THE INFINITE BROOD (Starcraft/Supreme Commander Crossover Quest!)

You cracked your knuckles. "All right, Fenix," you said, not sending a message to the wailing Warfield - your hands playing along the console. "Get your troops ready. I'm going to deal with those colonies. You be ready." Then you glanced back at the picture-in-picture, then considered your possibilities. Part of you...a big part...wanted very badly to tell him exactly what you thought of his Emperor.
Tin pot dictator. Upjumped colonial hick with delusions of grandeur.

An insect to be stomped on - like every other would be dictator who thought they could ignore Earth's civilizing light.

But...

You rolled your shoulders, lifted your chin, and said: "I'm just a General, General. I lack the proper authority to carry out diplomacy with the Emperor himself. Preliminary talks with Crown Prince Valerian however... that I could do." You smiled, flintily at him.

The problem with men like Mengsk was you never just stepped on him. They were the kind of people, like Deng Ho or Chazmir Vandire to bring down entire planets with them. And from what you'd heard about his throne world of Khoral, it had already been irradiated enough that he wasn't too picky about glassing large parts of it to stop his enemies.

You wouldn't have their blood on your hands.

Warfield's eyes were hard to read. He frowned. "I'll get back to you on that. General."

He clicked off.

"All right," you said, quietly.

The crown prince...I have heard little of him, Fenix said. To my eye, it seems as if he appeared from thin air between the wars - wholly his father's creation. No reference to an...Empress? Yes? You humans need males and females like we Protoss do, yes?

You coughed, adjusted your collar. "Not, uh quite. Or, maybe. I mean, I don't...know about..." you trailed off, not sure if you were going to have to explain exowombs and mutual chromosomal intermixing with genetic oversight - which had been the staggering majority of humanity throughout history's primary method of reproduction. The sliver of a minority back on Earth during the pre-quantum era was, compared to the teeming masses of the galactic population, nothing but an unfortunate bottleneck forced to...you shuddered faintly at the very idea. A baby was a goddamn 3.5 kilogram bomb, the idea of one exiting you was up there with trepanation and amputation with medical horrors long left buried.

Well, Fenix said, cheerfully. When the Khala has held a spirit within the crystals for long enough, and it yearns to be once more birthed into this world, then it the souls of the Protoss most directly related with a lustful passion, a blazing heat we call the Ch'nai. With this passion, a protoss male will have a mighty and engorged-

"Ahem!" you said, very loudly. "Beginning preliminary bombardment of Zerg formation."

On the lower ridges of the mountain, where your engineers had been hard at work, the shells began to arc into the air. They bloomed with ribbons of fire. Napalm fell across the creep colonies and smoke began to smear across the sky as you and Fenix watched the gulley burn until dawn.

You were asleep in the cockpit - the reports from Tosh and Matt's fronts playing silently on your screen - and dreaming of Sarah. In the dream, she kept trying to tell you something, but the two of you were sinking into something heavy and red, like the air had become blood. She looked so terrified, her eyes meeting yours. Her lips formed words, but no sound came out, and no matter how hard you pushed against the blood-air, you couldn't move. It was the worst kind of dream - the kind where you knew you slept, and you knew you dreamed, but as you struggled to wake, you couldn't. You couldn't help but see those kissable, purple lips forming the words.

Help me.

Splat.

You jerked awake, gasping, panting, your heart hammering, your hand reaching for your sidearm. You blinked - then heard Fenix's voice, roaring in your mind.

Antu'kha! All forces, disperse!

You snapped your head up to the cameras - and lurched as you saw that everything had turned red. Your camera showed red, red, more red. Then it hissed and turned to static. "Fenix!" you said. "What the hell hit me?"

One moment, friend Samantha! It is time for bladework!

You tapped on the orbital satellite view - and saw that your ACU was smoking, hissing and bubbling. It had been completely coated in a brilliant red glop that writhed and squirmed like living mucus. Similar explosions of red splattered across shielded Protoss units - and then you saw the sources: Writhing, centipede like creatures the size of...well, of an ACU from your estimate. They had burrowed out of the ground and were hastily retreating. You saw one get smashed in the face by a blast of energetic photons - the orb of blue light coming from Fenix and his dragoon body. He thundered towards the other creatures - firing shot after pinpoint shot. He blew one in half, shot another's tail off, then leaped like a spider.

Doom'ha du nala! Fenix roared as he smashed onto the back of the creature before it reached its hole. Rather than shooting it, he fired three more rapid blasts - one missed, but the other two struck the sides of two of the others. Back to the pit, foulness!

You, meanwhile, were a bit more focused on the ACU. The damage was stopped at the secondary levels of the unit - but you had to hastily reroute repairs to keep the nanolathe and your cockpit safe. YOu were fairly sure you'd be back to functionality in a few minutes...but before you could report that, Fenix's voice barked out more orders.

Enough! Samantha Clarke has opened the way to us! Templars - today, the Zerg will be broken, and Aiur shall once more breathe free. Arbiters - recall!

Cresting the hill came a set of three Arbiters - each one as large as you remembered.

Carrier Adelpha, prepare your wings! Scout squads, form into delta. Maximize power to your weapons!

The scouts and the carrier flew into position, right above the arbiter. They shimmered like cascading water was being poured along them, the cloaking field actually allowing your orb-sats to see them, as if they were ghostly, half there presences. Then the focusing vortexes of the arbiters flashed and a series of whumps filled the air - each one announcing the spreading, prismatic shape of a Protoss teleport. Standing in them were dozens of Zealots and their Dragoons. Then hundreds of them. They gathered into ranked rows, their armor gleaming in the morning starlight.

Fenix lifted one of his legs, then brought it smashing down onto the head of the centipede that had slopped you with this foulness.

Ki nala atum, Templars! We are as one! We fight as one! For Tassadar! For Adun! For Aiur!

And with that, they charged. The vast, breaking wave of their formation sprinted down the rocky face of the cliff - Zealots springing like mountain gazelles from rock to rock. They hit the ground and sprinted straight for the burning napalm and the smoking jungles. Blue crackled and shields flashed as Fenix was first among the darkness and jungles.

"...these people are absolutely insane," you whispered in the privacy of your cockpit.

You started down the mountain, feeling almost as if you were in a bit of a dream. The ACU stomped into the jungles, clearing most of the trees. You didn't see a single Zerg as you stomped forward, though you saw countless corpses of them: Some stopped by fire, most slashed apart with gleaming energy blades. The wounds left behind were ashen, but the bodies were otherwise intact. The jungle ahead of you flashed with a mad crescendo of plasma and screeching, hissing death. You moved forward faster and came out into the clearings left behind by the creep and the hive beyond. You could see dozens of Zealots slashing apart hatcheries, while dragoons sat in place and fired. The front of line still teemed with Zerg - but the flashing shields obscured them, the Protoss line hemming them in.

"Well, damn," you said, quietly. "It looks like you got them, Fenix."

There was no response.

You started to pilot your ACU forward a bit faster - coming to the last knot of the Zerg. There was a pile of corpses twice as tall as your ACU - a heaping mass of zerglings and ultralisks, slumped atop and against one another, as if they had all converged on a single point. Smoldering holes hissed and sparked from where photon cannons had blasted through the beasts, leaving behind carnage upon carnage. Zealots were watching the pile, and as you came to a stop, you tapped the broadband frequency. "Fenix?" you asked.

A protoss voice, unfamiliar to you, spoke in your mind. He was at the front of the line, at the thickest fighting... A zealot pointed - and you realized that was why the masses of Zerg had converted.

You opened your mouth, then closed it, grimly.

You and the Protoss stood at the cairn of the dead...

Then...a single golden spider-limb thrust past an ultralisk. The whole body slumped to the side and, wriggling, Fenix burst from the gore. His golden body was soaked, completely and utterly in gore and blood. He was as red and black as a Tal'darim walker, his chassis draped in bits of flesh and flecks of bone. He shook himself a bit like a wet dog, then carefully picked his way down the mountain of corpses.

Hah! he said. And thus, Antioch is truly expiated - by the blood of my enemies!

You sagged in relief. "Christ, Fenix," you said. "You are..."

A character? He asked.

"Certifiably insane," you said.

Hah! By your Terran standards of sanity, perhaps. And yet...the day is won! En Taro Tassadar! En Taro Adun! He lifted his limb. En Taro Clarke, the Liberator of Aiur!

The zealots began to cheer.

Overhead, a flight of Wasps screamed by - UEF blue and black fuselage glinting in the sunlight as their dual mounted rapid pulse beam weapons cut a scattered swarm of panicking mutalisks, guardians and scourge from the blue on blue skies.

---
Mission Complete! And, for liberating an entire planet, you have LEVELED UP! You get to choose One Trait, get one Loyalty (which is a resource you can spend to assist fellow PCs on the field of battle), and one Power Upgrade! How exciting!

TRAIT (pick one!)
[ ] Aggressive: Each spark created to deal with Range is doubled.
[ ] Charming: +2 to all positive social interactions
[ ] Defensive: Can spend free move sparks to move all enemies away from and your allies
[ ] Informed: Upon arriving in a planetary system, you can nominate 1 fact about it.
[ ] Empathetic: Upon meeting someone, the GM must reveal their motivation (their motivation can be "attempting to hide their motivation")
[ ] Experiment: Upon overheating, you can use a power as a free action
[ ] Interrogator: Upon defeating an enemy, you can learn one fact about them by getting hands on them.
[ ] Perceptive: You get to act once before an enemy acts when enemies arrive on the scene
[ ] Warded: you count as always having enviromental protection/space suits
[ ] Tough: Once per session if you would die or be wounded, you are instead Fine
[ ] Martial Training: Count as +1 Damage for unarmed combat
[ ] Unstoppable: Ignore all cover/difficult terrain sparks

POWER UPGRADE! (you need to first vote on the power you want and the upgrade you want to apply. You can only get one of each! Please use a plan vote!)
POWER LIST
[ ] Take Cover Men
[ ] Marksman
[ ] Rapid Defensive Employment
[ ] Just as Planned

UPGRADE LIST
[ ] Area: Adds +1 Area characteristic to a power
[ ] Cool: Add +1 to amount Vented when you Vent with this power.
[ ] Devastation: Add +1 Damage characteristic to this power
[ ] Efficiency: Add +1 to targets effected if this power effects multiple targets.
[ ] Speed: reduce how many enemies can act by -1 (3)
[ ] Range: Add +1 Range to a power.


Next mission is gonna be an interlude so I can write more gay se- I mean so you can reflect on what has happened so far before the potential climax of Act One