Chapter 5: Oblivion

The fifth installment of Rise, Rise 5: Oblivion is a continuation of the events after Rise 4: Hands of Fate and the lead up to the final chapter Rise 6: Encore.
=Characters=
==Mercenary Team==
===Returning Members===
Erin Whitehorse: A young expert in close-quarter combat and acrobatics. The missions and the battles have made her contemplate life more and she sees that certain things must be carried out for the greater good, but at the time same time, she maintains a less violent approach to most, usually choosing to disable her opponents than outright kill them. This leads to her also being the voice of reason onboard, unwilling to see her teammates take their differences to the extreme.
Ghost Rider 'Prime': A clone of Wraith who is capable of saving his memories into a cloning machine to reproduce a new body should he die. He is aloft and rarely cares about the anyone else, looking more towards his own self-preservation and life.
Jhareed: A Jawhen who is a powerful psychic, if incredibly distant, physically weak, mentally unstable and anti-social. Suffering mental trauma from past events, he finds himself warring with the voice of a Mi-Go while maintaining both a mental and physical link with his organic-like machine, Bloodlust due to experiments performed on him. By the start of Rise 5, he no longer hears the voices, having shattered the Mi-Go present and vows to take on the power of a God. Despite his eventual link to the Monitor he refuses such power and even when he ascends to another plane of existence he chooses to return back to Mjolnir instead. Crafting a new form to house his essence that is more reminiscent of his old self prior to the experiments, he returns to aid the team in the eventual hunt for Ray.
Kayla Eyre: A sniper and an excellent pilot who has a split-personality disorder between an overly cheerful young woman and a cold and calculating soldier. Normally loud and outspoken, she enjoys trying to get the crew together for social activities to try and build bridges. With the help of Talonyth, she manages to save Lyra, leading to her being considered an older sister with the human were-shark. The two personalities eventually merge into one when Kayla is faced with the nightmare of Eyre replacing her. While Kayla's first personality remains dominant, the soldier within her now has far more direct influence, focusing her mind.
Lilith Haruka Keyes: Demolitions expert and the daughter of the famous Abraham Keyes. Arrogant in her abilities and one to force a smile to hide her true feelings, she tends to be disconnected from most of the crew except Okaasan who is like her mother, and Lucas Hawthorne, often due to injuries. She suffers from health and mental health issues due to over use of a neural interface which she eventually abandons that to put her life back into order. Later she develops a close relation with Lucas Hawthorne.
Lucas Hawthorne:
The Machine / Mack: An Immortal trying to find his place, balancing the idea of Immortals and Organics being different, but equal versus Laertes' more extreme ideals. More open than he was previously, Mack, while generally kind to others, does have issues when he sees people like Jack altering an Immortal as if they were nothing more than a machine. His thoughts on Florence also continue, unable to get her words out of his mind until they finally confront each other where he realizes that he does not need Florence to acknowledge that he is alive. When Margaret learns that she is somehow part Immortal, he remains by her side as a fellow HMV.
Margaret Erachin:
Padraic Flanigan:
Raikegi Izanagi:
Sabishii Okaasan: Leader of the Lost Children PMC and a motherly figure and leader for the team especially Lilith. While she gets close to Ray to a temporary romantic involvement more on accident due to a plot for him to get the Lost Children, she is deeply injured by his betrayal to take the time machine into the past and his murder of Axel Erachin. By the end, she is a vengeful reaper seeking the death of Ray through any means including the placement of an incredibly high bounty for the pain he had inflicted to her. Near the end, during a confrontation with Lilith after the Battle for Automation Okaasan reveals that she is actually Haruka Yoshimitsu. The reasons for this appear to be due to her inability to bear children along with the falling out with her lover, Yvonne Dafoe that pushed her onto forming the Lost Children.
===New Members===
Adam Edged-Miller: The son of Roxy Miller and Gyver Edged, he is an odd human-canis hybrid who, like his father, tends to quick interest in any young lady within his vicinity. He has an odd tendency at making references to old movies from Earth, especially in battle, but he is a skilled hacker, regardless. He would also be the one to kill Winston, having been mistakenly let into the private medical wards after disguising himself as a guard and being injured in the process that saw the amputation of one of his legs. On Automation, he takes a more keen interest on Erin, having issues being on a long mission, especially when he failed to save Maggie from Masquerade. He is killed by Masquerade during the conflict on the Norik, but manages to live on through a replicant loaded with memory chip storing his thoughts up to the point of death. He bids Erin farewell, no longer content to continue with the mission, but not before embracing and giving her a kiss.
Adam 'Twitch' Viper: A young man whose body is controlled by a conglomeration of various ancient individuals that he had inadvertently awoken during his childhood. Having lost constrol of his body, they proceeded to find find their way through the galaxy until ending up in Ray's team. He remains possessed until his final moments in the nightmare conjured by Terra where he was killed, causing his mind to die in the real world. While those controlling him were willing to withdraw from Adam's form, back to the artifact from where they had hidden themselves in and even offered to save Adam's consciousness, he refused, however, as an act of defiance against those who had controlled him. 
Ailaa: A female Dracon with former ties to the Paladins. A healer with some experience tending to other species, Ailaa is also skilled in hand-to-hand combat. She has a strong sense of justice, but also seeks adventure and the thrills of life while also considering herself a pacifist with a distate for killing, if enjoying to occassionally see other in pain. Ailaa is killed when an enraged, transformed Lyra crushes her skull in when the fighting breaks out in Pirate's Cover
Jack:
Jane:
Lestat Shawo Vernaos Macias: The short Pracinoon mercenary veteran who gained the moniker of "the Marshal from the Dauntless Dale". Despite his short stature, his combat experiences, analytical thinking and tactics allows him to be a capable leader on par with Okaasan. After Pirate's Cove, he gets into a heated argumentt with Kayla, Erin and Talonyth over sparing Lyra and bringing her on the board after the girl had killed Ailaa. His is especially critical of Talonyth over his attempt to calm Lyra by risking the Pracinoon's life in hopes Lyra would remember them. Eventually he settles the disputes he has with members of the team. After the events on Automation, he starts teaching Lyra how to control her Were-shark powers. He dies at the end of the mission, but not before obliterating Masquerade's Archangel with his HMV's seismic resonators that detonates the Forefather crystal within which also cause Masquerade's death. 
Roland:
Rorin Fannekin:
Talonyth Markiss:
===Immortals===
==Major NPCs==
===Confederate===
===Hands of Fate===
Florence O'Malley
Masquerade 
Ulysses
===Immortals===
Laertes: An Immortal who's true loyalties lie to the Immortals and their beliefs. Even when he begins to warm up to organics, he remains as a spy for the Monitor within Ray's team, carrying out the Monitor's wishes such as sabotaging the Crossbones forcing it to dock at Pirate`s Cove. When the team reaches Automation, he is hesitant in the fight against his own people before he decides to fully turn against the team. Seeing organics as an inferior who threaten their very existence due to the experiments of Jack, he proceeds to engage the team and kills Talonyth. In response, he is killed by Mack.
Monitor: 
===Neo-Hydras===
Terra McConnelly: Leader of the Neo-Hydras and self-proclaimed queen, Terra is a powerful psychic and archer. Since the Reclamation War, she has a massive disdain for other races and sees human as destined to retake their place in the galaxy. To do this, she first launches a war against the Confederates to expand her own territory and take revenge on Axel Erachin, the murderer of her family. She later orchestrates the plan of trying to trap the mercenaries in a sort of dreamland before letting the nightmares set in to kill them off. This fails and when the world they crafted begins to collapse, Terra is defeated along with her Amazons, and dragged into the tear created from the distortion effectively trapping her mind within the remains of the world she had created.
===Paladins===
Achilles: One of the last remaining Acheans, the small, but powerful Achilles is the current leader of the Paladins who was instructed to look after Axel's daughter, stowing himself away on the Crossbones. He is quick to make judgements, sees strength and power as major factors to life and tends to take words in a literal meaning. Often he likes to flaunt his prowess and sees battle as a glorious sort of sport, though he does know the cost, especially when his pupil Raikegi is killed.
===Pirate`s Cove===
Lyra Valitare: A very young woman with a child-like personality taken by Winston from a Neo-Hydra lab to be his daughter. She is capable of transforming into a shark-like monster with impressive regeneration abilities furthered by a serum that increases her size and strength to that of an average HMV should she be angered or injured. Energetic and cheerful, she has limited attention span, initially, due to her treatment as nothing more than a child by Winston to ensure constant control. Spared from death thanks to the efforts of Kayla and Talonyth, she slowly begins to mature and have more control over her were-shark power that lead to her no longer going on berserker rages upon transformation thanks to a combined effort from Talonyth, Kayla, and Lestat. By the end of Rise 5, she shares a younger sister-like relation with Kayla.
Winston Valitare:
=Plot=
==Summary==
Rise 5: Oblivion begins with Ray and his team leaving the world of Villa, having deceived Axel Erachin so that they may depart for Automation despite the war beginning between the Confederates and Neo-Hydras. To reach Automation and hopefully reach the world before the Hands of Fate, Aerion and his vessel, the Crossbones are hired for this mission. Meanwhile, Ulysses arrives at Pirate's Cove, convincing Winston to aid the Hands of Fate in destroying the mercenary team who are en-route to Automation.
Due to the tampering of the Crossbones by a traitor, who would eventually be revealed to be Laertes, the mercenary team is forced to dock at Pirate's Cove. Only the reputation of the Crossbones and Winston's insistence on capturing the vessel does the team manage to get in without conflict.  
Splitting into three groups, the first group attempts to distract Winston and the majority of Pirate's Cove by staging a massive spectacle performance, giving the other two teams time to siphon the ncessary fuel required to continue to trip to Automation. Winston played along for he saw this as his chance to consolidate his power by seizing the Crossbones when the time came. The two team sent to siphon fuel are met with resistance while the stage performance team is faced with Lyra who soon transforms into a were-shark who is further enhanced in size and strength by an enhanced formula of the were-shark project on Winston's final command who was wounded in the conflict. 
Ulysses slays Raikegi and plants doubt in Padriac's mind to see Lucas as a traitor before they are confronted by the veteran Earl James, controlled by the exo-suit grafted to him after his capture by Winston's personal guard. Ulysses, however, is soon trapped under debris when Roland willingness to go to the extreme by detonating explosives in a reserve fuel tank that nearly kills both of them. When Achilles arrives, he finishes off the crippled Ulysses who stated that he had sacrificed Camilla to the former Empire to survive and that Ray may know of some information.
The stage team manages to escape at the cost of Ailaa's life and after a chase that leads to Kayla and Talonyth managing to calm the enraged were-shark who transforms back into Lyra. The crew then proceeds to board the vessel with one new passenger, as Pirate's Cove is left in disarray.
Ahead of the Ray's group, the Hands of Fate have reached Automation, using the captured Guildstern as their method to reach Monitor without being apprehended. When they reach their target, Monitor, the controlling leader of the Immortal race who is capable of influencing any Immortal who exists, states that he was behind the Neo-Hydra-Confederate conflict which was created so that his kind could sweep through the galaxy and purge all organics who he deemed as inferior. He also reveals his form which he planned to implant himself into, a massive red HMV capable of overshadowing any super-heavy that could easily be mistaken for Fury's former machine. Before this can happen, however, Masquerade uploads a virus created by Nathan Erachin that sees Wraith, who is within Guildstern, supplant the Monitor's control and prepares to permanently shutdown all connected Immortals in the galaxy who are connected to the network. 
When Ray's team finally reaches Automation, along with the majority of the Red Riders, they are met with the entire populace of Automation who engages them in combat. Wraith, no longer acting under Masquerade's control, sees this as his moment to be rid of Ghost Rider and all his doppelgangers that were based on him once. Futhermore the red mech that was to be the Monitor's new form begins to emerge from the planet, forcing a countdown to defeat Wraith or be utterly destroyed.
While drastically outnumbered and outgunned, the team manages to make their way to the planet's surface with the Red Riders fighting primarily through attrition thanks to their numbers from cloning. Wraith then takes to the battle himself using Guildstern, but he is finally beaten and killed by a combined effort with Ghost Rider delivering the final blow.
As for the Hands of Fate, Florence O'Malley, who had betrayed the team, is eventually killed despite Erin's best effort to convince her to return to Ray's team. Masquerade, on the other hand, incapacitates Margaret and escapes the world after the team's leader had been forced to abandon her machine due to Laertes' inclination to support the destruction of organic life for the superiority of the Immortals. Laertes is killed by Mack who realized how far his Immortal brother had fallen towards Laertes murdered Talonyth without hesitation or remorse.
The populace of Automation returns to normal after the events and offers assistance, giving the mercenaries a temporary breather, but the war between the Confederates and Neo-Hydras continues with Masquerade delivering Margaret to Terra. This would allow Terra to lure Axel Erachin out to finally finish him under her terms due to the man's love for his daughter. Terra completes her side of the deal by delivering the source of energy Masquerade return to him own time, the sole surviving Forefather from the Reclamation War, Thor. 
Axel is eventually forced to attend this hostage exchange, but he does so with support of Ray and his team, despite Terra's insistence that he should come alone. In the Norik, Terra's flagship, Ray's team is forced to engage the Neo-Hydras once more, their primary target being to retrieve the time machine before Masquerade can activate it. This bait, however, sees the entire team, except for Axel, being trapped in a dream world better known as Rise Academy that would later bloom into nightmares that must be faced with little knowledge of their past live. All of this was powered by Terra and her Amazons' psychic power. This leaves Axel to face Masquerade alone.
At this point, Margaret begins to learn more about herself, including the fact she was actually a new form of Immortal, one who had been raised since birth by Axel. And the man would refuse to return Margaret to the Immortals, who was unaware of this, when the time came causing the Monitor to see this as betrayal by organics. This new kind of hybrid-Immortal is capable of shape-shifting into a new form they desire which explains why Margaret was able to recieve visions from the Monitor despite being an organic.
The team eventually begins to remember their old lives and the world begins to collapse, but before that Twitch is killed by the "Soul Scattering", a psychic technique manifested by being killed in the nightmare. Jack then sacrifices himself to see Terra defeated in this world of dreams and visions which locks the Neo-Hydra Queen in her own mind, taking out the dictatorship of the Neo-Hydras. When the mercenaries come to, Masquerade reveal the true form of his machine known as the Archangel which is now powered by a Forefather crystal.
It takes the combined effort of the entire team and the sacrifice of Jhareed as well as Lestat to finally bring the behemoth down. Masquerade begins to limps away but succumbs to his wounds, but not before revealing he used to be Nathan Erachin in another timeline. Ray then decides that he must take the time machine and despite Axel's protest he goes ahead, even going as far to kill the Confederate's leader to achieve his goal. Dreamweaver, who seeks only power since the death of Raikegi follows Ray for the sake of power. Violet is killed as well by Dreamweaver who kills her.
After mourning over the loss of Axel who was known by much of the galaxy, the team is left to recover and think about the choice to follow Ray back into the past, not knowing how this would affect their own timeline. The Immortals do their best to try and copy the time machine that had been created, but progress is slow. To speed the process of a compatible power source that would be similar to what Masquerade had used, Achilles' volunteers to help power the machine with his own blood due to the power contained the Forefathers. 
In the past, Ray begins his first mission with the Dreamweaver at the facility where Ghost Rider and others of his kind were first developed with the intention to replace the one who became Wraith in their timeline.
Category:Events