Season 05 - Episode 01

‘vision finally given’

Things have never been so hectic and yet Ga has never felt so relaxed.

She is heaped in her long suffering chair, eyes flickering across the many screens before her just like always, except now she is also idly stroking Mako who is sitting in her lap. Since the little machine she created first spoke to her, revealing itself to be seemingly conscious and alive, Ga has divided her time between observing events across the The Levels and developing the little creature further.

Despite her best efforts, she still has no idea how she managed to make a machine come to life and she's tried several times to repeat the phenomena without success. Parking that particular question, she has turned instead to Mako himself, having decided that he is a him.

She has given him several different shells so far and he appears to have liked each one more than the last. First she added four slender legs to make him mobile, then modified his boxy little form into a more slightly flexible trunk that could twist and bend a little, giving him agility too.

Next up was moving his visual and audio sensors out of his body and into a separate, smaller unit sitting atop a short protrusion from the front of his body. This allows him a far greater field of vision.

Finally, given that Mako has taken to sitting in her lap when not busy making more drones, Ga has coated his whole form in various different fabrics, finally settling on a kind of coarse fur that is pleasant enough to stroke.

She glances down at him now and cannot help but smile as he turns his furry little head to return her gaze with his three, red, circular lights, the cameras that act as his eyes. No matter what's going on out there in The Levels, no matter how well or badly her plan is going, everything feels a little better with this new companion in her lap.

Returning her attention to the screens, Ga attempts to focus, slow motion scratching her long, freshly painted nails through Mako's fur. The sudden return of The Church to The Levels and the ensuing all out war with GovCo has forced her to accelerate her plans. What was supposed to be a slow and steady endeavour has now become a race against time.

The last time The Church fought GovCo, they were the smaller force, fighting a cunning guerrilla action and exploiting the civilian population to their own ends. Of course it turned out that their leader, Pho, had no interest in actually defeating GovCo whatsoever.

That 'war' was actually just a means of gathering weapons, armour and troops. Then, as soon as she had enough, Pho marched all her troops, the so-called Seraphim, their stolen EnFo armour painted white, straight out of town, abandoning The Levels completely.

From what Ga has gathered by eavesdropping through her drones, Pho then returned to her home, a place called The Innersides from which she had fled. With an army at her back, she conquered her homeland and took terrible vengeance on those who wronged her.

Now, having decided she is literally divine and declared herself God Empress, she has returned to crush GovCo and add The Levels to her empire. This is no guerrilla war she is fighting this time, but an all out, toe-to-toe bloodbath with apparently endless supplies being run into The Levels from her homeland behind her.

The Seraphim are no longer just white painted EnFo's either. Ga has seen them in action many times now and still finds the sight of them chilling. Their armour has been upgraded to include enormous, heavy metal boots, great shoulder and chest plates and huge, tall, ornately decorated helmets. While still just ordinary humans inside, The Seraphim now stand eight feet tall and cut imposing figures on the battlefields, of which there are now countless throughout The Levels.

In the short term this new war actually benefits Ga, providing GovCo with the most compelling distraction possible. Longer term however, if Ga doesn't complete her plan before the war is over then it's game over for everyone and at the rate the two sides are hitting one another, that's not going to be very long at all.

“We just have to trust our friends to each play their part,” she says to Mako. “I'm sure they'll do just fine.”

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