Somewhere in the vastness of space, is General Hiau, in the midst of superliminal transit.

  It has been a rather fruitless series of events since, trying to track down the Ulminhan survivors. At least, they assumed the survivors to be out there. Hiau personally thought of the entire ordeal to be beneath her, even if ultimately necessary. There wasn’t even any verifiable proof that they are anywhere out there; no traces, no signals, nothing. Just the simple fact that the rest found to be “missing” do not have any remains to be retrieved in the destruction of World Ritus.

  But here she is, still out there since, pushed back into commission as soon as possible. Even if she was punished for her failure, she is still too valuable an asset to waste, and so, repurposed to other duties, she once again found herself in command of troops, crew, and able to use her experimental capabilities.

  Having healed in the months since that incident, Hiau was nonetheless not without scars from the ordeal, having had to crawl out of the crumbling planet herself. Some parts of her still remained with burns, simply due to proximity to the energy blast emitted by Lym—

  No. Not Lym.

  The Subject.

  Subject-000002.

  Somehow, that wretched demon had managed to get to her, even all these months later.

  In her private quarters aboard her ship, Hiau looks at herself in the bathroom mirror, bent over the counter. Unseen to anyone else, it is here that she is simply Hiau, and not cold, upstanding, General. She swore that her skin may have slightly deepened its shade since, as she looked at herself with all four eyes.

  “What is there to refine? Look at yourself, in your unnatural form, and unnatural skin. You look like an experiment!”

  For a fleeting moment, Hiau wanted to lash out somehow. In her anger, she accidentally crushed the counter beneath her grip, cracking and pulverizing it into smaller bits. Now fully frustrated, she couldn’t help but punch the mirror, shattering it entirely.

  From one of the shards still hanging on the wall, her now broken reflection continues to watch her back.

  What did she expect out of such an encounter with a demon? Likely all manners of the extraordinary, but somehow, not this. It was almost too ordinary. One would have thought such an eldritch being, perhaps once caught, may have lashed out in any number of ways, but the subject never once changed its form from appearing as a person.

  What if it is one?

  Would that make it possible then? How else could those words hit so personally? But perhaps, those are just words. It would be foolish to let words affect oneself so much, especially coming from something that would obviously try to trick and otherwise deceive you.

  But if it still stuck with Hiau to this day, it meant that it had to be true at least to some extent, right?

  Right?

  Foolish. Stupid! Hiau had endured so much to become who she is today. It is nearly inconceivable to most ordinary people how much she had sacrificed and instilled into her to reach such a position of power and authority, both institutional and literal. It disgusted her how much the rest would rather ask for things to come for free, without so much as lifting a finger to put in a fraction of an ounce the same effort she had gone through.

  Yet for a fleeting moment, she is brought back to her reality.

  Hiau didn’t always have four eyes, four arms, and purple skin. And even still, this is coming out as one of the bigger “success stories” of the program. It was expected for everyone to come out changed on the other end, a noble sacrifice for a greater cause.

  But it is true that Subject-000002 didn’t have anything unnatural about it. Raw and unrefined power, maybe, but nonetheless pure. Any machine part is likely due to compensate for past injuries as opposed to alteration. Even with as much as she had gone through, Hiau couldn’t hold a candle up to Lym’s overwhelming power.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  No, not Lym. Subject. Subject-000002!

  “You are so submissive that you believe giving your body to these robbers makes you superior.”

  Hiau didn’t want to believe that. She is big, and strong, and overwhelmingly powerful, too. She has taken so much punishment and still stood, she has sacrificed so much for her ideals! In what world is a genetically modified and refined super soldier in the position of a General “submissive”?

  But there are still people above her. Is that not true?

  The words seemed to attack her. That would mean that for all the years she had willingly endured to come out on top, she had instead voluntarily handed herself over to become a tool for someone else.

  Hiau hated and despised the idea, especially the fact that it came from the demon. She came to the conclusion that it was all ridiculous, and not to be believed.

  Or perhaps at least, she didn’t want to believe it. Not yet.

  *****

  Given the context and assumptions at hand, they have since been able to narrow their search down to a specific sector of Alpharion.

  Should there have been any survivors that had escaped, they likely couldn’t have gone far. For them to jump superliminally without infrastructure such as a gateway, meant that they must have done so in older ships when such technology was more commonplace. This meant two things; one, their range would be mostly limited, and two, there was a real potential that they could be displaced by time significantly, but no more than a year from when they had made the jump.

  Such jumps especially from older ships tend to leave in them a wake across spacetime, and this could be monitored for interference or other unusual behavior. This data has since been collected from numerous worlds across the sector, but given how small the Ulminhan carrier ship is compared to its much larger Coalition counterparts, this would nonetheless be a challenge to find.

  It was on this day that General Hiau and her troops arrived to inspect the next most likely candidate down the list: World Pliua.

  Upon arriving and beginning their search, General Hiau couldn’t help but feel somewhat nostalgic. Pliua is indeed a nice world and popular vacation spot, and its four moons are a popular tourist attraction. It reminded General Hiau of her homeworld growing up before it became completely gentrified, though some signs of that are nonetheless present here.

  As it was typical, General Hiau would see the wanted posters of the treacherous, traitorous terrorist Vertan Zviedal, and Subject-000002 displayed on the massive holoboards across every city, the same way as it has across Coalition worlds for months now.

  For a moment, General Hiau found it deeply amusing that a demon could have a wanted poster of it up. And given one of such powers, what can realistically be expected of the general public to do anything about it, should they come across it?

  And then, to her shock, she sees exactly what they’re doing about it.

  Perhaps this comes more as a shock given that World Pliua is one of the more populated worlds in that specific sector, but it nonetheless was nothing like she had seen previously. Down the wide streets of the city, local law enforcement struggled against the violence of the organized rioters as they tore up the urban center into flames and debris.

  And paraded in their midst is the image of Subject-000002 as a political symbol.

  In the midst of sending her troops off to help law enforcement keep the violence at bay, General Hiau couldn’t help but realize the disaster of it all.

  What are they doing? What are they thinking of, to do such a thing? Can’t they see that the public is in danger with such an anomalous demon at large? Perhaps, then, these extremists needed to be put down as well; it was insane and nigh heretical of them to take such a side. Would it even be possible for them to do so consciously, or is she simply witnessing the biggest mass hypnotization her eyes have laid upon?

  But no, don’t be stupid. That sounds childishly delusional. A single thing manipulating this amount of masses to its whims? Why here, of all places then? Under any other context, that just sounds like comically bad propaganda—

  But why would she fall for that?

  Hiau watched as her men beat down anyone that posed a threat. Shots ring out as certain individuals scramble, while others push on. This must be reported back. The public is no longer cooperating, and as a result, society at large is in danger.

  From a distance, she watched as a woman shields a man from a bullet, getting struck in the back, and the two fall down together.

  Tragic. But a miniscule cost compared to what they’re trying to do—

  Amazingly, the woman somehow manages to stand up, and struggles to her feet. Some of the other rioters encircled the two to shield them both, and quickly began escorting them away to safety.

  For a moment, Hiau wondered if that was a rubber bullet. Then, she was hit with the thought of, what if that was Subject-000002? But they had already all disappeared into a different part of the vast city, and none of her troops had Daero Counters out; they were all too preoccupied with aiding law enforcement at hand.

  Her last thoughts in that moment are of the seemingly genuine cooperation and kindness exhibited by those strangers to each other, and with that, came the realization that they do genuinely believe in a now widespread cause.