1.1.5: 0000 A.E. - ??? - The Machine

DiTh rushed over to the machine, his best clue as to where he was and what had happened. A thin layer of soot was stuck to the CRT monitor on what DiTh assumed was the front. He quickly cleared the obscuring material with a sleeve, revealing a monochrome green monitor.

On the monitor was what appeared to be a topographic map of the surrounding area, a perfect vectorized circle with the machine in the middle and contour lines demarcating the outline of level slices of land. There were also various notes in some strange script that seemed vaguely familiar to DiTh, though his limited linguistic skill prevented him from divining its origin.

Among the strange symbols there were some small blocks of text that caught his eye. Marking 8 of the 9 dots spread across the field he found small sections of English.

• Bill
• Jaydee
• Riley
• Raven
• Rhino
• Crock
• Doc
• DiTh

The ninth dot was near the dot labeled Jaydee, but this one's label was written in the unknown script instead of English. Without being able to read it, DiTh felt angry as he understood it's meaning. "ELi," he growled. Seeing red, he split his shirt with an explosive bubbling of his back. Wings of skin erupted from his torso, spreading 4 meters from each side, fully disconnected from his body.

With no more than a thought, the wings pummeled the air in a mighty whomp and catapulted him towards the target of his ire. He didn't remember why yet, but he knew that that reptile was the cause of all this.

As he flew, he pondered for the umpteenth time over his ability and its limitations.

Fortunately for his health, the dissociated masses he farmed out to perform various tasks received blood-flow through some mechanism he didn't fully understand. ELi did, but that bastard was the cause of whatever happened and was never great with English.

In the distance he saw two figures, one of which was helping the other up with unnerving ease. Jaydee was helping the snake.