Earth Year 2840. The Mystic Planet, Base of the Titan Tree.
The massive twin combustion engines of the Behemoth tank idled.
"Weapons down immediately!"
Commander Maroon barked over the comms vaulting out of the turret and hitting the ground running.
"Captain Diane, Ruby, grab your medkits right now, because he is down!"
Maroon ordered frantically.
"I’m on it!"
Zeon shouted, slinging his kinetic rifle over his shoulder and sprinting across the cratered clearing.
Ruby tore open her medical satchel as she ran right behind Zeon through the clouds of Abyssal ash toward the motionless armored giant.
"Halt right there!"
Vance commanded, his voice trembling but resolute forming a defensive ring around Crown Princess Angelica.
"Stay back from the Princess!"
Vance warned, raising his silver sword.
"Lower your swords kid, we aren’t here for you!"
Maroon yelled aiming his heavy plasma pistol directly at the dirt.
"We are here for him!"
the Commander declared, pointing at the unkillable ghost in the dirt.
"Let them pass immediately,"
Angelica ordered weakly, her voice cutting through the tension with undeniable royal authority despite her pale exhausted face.
"He is their shield, just as he was ours,"
the Crown Princess stated softly, looking down at the unconscious super soldier who had just defied the Outer Gods.
The Celestials reluctantly parted allowing Zeon to slide into the dirt beside the armored man.
"His suit is boiling!"
Zeon yelled, pulling his hands back in pain as the immense heat radiated like an open furnace.
"His cooking alive inside there, we have to get him out!"
Zeon panicked while thick black smoke hissed violently from the exhaust vents of N032’s suit.
"Ruby, his vitals must be flatlining, get the trauma foam ready!"
Captain Eva Diane ordered, dropping to her knees on the other side.
"I am trying Captain, but the armor’s thermal output is frying my medical scanner!"
Ruby shouted in frustration.
"He took the full psychic weight of whatever the hell just looked at us from the sky, so he could be bleeding internally!"
Eva warned.
"I can’t find a single release valve!"
Zeon shouted, his fingers frantically tracing the seams of the featureless neck guard.
"It is not a standard Mark IV, we are going to have to cut him out with a plasma torch!"
Zeon suggested desperately.
"Stand back Zeon, if you breach these pressurized seals improperly, it will decapitate him!"
Eva snapped.
"He showed me the override,"
Eva said, her hands moving with frantic precision toward a recessed groove beneath the heavy jawline.
"It is an incredibly old federation black site cipher, so hold him perfectly steady!"
she instructed, twisting a hidden mechanical valve.
"Step aside, mortals!"
Angelica suddenly commanded, pushing past her guard and kneeling beside Eva.
"His armor is conceptually sealed by the Abyss he wields, but my Light can purge the remaining magical locks!"
the Princess declared, letting a fraction of her remaining celestial magic flare against the rusted latches.
HIIISSSSS.
A violent burst of pressurized, superheated air erupted from the neck seal and the magnetic locks disengaged with a heavy metallic clank.
Eva grabbed the heavy scarred iron helmet with both hands and lifted it off with a sharp pull.
As heavy helmet hit the dirt with a lifeless thud, the entire clearing instantly went dead silent.
"What..."
Ruby whispered, the medical scanner slipping from her trembling fingers and clattering against the metal chest plate.
Eva’s breath caught sharply in her throat, her sharp tactical eyes widening in shock.
"No... no, that’s impossible,"
Zeon stammered, stopping his breathing as he stared at the face beneath the iron.
"That has to be a trick! It’s a shapeshifter, right? Ruby, tell me it’s a shapeshifter!"
Zeon spiraled into a full blown panic attack.
"Zeon, breathe, you just need to breathe,"
Ruby commanded, her voice cracking as the blood completely drained from her own face.
"He has my birthmark!"
Zeon screamed, desperately tracing his own jawline as he stared down at the unconscious man.
"He has my exact face! What the hell happened to him?!"
Zeon cried out in terror.
The man lying in the dirt was in his early thirties, framed by pitch black hair heavily streaked with premature silver.
His pale skin was aggressively scarred by countless unimaginable stress, violence and sorrow including a scar mark tearing across his jaw that perfectly matched the helmet.
But the bone structure, the shape of the nose and the sharp angle of the jawline were identical to the nineteen year old Zeon kneeling beside him.
"I told you guys!"
Chang breathed out, his voice shaking violently as he dropped his heavy ammunition box into the dirt with a loud crash.
"I told you it was a black site cloning project, he is a genetic template!"
Chang insisted in horror.
"He wasn’t talking in cryptic riddles back in the jungle,"
Commander Maroon whispered, completely paralyzed as his tactical mind hit a brick wall.
"He was actively trying to protect you from seeing what the universe is eventually going to do to you,"
the veteran Commander grieved, realizing he had been talking to a boy forced to fight a war for eons.
"A clone could share my face and a genetic experiment could replicate my combat stance,"
Zeon muttered, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.
"But a clone wouldn’t have the exact same tiny crescent shaped birthmark right below the ear that my mother kisses before she leaves for her shifts,"
Zeon realized, the cold terrifying dread settling into his bones.
"Zeon..."
Ruby asked softly, her voice devoid of oxygen as she saw the sheer terror in Zeon’s eyes.
"This isn’t a template, Ruby,"
Zeon rasped, unable to look away from the closed scarred eyelids of the older man.
"He is me."
A few feet away, Crown Princess Angelica watched the humans entirely break down over the unkillable apocalyptic supersoldier.
"You aren’t a god,"
Angelica whispered, finally recognizing the shattering weight of the revelation.
"You are just a broken man carrying the weight of the world,"
she observed softly.
And for the terrified young boy staring down at him in the dirt, he was a living breathing ghost of a ruined future.
A/N:
To my old readers from the old book, im changing confederation to federation, mainly because it didn’t make sense and federation sounds cooler