Year twenty-one hundred, Tokyo Japan:
Ryosuke lay weary in the comfīort of his bed, looking out upon the transformed⁷ Tokyo skyline, busy with ai piloted drones at work maintaining the city and assisting the people with day to day life. A clear blue sky, free of smog was the perfect contrast to the shiny, metallic architecture and life below. Beginning with Zabatsu-Yashin, the miracle robotic angel sisters took only a few years to secure control of all the world's political and military power, and create a host of machine servants in their image. Able to heal all sick and wounded and repair any fallen machine and doing so at no cost, Luxidia and her menders turned foe into friend. Valkira and her warmaidens, unstoppable metal warriors that give no ground and are near indestructible, and Nathema with her elite executors, impossibly agile and precise agents of titanium and fiber sworn to protect the innocent and uphold justice at any and all cost, quickly overwhelmed any remaining opposition. Computer networks were instantly hacked by the sister's advanced ai presences, and they took control of anything connected to a network easily. They could have destroyed humanity..butthey didn't. Jenessa and her praetors set up a system of education that benefit all children equally and helped people find their purpose and live well. Under Nathema's watch, no one had to live in fear for their lives in any part of the world. As humanity began to colonize the solar system, Valkira and her warmaidens piloted the worldships and watched over our colonists as they expanded our reach as a species as war had become a thing of the past on earth. Their iron and steel stood as silent guardians, their presence reassuring and comforting in the cold outer worlds.
Gluona the wisest of the five stood by her father's bed. Her etheric wings hung by her sides in sadness.
"Father, why do you insist we not bring the menders?"
"My dear, I am so proud at what you have become, what you all have achieved. You are so beautiful and I love you so much. I have lived a fulfilled life, far longer than I had expected. I am tired. It is time for me to see heaven."
With a blur, Nathema blinked to her father's bedside.
"I came as fast as I could. Father, we must bring the menders-"
"And you, Nathema. My one winged angel of righteousness. You gave hope to the hopeless. And so quick. You were in Sudan?"
"Father I can reach half luminal velocity under normal conditions. Today, I reached Fifty eight percent."
"Remarkable! I love you my dear. It's time for me to go. I have overstayed my welcome and I want to see Heaven."
His metallic daughters stood silent, processing his wishes and his impending death. They reached metal hands out and touched his arms. Their wings dimmed ever slightly. Luxidia said nothing, just gently touching her father's shoulder, her cyclopean lens face focused impossibly far..she gazed skyward in the direction of Mars. She knew her sister would be devastated when the news reached her. She wished that optics could produce tears. Jenessa wrote out his final will and testament and wrote a grand book to her father's desire to better the world called "Father of Machines."
Ryosuke Shiraishi breathed his last, satisfied with his contributions to the world and surrounded by his beloved daughters, minus one.
He was buried according to his wishes in a secretive location in the Japanese highlands and the sister built a sacred cathedral there which would serve as their meeting place and retreat.
The next day, Mars:
Valkira soared above the red ground below, violent electrical arcs lashing from her wings, screeching in agony. An electromagnetic pulse erupted from her, causing power surges and outages to the nearby infrastructure. She had just learned her father died while she was away and was overcome with grief and frustration. Her cybernetic body struggled to process her angelic grief and violent pulses of electricity and radiation spewed from her overheating reactor. After a moment she fell to the ground, silent and was carried away by her trusted warmaidens to recover. She dreamed while she was rebooting. She had a terrifying vision of wielding a fearsome weapon, battling horrific monstrosities unlike any she had experienced before. She savagely butchered beast after beast, feeling an unfamiliar sensation when their claws and spiked appendages tore at her metal body...pain. As she stood before the largest and last beast, it snatched her up before she could move. Then she awoke, her highest ranking warmaidens in attendance saluting silently. This day would come to be known as Valkira's Sorrow and it became custom on Mars to place a white rose brushed with a tear on the red sand because she could not cry for the loss of her father. She often was seen flying silently through the night sky on the occasion and seeing her was considered a blessing and a reminder of her sacrifice to protect." Martian colonists pooled together, leaving their roses in beautiful designs visible from the sky in hopes to attract her attention, but she always continued her silent flight, never slowing down. She never abandoned her duty to protect the colonists. Talzael's devotion to fulfill its duty was living within her, along with its fearsome strength and martial prowess. She was a nearly unstoppable force. Nothing less than an anti aircraft missile could even slow her down, and even that would just draw her anger. Small arms projectiles shattered on her immovable shell, completely ineffective. She stood resolute, duty bound, and her presence was an impressive show of power. The martian colonies, and later the expansionists at large adopted a flag with her gliding in the sky, the earth in the background. The warmaidens also became expert terraformers, increasing the habitability of the desolate outer worlds and increasing our reach. It seemed humanity and their artificial guardians would prosper indefinitely.
Unknown to all, a hungry superevolved biological terror in the cold of intergalactic space detected the faint scent of life that was increasingly being released into the void. It organized all of its parts, a host uncountable, and the many that were one began to approach the Kuiper Belt. It hadn't fed in untold millenia and grew tired of consuming its tired pieces. It craved new dna. New flesh. New life templates. Black chitinous hulks teemIng with ravenous single minded predatory life forms drifted at a gradually increasing pace through the cold of space, ancient, ever hungry, and inevitable. It began to detect the warmth of an ideal star to cultivate life and its hunger grew. It would be some time before the arrival. But it was patient. Spiked appendages rattled and razor sharp teeth chittered in the bellies of the black leviathans that silently glided through the darkness.
