{This ending is part of the Finish the Story Contest, the 21st contest so far. Click here to see the contest… Also first time hosted by @bananafish, I got this kick-ærs banner below and the prompt was crafted by @marcoriccardi this week... Ending music pair: "Salvation Closing" by Cheshyre (Newgrounds, Madness Combat: Project Nexus OST).}
Banner done by @f3nix.
The Prompt
In the scant shadow of the guardhouse, a greenhorn Border Legionnaire was waiting for the end of his first watch shift, gasping for the heat.
Below him, there was the stretch of sandy desert that the XIX Floating Fortress patrolled incessantly, moving back and forth in the sky like a surreal and phlegmatic cetacean, with the low and incessant buzz of the managems that powered it.
Behind the line of Fortresses, the Lands of Man ideally began. In that marginal strip, there were meager pastures and stretches of scrubby bushes, attacked for miles and miles by a fine sand, like yellowish talcum powder, that made the desert gain extension every year.
"This year the wind has put so much sand down," the marshal told him, biting a gray mustache, one of the last days before the Duty Beginning ceremony. "And behind the sand, the Those arrive".
He was glad he no longer had just a stunner to defend him from the Those, like the guardians of the border in former times, before the Legions. Once, it was thought to direct the Those into reserves to prevent them from doing too much damage with their insatiable hunger, but then they started to run away, to strip the flesh off every head of cattle, to waste fields and orchards, to devour even the people... and more and more came from the desert.
He had been among the first in his leverage class in combat and shooting exercises, but in his heart he was afraid of when he would found himself in front of a real That, and not an illusory image created by the trainers. It took him months to get used to the slouching and snappy movements of those lean and black illusions, all teeth, which he found horrifying.
During that first day of service, however, only an armored convoy had passed, transporting ordered and dull clusters of goleminers to the mysterious and vital mines of managems, on the other side of the desert. The Those did not find goleminers edible, luckily.
The Horn of Danger snatched him cruelly from his thoughts. Intruders in the fortress! How did they get in? How did they pass under our noses?
He grabbed the heavy terminator and ran down the spiral staircase, toward his team's collection point, his heart in his throat.
A scraping noise from a corridor to his right made him stop. Pointing the terminator in the dark, with a trembling grip, he shouted "Who goes there?!?"
The Those came out, completely different from the illusions of the trainers...
The Ending by @theironfelix
But there was no time to comprehend this Réal, as a portal ruptured into existence - scaring the Those away... Two cryptic lines from the morning letter flashed in my head: "an overdue favor shall be reimbursed partially" and "the other payment shall come right after the first one."
Not long after, its agent was spewed out and the portal closed - as the agent raised, the lights flickered on. The agent seemed like a twentieth century mystery scientist with a retrofitted laser-spewing Mauser. Greeting the lad:
"So, I guess this is your first debt repayment."
"Debt repayment!"
"Our mutual friend never leaves a debt not reimbursed."
"Well, that seems extraordinary."
"And there's more to come for you... Look: I need your help to clean the Those out."
"The Those? Uhhh... Huh, what's with my gun?"
"Don't worry about it, it shoots lasers."
Pausing to shoot it 'til it ran dry - he never heard the empty click noise; after shaking him, we stuck together as we traversed the guardhouse. I told him to aim at the chest when killing the Those, then we spotted some - so we prepared our barrage and sprayed lasers at them.
The sight of the black and blue lasers was an eye sore, the combination almost made me blind at this rate. Combined with the shrieks of the Those had me cringe - my agent was the same, his old age not helping either.
The lights flickered on thankfully, but... a shadowling remained, clutching its chest and moaning in pain. We both agreed to end its miserable life, but it spoke:
"The damn tesseracts - corrupted our lands and corrupted us! To think we were you humans once... Heh, such is life."
And it evaporated into a mist, then the World shook hard. Looking at him, I gestured him to follow me and we began running to the top as quick as possible.
Whence there, I looked at the great dunes to find Tesseract-19 and he exclaimed while pointing at it:
"What is that? It looks rather unstable!"
"Did the Kunst Meister did it!?! Screw it, I got to alert the entire Legio! Hurry!... Crikey, 'tis going to blow!"
Time began to stop and colour turning to a white-black chromatic - it appeared with its black suitcase and kestrel, saying:
"Time? Is it really that time again? But I'll pay the rest, have no worry about that or the Kunst Meister. I just need to explain to my agent something... You have done rather well, but I am afraid I need to still pay back other debts. But don't worry, there's not many left..."
It then placed its hand on my shoulder:
"And this is where you get off..."
Flashing through space-time, I appeared in a villa - with the whole Legio intact... We were safe, but our post was... gone to Tesseract-19's explosion... Then I heard an old acquaintance cough up blood...
"Meister?"
Cited Posts:
@f3nix - "Finish the Story Contest: Week 21"
Cited Images:
@f3nix - "Official Storyteller banner"