Lorien Legacy Fan Fiction
The Last Zero
By Jake Smo
All Character, Ideas about characters, storyline, and a bunch of other stuff in this is all belong to the original writer of the series. I do not want to make money on this or no junk like that. I just want to write a halfway decent fan fic because, from my experience most of them are... shall we say a bit... subpar. so yeah, I don't own this blah blah blah. Enjoy!
WARNING! Contains serious spoilers. Readers should be have read "The Rise of NIne" before reading this!
1
The smell of ash, blood, and burnt flesh assailed my nostrils as I came to my senses. Using eyes filled with dirt and grime visibility was difficult and painful, for that and other reasons besides that I would rediscover later. The scent of ash was easiest to identify – the stuff was everywhere: in the air, all over the ground in my clothes and hair, and on my sweaty skin. Amid the grey remains, especially in the larger piles were a variety of weapons. Everything from swords to human firearms to high tech energy cannons lay strewn about, many of them bent, battered, or smashed to bits. If the number of weapons as well as the amount of burned-out leftovers were any sort of indicator, a hundred or more mogs had been dispatched.
But at what cost? The metallic, organic smell of blood drew my aching eyes to the two bodies I could see before me. Louis, Halley. Too high. The cost is far too high, especially for failure, I realized as my hand reached up to my head, seeking my right temple. Sure enough the mark had shifted, and I found myself tracing the loric symbol for the number three where there had until recently been a two. As the base and side of my palm brushed the lower half of my face the areas touched exploded in in protest. Like a chain reaction of awakening nerves the remaining regions similarly afflicted to the regions hit spoke out as well, and I remembered the third odor. Burnt flesh. With this thought I screamed, a horrible ghastly sound filled with agony and unimaginable grief, for I was now and forever would be scarred and alone.
With a sharp back and forth motion I shook my head to rid myself of the haunting memory that had temporarily paralyzed me. My concealed right hand had started shaking uncontrollably, and I balled it into a fist in order to subdue it. Get a grip, now, I commanded myself. There is no more time for grief. In fact there never was and never would be, which meant that burying feelings was the only viable option so long as I drew breath. As I compartmentalized and secured my emotions and repressed past best I could I unclenched my iron tight right fingers as they gradually ceased their quaking.
It was the smell of the barbecued bodied that had awoken such a strong reaction within me. Surveying the fresh battlefield with my newfound clarity I whistled despite myself. High in the mountains of India a miniature war had raged not three hours ago. Two well-armed factions had clashed, though I knew that the weapons used varied dramatically from side to side. One group used grenades, guns, armored cars and helicopters. While the opposing side certainly used some of these, a great deal of their arsenal came from a different source: Lorien Legacies.
As I gaged the aftermath of the carnage I could not help but be a little impressed. The Garde members had torn their attackers apart, with admittedly a little help from the Vishnu Militia. The charred blackened hulls of trucks, reinforced cars, and even a couple of small tanks were all damaged beyond use by flame and explosion. Kicking a bit of scrap metal aside I thought with small satisfaction, well at least one of them knows how to fight, and against pretty steep numerical odds. As I leapt about fifteen feet down from the rocky perch I had be crouching atop, I noticed the tire marks, tread paths, and footprints all moving in the opposite direction of the battle. Smart too. One of the Garde had used the still sporadically lingering flames to instigate a retreat. With each observation it was just the kind of fighter the Loriens would need to prevail against the Mogadorians.
Of course they had only faced human soldiers, whose weapons and bodily constitution were a bit less advanced and hardy compared to the true enemy. Still, doubt I may the Garde had proven themselves’ capable of handling even the Mogs adequately. This didn’t stop me from doing my job whenever possible, in this particular case eliminating a school bus full of Mogadorian Soldiers and Scouts sent the Flank the Garde while they were preoccupied. The overconfident idiots hadn’t expected to be ambushed en route to their targets and as such had fallen without much resistance. Be that as it was the Mogs had still slowed me down considerably, and I needed to make up lost time. I knew I could not waste any more of it admiring the efforts of my principals. Just before setting off through the marred landscape I succumbed to one of my very few habitual behaviors and rubbed my thumb over the back of the Loric Talisman that hung from my neck. Engraved there were two Loric symbols that forced the notation “zero-five.” It was my call sign, the only semblance of a Lorien identity any of us ever had except zero-one, but he didn’t last long enough to share his knowledge. A few years ago the rest of us took human names for convenience. It allowed us to blend in more easily when the need arose. I chose Isaac. The word eventually grew on me, though I still held my number close.
I am a Number Zero, the last of five sent to protect the Nine Garde children while they matured and developed their Legacies. To date, we have failed them three times and lost almost everything in doing in the process. Now, as the sole survivor it is my duty to do everything in my considerable power to ensure that the Zeros do not fail outright, which was proving to be more challenging with each passing week. Until recently my only responsibility had been to the Number Four, a boy going by the name John in America. Watching over a single member of the Garde was by no means an easy feat. The Magodorians were far more connected an numberous on Earth than the Loriens had foreseen. They had eyes and ears everywhere, and it took hard work and constant vigilance to keep them from catching up to their prey. When the charm that kept the majority of them safe from harm was broken, my work became infinitely harder. And now the stupid punks had the bright Idea to split up, as if they could divide and conquest the Mogadorian forces. Though I had to give it to the raven haired girl, she had managed to rescued another two members of the Garde, which was quite an accomplishment. It was a lucky thing I decided to follow her instead of the boy and the human, for the battle in Spain had been brutal indeed. In the hellish fight I had kills over fifty of the brutes and their monstrous creatures, driving many more away from their three intended victims.
And now the survivors of that skirmish seemed to think they were close to finding yet another of their rank here in India. Where to next, I wondered as I jogged up the mountain. Australia or Africa? Because God forbid we miss a continent in our frantic fifteen year reunion, or however the hell long it has been. The tail end of the thought struck me and I can to a halt. Had I truly lost track of how long I had been on this alien world? Cocking my head to the side I racked my brain to try to kick-start my sense of time, but to no avail. The restless months just blended together, just one fight after another with a only enough time to stop the bleeding. And there had been quite a lot of that, especially in the beginning. But none of that told me how long I had been doing the things I did. An even better question: how old am I? I was seven when I arrived, but how-
My internal digging was interrupted by the all to familiar report of an alien weapon less than thirty yards to my right. I leaned back hastily, watching the beam of energy pass in front of my face harmlessly. With my back still arched I first thrust out with my hand, then pulled, bringing the shooter flying towards me. Moving to a crouch I punched the Mogadorian Scout in the gut when he reached me with my left hand, causing his to burst into a cloud of ash. As the scouts six friends sprang from their hiding positions around me, I slung the lightly pack book bag I carried with me at all time off my shoulders. Reaching inside I called to the tense looking group surrounding me with their wicked swords drawn, “Any of you know how old I am? Hmm,” I grunted calmed as they charged me at what a human might consider an alarming speed. When I extracted my left hand from my bag, it was now covered by a beautiful, iridescent gauntlet. “I suppose that means no.”
