#ES-02O30

[themoonthestarstheplanet]

Pick a place (Pretend it's home)

(This is my revamped version of 'Pretend it's Home' and hopefully, the much better version of it. 'Myths, Magiks and Monsters' is a work on progress between me and @vice-virtue that will hopefully span more than just my Pretend Verse, as it has so much potential. Hopefully you like it as much as I do so far! This is also heavily inspired by: @secret-engima and @sparklecryptid AU's, sometimes heavily and sometimes none at all. Also, tagging @wolfsrainrules for Reasons. Please let me know if this is at least semi-OK! Thanks.)

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[...]Throughout human existence, we have often pondered the fundamental questions of life, death, nature and history with one another. Astonishingly, across the world and an inordinately long time span, our solutions to these queries have been identical; the creation of myths.

From vast civilizations to localized societies the world over, each had created a rich catalogue of its own deities, monsters and myths. These tell the stories of our origins, triumphs and disasters, and act as creative tools to communicate life’s most important lessons.

The majority of religions and mythologies contain key features that point to some of the very basic questions we have been asking ourselves since our early development as a civilized species; concerns around mortality, birth, astrology and nature as a whole. 

Often we have looked to nature to inspire stories to explain the inexplicable, creating deities from the sun, moon, rivers, the sea and mountains. In trying to make sense of the unanswerable, we humans have a tendency to subordinate ourselves to a higher power far beyond our comprehension.

The most important thing is, that for all that humans had evolved far beyond their simple starting line, they still hold something unimaginable in the grand scheme of things; belief. 

Belief is a strange concept in itself. It is to believe something we have proven facts or stories passed down the generations until its nothing more than a mangled form of what it once was. 

Humans most powerful ability is a belief in something, either a higher power, a conviction, an oath. There are thousands of insists where belief is all one needed to ‘power’ through something or to do feet that normally we wouldn’t be able to do.

The problem with belief is that humans are naturally curious creatures. They want to know why certain things work, or how they’re made. In the early years, one could point at the sea and say with confidence that a god made the waves move along the shore. And other people would believe it until you’ve got something hundreds of years later that makes it fact. 

The beings that would become known as The Six, Astrals, Hexatheon.[...] Export from Myths, Magiks and Monsters by Arydn Izunia.

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It started as a story always had. 

With the beginning of a legend. The start of a boy made man far to young, a girl forged women with no choice and a thing made into being that shouldn't have been. 

It's a story that spanned thousands of years, yet only seemed to truly matter in the recent decades. 

In a lab in the middle of nowhere, it began, between machinery, stone cold walls and stone cold hearts. Surrounded by oppression, leashed by collars and told to bend knee to their creators. 

It had started with small training exercises made to look like games to the growing mind. Then gradually, it bolstered into training to kill, to survive, to fight, to influence, to manipulate. To destroy and rein supreme. 

Collared beasts. Man made monsters held only by the finest silk that felt like chains around their necks. 

ES-16O30 had never been a boy. It had been made into a surveillance and spying. A defender with no fortress. It was an experiment. 

ES-02O30 had never been a girl. It had been made into a fighter. A sword with no sheath. It was an experiment.

ES-14O30 had never been a human. It had been made into an agent. An assassin with no goal. It was not alive. 

They were weapons, made from the cruel minds of scientists and doctors. Made from humans. 

Made into a sword that always cuts, with nothing to protect. Made into a knife that always aims true, with nothing to guide. Made into a shield, with nothing to protect.

Yet. 

For all their training and lessons. They had always seemed to orbit each other. Always seemed to find each other in every chaos spilled zone and exercise they had done. They spun around each other like planets to a sun, like water in a whirlpool. 

They weren't humans. They weren't a girl nor a boy, or even a person. 

At least. 

Not yet. 

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The ES's had whispered to each other in the dark of night. When they were certain of none hearing and no missions the next sunrise. 

They had whispered of hopes and dreams. Of choices and decisions. Mumbled words of comfort and soothing tones that had taken time to calm and brought forth peace. At least, as much peace as they had known.

They had whispered of resolve, of plans and faith. Hushed laughter and small smiles hidden beneath sparsely decorated cots.

They had spoken of names and their meanings, they had hushed fretful minds and overwhelmed bodies the best that they could. They had gasped at great ambition, sighed with longing to feel the sunlight on their skin and the wet grass beneath their feet. Dreaming of experience without pain, or fear of failure.

ES-02O30 would like to name itself, it had whispered to its siblings. For when they are free, gone from the labs, no one would control it anymore. Names have power, it had said. It would not give anyone any power over it anymore. 

ES-16O30 had no care for names, nor for their meanings. It had only the craving of feeling the sun on its skin and lush forests underneath its feet. It cared not for what it were named, only for it to be free. 

ES-14O30 had dreamed of knowledge. It wished for hope beyond dreams and whispered plans for things that might not come. It hoped to roam with no master to tug its leash. 

They dreamed. They hoped. They planned. They wished. 

It is not enough. 

It is never enough. 

*-*-*-*

They had taken ES-14O30 from them. They took it from them and they did not give it back no matter how hard they had worked. Or how hard they had learned. 

They do not get ES-14O30 back

*-*-*-*

 

The cot in the far end of the room is taken the next day. 

They hoped and they prayed but they both know it would not be enough.

[themoonthestarstheplanet]

(I was going over how ES-16O30 meets Arydn and I come out with this?? ALSO, yes, ES-16 does get a name, as do the other ES’s, but if you want too, you can send in some other ideas for them. ES-16 is ‘The Star.’ ES-02O30 first name is basically Latin for ‘To fight’ and ES-14O30′s is ‘The Light’.)

It—is it a him?—meets a man that looked far to human, far too in control for the monster that lurked beneath his skin. It’s almost unnoticeable at first glance, even the second and third glance, but ES-16O30 had been trained—made to notice the difference between human and monster.

It clung to the man’s body like a second skin, almost hoovering, sinking in and if it weren’t for the tightly leased control he could sense hidden underneath the man’s relaxed body language he wouldn’t have known there was anything other about him. 

He tensed, tightening his grip on the sword and shield he had stolen from the armoury that he had used many times before on his missions. 

The man—the chancellor he distantly recalled—smiled at him. It’s not a nice smile, more teeth than lips and distantly threatening in the way he leaned forward slightly, even if he didn’t make any threatening moves and stance relaxed. And even if ES-16O30 had been trained since being made to fight, to survive and bring victory for the Empire. He doesn’t try to fool himself into thinking he could win against the chancellor.

“Hello,” Arydn said, looking at him like he was a fascinating puzzle that he couldn’t wait to figure out. “Aren’t you a little far from home, little Prince?”