too long figuring out "You know what? I like this. I stay like this."
@LucyKitsune wait...wait.... Is this a tease at something to come?
@RebelRose I'll never tell~
It doesn't seem to be covered my usual operations manual, but I imagine that "Don't argue with people who can throw things into orbit" would be in there if it weren't such an obvious survival tactic
It's not so much into orbit as it is into deep space...
But yes. That is a very good survival tactic
@LucyKitsune It would be possible to throw things in orbit but it is not as easy as just throwing an object super fast. You would need to aim it in a way that it travels past a moon and make use of that gravitational well in order to reach orbit. It would cost more energy but it would be easier to throw something into the sun.
You only need to aim it in the general direction of the sunset when the sun is straight over head. Or straight up if the sun is just raising. The only thing is that you need to throw it about as fast as the rotational speed of the planet you are on.
@CosmicWolf Again. She didn't throw it into orbit, she threw it so it would fly off into deep space far away from the planet, perhaps even leaving the stars gravitational influence altogether
@LucyKitsune That is........ *does quick maths* enough to start a streak of plasma from where the object hit the air particles it is not enough to start spontaneous fusion reaction (you need several hundred kilometers per sec for that in stead of the 42KM per sec I am assuming the object was thrown at). After that you would have a giant vacuum that collapses with a loud bang. I think that it is a clear beacon for anyone wondering if something curiously happened.
My personal guess is that the object completely disintegrated in the atmosphere because of all the friction.
@CosmicWolf
You would need to aim it in a way that it travels past a moon and make use of that gravitational well in order to reach orbit. It would cost more energy but it would be easier to throw something into the sun
I'm going to optimistically assume you mean that it's easier to throw something into the sun than throw it out of the solar system, in which case... oh hells no. Getting something out of Earth's gravity well to orbit is 9-10km/s... from there, getting it out of the system works out to about 16-17km/s... hitting the sun is 29-30km/s. It is always easier to throw something away from a body being orbited than it is to throw something at it.
@Kaithar Tbh since I'm rewriting this entire series idk if this detail will even remain canon because while it would be kinda dumb for the main cast to essentially leave this guy for dead and not remove the tracker because however unlikely it is that someone finds a way to revers Blue's magic it is possible and stranger things have happened. Not that Blue will make it to the rewrite as I simply do not see any meaningful impact he would have on the story besides one scene where he's being an ass that he can either be a random side-character for or that does honestly not need to happen at all so I'd rather focus on the characters I actually have some idea how to develop and give them some acceptably written arcs
@LucyKitsune I DO kinda need the bad guys to catch wind of Draco still being around for spoiler-reasons and I planned to have this be done by them SOMEHOW finding the guy and SOMEHOW extracting his memories off screen so I wouldn't have to come up with a plausible reason for it, but honestly leaving this guy alive is extremely out of character for Draco and he 100% would have killed him without a care in the world as at this point in the story he very much is still in the "Life doesn't really matter anyways unless that life is me or someone I care about" mindset where he doesn't go out of his way to kill people but won't think twice about doing so. (Seriously he murdered idk how many people who did nothing to persnoally wrong him in cold blood without hesitation and then lets the one guy that he actually has a reason to be pissed at alive? What the f*ck was I thinking?)
I think in the rewrite Draco is going to kill the guy and then idk Omega uses an Ouija-Board or something it's magic I don't gotta explain shit
@Kaithar I meant it is relatively easier to aim for the sun. Like I stated the amount of energy needed for that is way higher. Also with those calculations you need to aim the direct opposite way that I described earlier. And yes that would indeed cost way less energy to leave for deep space. But as we do not know the exact direction the object was thrown into we can not precisely calculate how much energy/power was imparted unto the object.
@LucyKitsune I can see some magic on the scale of "magic this entire planet and reveal what happened" if you want to go overkill.
@CosmicWolf Not gonna go too into spoilers, but Omega knows someone who has the tools to extract information from dead people up to a certain amount of time after their deaths
@LucyKitsune Then I eagerly await a next chapter!!!
@CosmicWolf There is no next chapter. I am scrapping this story and starting over. It will eventually reach this point of the narrative again but yea... I just am not satisfied with the quality of my writing here and I have already added way too much stuff to explore and focus on that I will never get done with and it's already going to be impossible to tie up any loose ends and the ending I have in mind will not be very satisfying but I really like it and want to keep it relatively unchanged, so I have to change the story so tbe ending fits it better
@LucyKitsune Then I eagerly await the new book!!!
@CosmicWolf "I meant it is relatively easier to aim for the sun." ... want the bad news or the worse news?
Bad news: You'd have to hit it perfectly otherwise you'd slingshot and be sat in an escape or elliptical orbit instead.
Worse news: You can't aim at the sun because that is a guaranteed orbital burn unless you dump in orders of magnitude more delta-v than the 30km/s orbital the Earth has.
So, orbital mechanics 101: nothing to do affects where you are right now. Burning prograde or retrograde changes the other side of your orbit, burning along the orbital axis rotates the orbit, burning perpendicular to the plane alters inclination, and burning perpendicular alters the inclination (so max effect at 90/270 degrees, none at 180) ... burning towards the sun would initially be 100% rotation, but if you keep burning that way you'll get decreasing benefits as more of the thrust vector becomes prograde. So you could...
1/ Burn constantly towards the sun and you'll hit it IF you can make your orbit so elliptical that your initial 30km/s sideways doesn't make you miss
2/ Burn constantly but gradually rotate to remain at 90 degrees to orbit... you'd hit the sun eventually but only because a much bigger circular orbit intercepts it
3/ Burn retrograde and accept that the one thing you can't actually aim at is the thing you're trying to hit.
I don't actually know if 1 or 2 requires more delta-v, just that both should require orders of magnitude more than 3. For reference, if we take the radius of the sun as 695,700km and the orbital-turned-lateral component as 30km/s, the time you have to reach the sun before you make that much lateral motion is 6h26m30s ... which, a naive calculation suggests, means you need to find something on the order of 6450km/s in the sunward component.
Aiming directly towards sunrise/sunset doesn't even help quite as much as you'd think since you'd doing it inside a gravity well, meaning that a non-trivial amount of the momentum has to be adjusted for based on the gravity rotating the trajectory as well as just slowing it, and on a rotating sphere... so the direction of aim is adjusted for your latitude and planetary tilt at this point in the solar orbit, cause some of it would be perpendicular otherwise.
As a bonus, if you randomly get an encounter with some other body on your way in, as statistically unlikely as that is, the result would most likely result in missing the sun.
Aiming to escape is marginally easier because any direction vaguely prograde will do as long as you have enough, the retrograde burn has to be much more accurate because you're trying to hit a relatively tiny target.
TLDR if you already knew that: orbital mechanics are complicated yo, gotta hit stuff but not *hit* hit stuff
@Kaithar I know my KSP xD
I said that if the sun is overhead then aim for the place where the sun is setting.
Also I compared throwing something in orbit (needing a gravity assist of a nearby other celestial body) as harder then aiming for the sun. Plus that you also need the speed to escape earths gravity well ~11km/s. So your throw speed aim is ~42 km/s.
The bonus of aiming for the sun as well is that all orbits with that much reduction will have the periapsis close to the sun. It is indeed likely that because of a wrong aim or the wrong throwing speed the object will still miss the sun.
In conclusion the list of hardest things you can thrown an object to would be from hardest to easiest:
1. Orbit around the celestial body you are on
2. Into the local star
3. Escaping the local star
@CosmicWolf ya, right, so... if you aim for where the sun would set, in the time it takes to get out of the gravity well it's going to curve your trajectory down pretty viciously, away from the sun... you're in atmo as well, so RIP momentum. Yes, in theory you could raise your apoapse to intersect with the star by treating your current spot as periapse, but you'd have to do that at midnight. I think the efficient angle would be something like 20-30 degrees off vertical at noon but I haven't actually checked.
Hmm... could you throw something into an orbit without having to circularise or get a gravity assist ... technically yes? With a precise amount of initial delta-v you could probably get something to come to a stop at L1 or L2 and stay there a while.
It might be interesting to throw up a move plan in KSP to see what burn it wants you to do for surface to star in a single burn... maybe not at *checks clock* 00:30 lol