The Age of Cyber: Prologue

Story by SashaWS on SoFurry

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The pilot prologue to the story of Hillevi, a queen forced to abdicate through kidnapping and her understanding of the weaker in society, prompting her to assume the masked appearance of the new crime fighter and superhero, Night Mantra. This starts at the point when Hillevi is first introduced to the unknown danger of the entire world.

Hillevi "Night Mantra" Ekelance © Me

Length: 1,603 words. 8,857 characters.

Time used to type: 2.5 hours (with corrections, editing and cleaning)


The Age of Cyber: Prologue This story is copyrighted to Lysgaard Ljusskjöld, containing characters owned by various people used with permission. Any usage or posting of this story under the claim of being your own is not approved and you will be requested to remove it or face charges.

"Calling all officers currently on duty! Calling all officers currently on duty! We got a robbery going on currently at South Callwire Street. All officers stationed nearby, advance to the location and arrest the criminals. They are heavily armed with plasma pistols of Crimson quality, so be cautious." The voice called through the frequency used by law enforcement in the utopian city of Valoniah, built on morals and the desire for a brighter future. The frequency was however wired anonymously by the female gryphon sitting on the edge of a building where the robbery was taking place, a slightly frustrated sigh escaping her beak as she took a look at the hologram bracelet, "It took them exactly 1 minute and 12 seconds to respond to the call. They are getting slow, or just comfortable with that I gonna handle it all for them."

With an exasperated sigh, the gryphon leaped from the top of the building and with an almost unnatural precision, she pulled out two crossbows fit for her hands and fired at the criminals that ran out the computer store they had been robbing, one bolt each burying themselves into their hands, forcing them to drop the stolen goods before their faces met the ground.

The officers arrived just in time to witness the takedown and just as quickly as the takedown had been made, both the criminals were cuffed and brought in for questioning while the masked gryphon made her escape into the darkness, much to the officers' dismay. She didn't want them to know her true identity, but only her superhero name, Night Mantra.

Back at her hideout, the gryphon removed her mask and sighed before slipping out of her full-body suit, feeling no need to cover herself up for the AI that was watching her, "Good evening, Mistress Hillevi. How are you this evening?" The gryphon looked at the console showing the face of a male gryphon butler, who bowed to her, "Quite honestly, Jeeves, I believe the law enforcement here in Valoniah has become quite slack as of late. It is like they expect me to do all the work so they can just arrest the criminals and get all the glory for themselves."

The butler AI's face turned a bit somber, "I may not be programmed to feel what you called emotions, mistress, but I am either way sorry that you are feeling that you are not given the right appreciation." The gryphon entered the shower after putting her superhero costume in the nanoscopic washing machine, "Jeeves, start program one on the nano and then turn on the shower at warm sanitation."

As she had ordered, the washing machine was beginning to wash off her costume while the shower began to light up with a faint light as Hillevi entered, happily churring as the light removed any unwanted filth from her feathers and the warmth worked itself into her body to give a full treatment of her tense muscles before the AI's voice called out as the washing machine stopped, "Mistress, I have discovered an unknown trace on your attire. What shall I do?"

Hillevi groaned before sighing, "Pause the sanitation and open the nano." Right as she said it, the AI had performed her order and Hillevi walked out of the shower and over to the washing machine before pulling out her costume, and as the AI had said, there was a type of stain on it, however it was black and made it near impossible to notice it if you didn't have a trained eye, or an AI, "That is odd. I haven't seen this before."

With a latex glove on her right hand, Hillevi proceeded to remove the stain, which seemed to have already hardened, before she put it in a transparent plastic bottle and put a lid on top of it as the air inside quickly escaped to create vacuum, something that had been discovered a few years earlier and had revolutionized the world.

After good sanitation and her costume cleaned off, Hillevi retrieved her casual clothes before walking up the stairs to the laboratory of her good friend, simply known as the Alchemist even if he was also a chemist. His head turned to face her, the golden muzzle glimmering in the light with the various fluid pipes connected to sockets, but she knew when he was smiling as he bowed deeply, "Ah, Hillevi. Welcome to my laboratory. Finally decided to escape your dark world of crime fighting for a bit?"

Hillevi nodded to him before holding the plastic bottle out to him, watching him slowly taking it and having a look at it quickly before undoing the seal and reaching in with a pair of tweezers to extract the weird black substance and chuckled, "Looks like part of your costume. Did you really have to cut it off to tell me that you need me to repair it?" He watched her reaction before noticing that she wasn't joking, his eyes focused more on the strange material, proceeding to cut off part of it before putting it in a test tube and finally putting the test tube into his spectrometer.

Once the spectrometer was done, Hillevi could see his face turning into one of surprise, "This is a polymer made from an intermediate of glycolic acid and mandelic acid. But there are traces of blood in it too." Hillevi looked in shock at her friend, "Okay, speak normal language instead of your science way." He sighed, "What I am saying is that this is a plastic that can degrade fast, but there are traces of blood in it. It is like the blood keeps this plastic fluent and once it dries up, the plastic solidifies."

Hillevi looked at the plastic and her eyes met his, "So what? I am dealing with some kind of plastic person?" He gave her a worried look before shaking his head, "No, but I wanna study this more. Hope you are not against the idea of me asking where you could have gotten it from." Hillevi tried to remember, but the only moment she could have gotten it was when she pinned down the robbers. But that couldn't be the moment she had the stain on her attire. The information didn't help him a bit, but soon the sound of Hillevi's frequency scanner picked up an emergency signal.

A bit earlier, the cruiser made the final turn to the police department of Valoniah's western sector as the officers stepped out of the vehicle and opened up the backseat doors, just to witness one of the criminals had managed to escape the cuffs and in front of his shocked companion, he grabbed the officer by the face before a sharp plastic spike pierced right through the head of the officer before they were discarded, the remaining officer managing to pull his gun out just in time to shoot the criminal in the back of the head, killing him instantly and leaving the remaining criminal to cower in fear before the officer tore the door open and pulled him out, pressing him down onto the ground with a growl, "What the fuck was that?! Tell me!!!" The criminal whimpered before the officer applied more force, "Tell me now, scum!"

It was at that point a sound of a beast could be heard and just as the officer was about to signal for backup, a black creature swiftly moved from the shadow and tore off the officer's head, chucking it past the criminal who laid there with a face of pure dread at what he had witnessed before the creature slowly moved closer to him and from the neon lights coloring the street red, he got a brief look at the feminine traits of the creature, but just as he attempted to turn over and get away from her, the creature got a hold of his legs and no matter how he struggled, she seemed determined to have him, but with the radio still being turned on from the headless officer's body pressing down the button, it gave whoever listened a good idea of what was happening to the criminal.

The sound that both Hillevi and her friend heard was not the officer's voice, but rather the criminal moaning and the black beast girl enjoying her catch, or her mate, as much as she could. The whole ordeal made Hillevi a bit uncomfortable, but her friend seemed to have picked up some details and looked at Hillevi just as Jeeves' voice spoke out, "Mistress, my firewall is sensing unwanted computer viruses. Shall I start the antivi..." Suddenly the voice was cut and as Hillevi ran to check on the AI, she was noticing that the shower was on, but inside of it was a being made from the pure black matter being formed.

Before the creature could be finished, Hillevi retrieved one of her cooking knives and pushed it into the black mass' chest, causing it to disintegrate in front of her and the shower to turn itself off, but now without any AI. Hillevi looked in pure horror at where the creature had been standing a moment ago, her eyes not leaving the spot while one thing went through her mind, "What the fuck was that?"

To be continued?