An Imperfect Arrival

[Handsome Jack]

With a wet thud, the bioandroid let his victim fall to the dirt. The poor Saiyan boy had been no match for perfection; it had been an almost disappointingly easy kill. Gero's creation had expected more from the one who had destroyed Androids Seventeen and Eighteen. Still, he couldn't really complain. After all, he was about to solve that particular problem. Soon, the Androids, and perfection, would be in his grasp.


He looked to the technological marvel that the boy's mother had created. With it, he would return to a time before his birthright had been taken from him. His beak-like mouth broke into a wicked grin, but as he took a step towards the machine, something changed. There was a sensation like falling from an extreme height, his stomach leaping into his throat. The world around the bioandroid exploded into light and color, quickly fading to a deep black as the previous sensation left him. In the brief time it had taken him to put one foot in front of the other, the world he knew had vanished and the amalgamation was left floating in a void of pure midnight.


Shock filled the bioandroid, both at his new surroundings and at the inexplicability what had happened to him. It didn't take long for that shock to be replaced with rage, however. His blood boiled and he soundlessly screamed in rage and loss. In that pit, there existed only himself. So close to fulfilling his purpose, and... something took it all away from him. Perfection was forever beyond his grasp. Perhaps some God had known his intentions and whisked him away to another realm. Maybe he'd even been killed, improbable as that was. It didn't matter WHAT had happened. Only that he had been denied his birthright. And the universe had been denied its chance at true perfection.


Whether he waited there for only a few, mere seconds or an eternity, he didn't know. The passage of time in that place was impossible to measure, and his own rage prevented anything even remotely resembling rational thought. All he knew was that, suddenly, he was no longer alone in that dark expanse. A being of pure, white light appeared before the bioandroid, the contrast to its surroundings making it blinding to look at. He wanted to scream at it to return him, to rush forward and punish this being who had taken everything from him, but something held him firmly in place and the words would not form in his throat.


And while he struggled against this intractable power restraining him, the being began to speak. It gave its name as Omni and spoke of a new world. It spoke of how he had interested it. None of that concerned the bioandroid. He didn't care what the thing was or what it wanted with him. He just cared about achieving his perfect form and becoming the ultimate power in the universe. But it continued speaking, and suddenly his interest was piqued. This Omniverse, as it had named this world, was a place that could grant its denizens their wishes and desires.


He fixated on what it was saying now, feeling that somewhere in those words was the key to his destiny. Omni spoke on about a substance called Omnilium and that it was the key to giving him what he wanted. But that he would need more, much more, if he were to achieve true greatness. It spoke of others in this world who also sought out the pearlescent material, and that death itself was nothing to fear, so long as he continued to interest it. With a few parting words, the world around him changed and the being vanished.


He gave his new surroundings little more than a cursory glance before he returned his thoughts to what Omni had said to him. Omnilium... The Omniverse... it seemed like this Omni was rather full of itself. The amalgamation's Saiyan part could respect that. Pride was as much a part of him as it was of Vegeta, one of the Saiyans whose DNA was used to create him. But, more than that, it told him something very important: that this Omni was the most powerful being in this new world. Such an acknowledgment irked the bioandroid. But it also filled him with purpose.


He would play along with Omni's game... for now. He'd stay interesting, and while doing so, gather more strength. Omni had spoke of others in this world, and perhaps Seventeen and Eighteen were here already. But even if they weren't, he would use who was here to increase his own power. He'd been designed to extract biomass from organics and use it to bolster his power; it was possible this could also be used to extract Omnilium from them. There was only one way to find out. His slitted-eyes took in the area around him.


A white expanse stretched far and wide, blending seamlessly into the sky and making distance impossible to gauge. Behind the bioandroid, the concrete ruins of a fountain sprayed dirty water haphazardly skyward, the damage done to it making it impossible to tell what shape it originally had. And, barely visible at this distance, several shapes dotted the horizon, regularly spaced as he walked around the fountain. It was impossible to make a choice about which direction he should go first, and in the end all he could do was choose at random and begin his long trek towards whatever awaited him.




For once, it had been a quiet day at Coruscant's Nexus Gate. It had been a little while since the last New Prime attack and Trudeau was finally beginning to relax again. Why the arrivals always wanted to pick a fight with the Empire, he didn't know. He also didn't know why Dredd didn't station more soldiers at the gate to prevent this sort of thing. Maybe the Judge didn't want to scare away any potential allies... who knows? But the Guard Captain had been getting pretty tired of feeling like they were the Omniverse's punching bags.


Trudeau was just finishing up the last of his troop reviews when the radio crackled to life on his desk. A desperate voice came over the airwaves, the Captain recognizing the voice of Recruit Jones, a recent replacement on detail at the Nexus Gate. As the boy spoke, his superior's chest tightened and a headache pulsed at his temples.

“Goddammit... Not again.”