JADED REQUIEM - QiCon🪐HQ

Chapter 1: The Starfall of Memory

Dreams launch with one jump—but not all jumps land clean.
At the rim of the universe, Gateway Seven shimmered like it always did: jade luminescence threading through families, portals breathing softly, Qi purring in perfect rhythm.

Except today, the pattern pulsed off-beat. Glitched. Smiled too wide.

Li Wei was twelve, jittery with birthday adrenaline. TinTing clutched a secret and planned joy in silent script. Below, laughter. Above, old eyes—mine—watched from the shadow-code.

I am Magpie. I witness the stitch where time and meaning unravel.

And this? This was the moment before the fracture.

Before the screaming. Before the starfire.

Before a girl fell through a birthday and landed in legend.

“Quick! Quick! Magpie’s out for lunch!”

Zip skidded across the polished obsidian floor of the tech bay, nearly faceplanting into a live Qi conduit. A puff of ionized sugar burst from his snack dispenser like celebratory glitter.

“Flip, is that you or are you Magpie posing as a raccoon again?!”

Flip was already tying his tail to the hyperloop. “It’s me, it’s me! And we’ve got, like, five minutes before this whole station figures out we’ve re-routed the smoothie dispenser into the secondary comms array.”

“Again?”

“It’s research.”

“You said that about the Lego starship incident!”

“Which, for the record, still flies—just in pieces.”

They moved in sync, half-chaos, half-ritual, scrambling over live wires and half-eaten dumpling packets like true outpost gremlins. The air shimmered with Qi—thicker than usual. Hotter. Flip’s whiskers twitched. Something was… off.

“Feel that?” he whispered.

Zip paused mid-snack. “I thought that was indigestion.”

Flip shook his head. “No. That’s a rhythm break.”

Elsewhere, near the family quarters, TinTing crouched in the shadows, her fingers curled inside her sleeve like a bird gripping tight.

She mouthed her lines again:
“Happy birthday, Mum. I made it myself.”

The gift hummed quietly in her bag, alive with layered code and handmade threads of Qi. A simple thing, but full of meaning. Joy was always a risk, but today, she believed in it.

The air around her vibrated—warm, then sharp. Her smile faltered.

The station’s Qi, usually smooth as silk, suddenly scraped like a warning.

Then the portal screamed.

It started as a shimmer—blue ripples twisting in a lazy spiral.

Then came the tremor: the jumpgate convulsed into chaos, the surface snapping from tranquil to rage.

Amethyst arcs laced with blood-crimson lightning spat out across the terminal, fracturing the floor’s reflection. Raw Qi lashed the air like lightning made of memory.

Magpie turned from the shadow lattice.

“And so… the thread snaps.”

Zip froze mid-snack, one paw clutching a now-dripping bubble-crunch. His eyes widened. “Uh… that’s not supposed to do that, right?”

Flip’s tail puffed into a bottlebrush. “NOPE! That’s definitely not protocol!” he squeaked, ears flattened as warning sirens flared in three languages.

Thunder rocked the outpost.

On the command deck, TinTing’s father roared, voice slicing through the chaos like a blade:

“HOLD THE LINE! We cannot—we will not—let them breach the inner sanctum!”

Silver uniforms smeared with blood and dimensional ash, he and her mother stood firm, rallying the JumpMasters as alarms screamed and the lights flickered red with panic.

“He’s drawing the ambient power! Stop him—protect the jumpers, the families! Get them through the gateway—go go go!”

In the rafters, Zip and Flip exchanged a panicked chitter.

“This was supposed to be our day off,” Zip moaned. “Selfies. Smoothies. Maybe a ten-thousand-light-years-long dare stick—not this!”

“Nope!” Flip shouted, strapping on a plasma-laced snack bandolier. “The JumpMasters are out there—bleeding for the gateway! Morale’s tanking, Qi’s glitching, and that walking arson regret is sucking the life force outta everything!”

“The Qi’s going poof!” Zip pointed a trembling paw as tremors hit again. “Like someone left the galactic fridge open!”

A rrupture cracked the vault open—not with brilliance, but with its unmaking. The great portal twisted into a storm of amethyst and bloodlight. From it emerged:

Liánhuǒ. Celestial of Raging Flames. Returned for vengeance.

A towering silhouette of molten grief and dying-star heat, claws dripping ruin. His body glowed like shattered magma; his eyes held the heartbreak of exile.

“That’s not an attack,” Flip whispered, tail twitching. “That’s a breakup with the universe.”

But Liánhuǒ didn’t strike. He hovered—high, massive, radiant with wrath barely contained. He didn’t come to fight. He came to feed.

Below him, the air distorted. A second figure surged from the rip in reality—sleek, fang-masked, wrapped in vaporized nanosteel: Commander Myxa. Vapor Vampguard elite. Arch-rival. Betrayer. Born of mist and malice.

Liánhuǒ grinned—a fissure of light across his face. He gestured.

And the fighting began.

The Raccoons vs. The Vampguard

The battle hit like a system crash. JumpMasters were flung like sparks. Barrier shields melted. Vapor hounds erupted from glitch-vents, fangs first.

And amid it all—plates.

Zip launched the first one with a feral yell, yanking a ceremonial dish from the buffet launcher and hurling it at a gamma lash.

CRASH!

The plate intercepted the ray and ricocheted it into a charging drone.

BOOM. The drone vaporized.

“Direct hit!” Zip howled. “I just weaponized dim sum!”

“Cover me!” Flip shouted, leaping through wreckage. He scavenged a shimmer-shield from a fallen JumpMaster, rewired it with a churro stick, and slid behind the emergency spud cannon.

THWUMP!

A blast of molten starch struck Commander Myxa’s flank. He staggered—only a blink, but in a realm of Qi and code, a blink was life.

“That’s right, vampire maniac!” Flip grinned. “Starch you very much!”

Behind a cracked support beam, TinTing clung to steel, her body trembling. Her lips moved, soundless. “Mom… Dad…”

But she didn’t see the battle. Couldn’t. Her eyes weren’t here anymore. She was regressing inward, her Qi signature spiraling wild and unguarded.

“There she is!” Flip spotted her. “Primary target in full dissociation mode! Zero defense, max vulnerability!”

“If Myxa drains her—Liánhuǒ wins!” Zip’s ears flattened. “We fail the mission. The whole cosmic gig goes offline!”

They didn’t hesitate.

Zip grabbed the last stack of reinforced porcelain. Flip hotwired the smoothie core, overloaded the sugar line. Together, they moved—not as mascots, but as maniacs with purpose.

CLANG. Plate caught a flame lash mid-arc. BOOM. Spud cannon disabled a flamehound mid-charge. FLASH. Shimmer-shield blocked a strike that would’ve collapsed the lattice.

They fought like disasters with a death wish.

And still—it wasn’t enough.

Myxa’s form split into afterimages. His blades sang hunger. He moved like malware through space, slicing physics itself, clawing toward the girl.

Liánhuǒ hovered, glowing brighter, pulsing with the joy of resistance. The more chaos, the more he consumed.

And from the breach—more vapors arrived. A second squad. Then a third. Fanged. Unnamed. Infinite.

JumpMasters dropped one by one.

“We’re out of plates!” Zip shouted.

“Then we improvise!”

Flip roared and headbutted a drone mid-air. His skull cracked against nanosteel. The drone shattered.

Zip leapt on the back of a vapor beast, gnawing at its cables, jabbing with forks, steering it like a death-chariot straight into an engine core.

BOOM.

Fur smoking, claws shaking, they kept going. No more gadgets. No more tricks. Only instinct. And mission.

TinTing’s Qi was unguarded, pulsing like a wounded sun. Tears streamed down her cheeks—silent, disconnected. She couldn’t speak. Couldn’t move.

But they could.

They shielded her with bodies. Took strikes. Smashed drones. Bit ankles. Screamed into the night.

Flip’s voice cracked. “Zip—status?”

“Smoked. Broken. Borderline heroic.”

Flip grinned through blood and bruises. “Name?”

“Zip.”

“Rank?”

“Double-trouble.”

“Mission?”

“Protect the girl.”

Flip raised one paw in salute. “Just call us Bond.”

Zip blinked. “James—?”

“No.”

Flip faced the storm. “Raccoon Bond. Mission 88888888.”

Zip raised his fists. “Nah. It’s not that impossible.”

“Is it?”

They charged. Again.

And again.

Then they arrived—summoned by the silent call of Qi itself.
A surge of Ahua essence tore through the dark, spirit and vitality entwined.
Tumatauenga, Celestial of War, dropped from orbit like a war cry made flesh, his volcanic jade board blazing.
Laser cages slammed into place, cubes of radiant fury locking down the invaders.
The ancient battle resumed. No speeches. No delay.
“YEAH! That’s how you clear a level!” Zip whooped, already dancing behind the console.
“Cosmic mahjong—boom! Clean path for the asset! Way better than rerouting smoothie dispensers.”
Flip nodded, already queuing up filters for their TikTok AAR.
“Maybe Raccoon won’t even be mad… unless he wanted that snack for himself.”

The hum of Qi Command’s deep-space station was usually a lullaby to Cadet Tui Tiaki. But today, something was wrong.
Three hours. A signal, faint and jagged, gnawed at the edges of his sensors.
Most dismissed it as gateway interference. Tui didn’t. Couldn’t.
He double-checked the readings. Triple-checked. Flutter didn’t match these gravimetric distortions.
He stood at his section chief’s desk, eyes steady.
“Requesting manual inspection. Sector Gamma-7. Scout 734 is cleared for short-range check anyway.”
The Chief waved him off. “Fine. Take your milk run, Cadet. Don’t miss dinner.”
Tui saluted, spun, and left before permission could be revoked.

Scout 734 was a clunker—old hull, dated comms. He slid into the seat anyway.
No complaints. No shortcuts.
He flew what was ready. He earned his way, even in silence.

As 734 broke from dock, Tui barely registered the shudder—until the universe exploded.
A hellstorm of energy slammed into the vessel. Alarms howled.
Tui tumbled, slammed against restraints, chest heaving.
Fingers flying, he reached for manual override. “Come on, come on—old friend, it’s me—just send it!”
The distress code flashed: Priority Zero. His voice cracked:
“Chief, requesting reroute to Gamma-7—do you read? Hello? Chief?!”

Silence.

Only static. Then—
“Gateway Seven compromised. Unknown hostiles. Request immed—”

—BOOM. The signal shredded. The station rocked.

TinTing gasped as light fractured across the sky.
Pressure slammed into her chest. She stumbled to the viewport.
Through broken haze and glass—
A fiery silhouette: Liánhuǒ, Celestial of Raging Flames, burning holes in reality.
Her comm crackled:
“—lo? …Ting, is it? TinTing, I’m Tui! Do you read me?”
A whisper—but real.
She slammed the response button. “Tui? Please—help! Everything’s breaking. Dad, Mom—they’re—”
Her words collapsed into sobs.
“We need help. Please. Please!”

Tui clutched the console, alarms flashing red.
He heard her. He heard her.
He triggered the beacon. Voice steady, barely.
“I’m here. I hear you. Hold on, I’m sending the alert now.”
SEND.
The signal blinked… blinked—
Another explosion rocked the ship. Darkness surged.

In the crawlspace above Command, Zip and Flip stared, ears twitching.
Flip turned to Zip. “She’s not getting through.”
Zip dug out a snack wrapper, scribbled fast:
“G7 hit. Send help. Kids in danger. Celestial breach.”
Flip folded it into a jet.
“Air mail. Chaos delivery.”
He launched. It soared, dipped—
SPANG—
A blur: Magpie. Wings wide.
The jet vanished into his beak as he spiraled down.

Magpie landed beside Tumatauenga, feathers burning with starlight.
He dropped the message without a word.

Magpie bowed, presenting the jet. “Dispatch, direct from the young. Their signal pierced the veil—by wit, courage, and questionable use of a coffee machine.”

Tumatauenga took the paper jet in his massive hand, squinting at the frantic scrawl. A smile cracked through the battle lines.

“Hey, got your airmail!” he bellowed, his laughter rolling over the clash of swords. “Not bad—might catch on. Or you could just WeChat it next time.”

He blew the jet, Qi surging through the air. The message amplified, echoing across the ruined gateway. His voice thundered as he raised his longboard high:

“Let’s answer this call, follow the jet.”

With a blast of radiance and a war cry, Tumatauenga hurled himself into the heart of the fray. Magpie soared after him, the message of the young—small, desperate, ingenious—now weaponized into destiny’s turning point.

In the ductwork, tails curled together, Zip and Flip peered down as the tide shifted.

“See?” Zip whispered, a shaky grin breaking through. “Sometimes analog wins the day.”

Flip adjusted his mustache, gave a covert salute, and scribbled in his notebook: “Field Op: Paper Jet—successful.”

TinTing pressed her forehead to the cracked glass. Chaos raged, but deep inside, hope flickered. Someone had heard her—a voice, soft and young. Tui. She was grateful… but the voice was too small to stop what was coming.

Tui’s scout ship bucked wildly at the edge of the Outpost StarGate sector as the sky tore open—not with radiance, but with its unmaking. Gravity twisted. Alarms howled. Orange fire bled across the void as Liánhuǒ’s malice ripped reality apart.

He fought the controls, battered by shockwaves, his heart thudding violently as the comms panel blinked in and out.

“Outpost StarGate is under direct celestial-level assault!”

His quiet voice strained, pitching high. Static drowned the next word.

He slammed the emergency broadcast to full power.

“This is Cadet Tui Tiaki, provisional callsign Relay-7! Do you copy, Qi HQ? Outpost comms array is down, repeat, gateway compromised!”

He wiped sweat from his brow, the cold plasteel of his cockpit already streaked with condensation.

“I say again, gateway down—over. Jumper TinTing requesting immediate Cutter-Buster support! Jade Dragon, Tumatauenga—this is a Priority One, over!”

His hands shook as he tore open the relay panel, hot-wiring the secondary systems, sparks stinging his fingers.

“JumpMasters down, gateway compromised, junior jumper in peril, over. I am unable to move, over.”

He squeezed his eyes shut, fighting the sting of fear and smoke.

“Nothing heard—listening out,” he finished, his voice trembling but steady.

The scout shuddered. Tui’s hands hovered over the failing controls, the echo of TinTing’s plea still in his mind.

He braced for whatever would come next, hoping his words would find a way through the chaos—hoping someone, somewhere, was listening.

Qi itself shivered. A wave of pure Ahua essence—spirit and vitality entwined—rippled outward, a silent promise to rebalance what had been torn. The sky cracked wide, a second wound. The spectacle that unfolded was not for mortal eyes alone, but for the very fabric of the cosmos—ancestors watching, fate unspooling, destiny stirred.

TinTing gasped. The vibration wasn’t just in her ears—it pounded in her chest, electrified her skin, prickled the roots of her hair. Something ancient and immense was moving. Brilliance ignited, not merely bright but alive, throbbing with the memory of a thousand generations.

She pressed herself to the viewport, knuckles bone-white. Through the chaos, she saw not a dragon, not at first—a pattern, a code, a shape born of jade and fire and something unnameable. Tumatauenga, Celestial of War, dropped from the sky in a surge of white-hot Qi, volcanic jade longboard under his feet. As he landed, the ground buckled—stone cracked, the very air bent. Suddenly, a tiny shape streaked through the maelstrom—a battered origami jet, still sharp from desperate hands. It darted past Tumatauenga’s face, swirling around him as if animated by purpose.

He caught its message in a single glance: make haste, mission critical, dispatch priority one, follow me.

Without hesitation, he grinned—thunder and sunlight in one—and pivoted, following the jet’s wild arc through the chaos. Shields flared to his sides; the longboard roared beneath him. In that instant, the Celestial army surged forward, their course set by a child’s paper hope, now a banner for war.

And across the battlefield, all could see it: a force greater than fate, answering not destiny alone, but the desperate courage of the smallest—taking orders from those brave enough to ask.

Back at Qi Command, chaos reigned. The holoscreens flashed with red alarms and failing system overlays, each a new wound opening in the defense of Outpost StarGate. The hum of voices, half-shouts, half-prayers, tangled in the air.

“Sir, all primary channels down!” a comms officer called, eyes wide as she scanned the cascading failures. “Secondary comms offline—catastrophic failure across the board!”

Admiral Tiaki’s jaw tightened. “Situation report at the Gateway—SITREP! I need fighting strength, casualty updates—KIA, WIA, MIA. Anything!”

“Nothing yet, Admiral,” came the reply, bleak. “Shield signatures—dropping fast. It doesn’t look good, sir.”

He slammed his fist on the console. “Emergency beacons? Triangulate! I want anything—any signal!”

A lieutenant looked up, sweat beading her brow. “Admiral, I’m picking up something—encrypted, narrow-band… Wait. It’s a live tactical feed!”

The speakers crackled, then—through the static and the distant rumble of war—a boy’s voice, raw with strain, punched through the chaos.

“…SITREP, Qi HQ. Hostile entity—codename Liánhuǒ—confirmed. Multiple hostile energy signatures. Outpost shields failing sector by sector—ouch!—class-7 celestial burnout. Primary command spire—losing integrity. Transmitting Alpha-3 telemetry now… Did you get that, Qi HQ? JumpMasters are holding the Gate… heroic output, but it’s—unsustainable, sirs… this magnitude—”

Near the tactical pit, a ripple of shock passed through the staff. Elara, knuckles white on her headset, breathed, “That’s Tui Tiaki. He’s just a kid—how’s he even out there?”

Mei, beside her, wiped her eyes. “He’s fighting. Alone.”

At the command table, Admiral Tiaki went rigid. He stared at the speaker, horror dawning. “That voice…” His lips barely moved. “No, it can’t be—”

Captain Yu Xiu’s holo resolved into view from the bridge of the Jade Phoenix, already prepping for emergency deployment. She was pale, jaw locked, hands gripping the armrests so hard her knuckles blanched.

“Admiral,” she cut in, her voice tight, every syllable vibrating with urgency and pain, “I confirm. That’s Cadet Tiaki’s relay signature. He took Scout 734—went to check anomalies near the outpost before we lost comms.”

The Admiral’s composure shattered. He lunged for the command override. “Tui? Son—Tui, is that you? Answer me! Report your status. Are you hit? Get to an escape pod, now! That’s an order, Cadet. Please, Tui—answer me!”

The line spat static, then Tui’s breathless voice came through—distant explosions, the screech of failing systems.

“Admiral! With all due respect, sir—this relay’s the only clear channel. Critical data on Liánhuǒ’s assault pattern—holding the link—oof! Engaged with hostile drones—one down. Sorry, HQ—Dad… later, maybe? Continuing SITREP: Liánhuǒ’s main assault—focused on JumpMasters… defending Gateway…”

Yu Xiu’s face twisted, eyes wet but fierce. Her voice was barely controlled rage. “Sir, I’m requesting immediate launch. My family—our people—are dying out there! I need clearance—now!”

Tiaki hesitated, a thousand fears and duties tearing at him. “Yu—” His command voice faltered. He saw her—not just as a captain, but as TinTing’s older sister, trembling on the edge of panic, desperate to save her family.

She slammed her fist down, her eyes filled with a desperate fire. “Sir! With respect—if I don’t go, we may lose them all!”

Admiral Tiaki struggled for a heartbeat, then—shoulders squaring, voice grim—nodded. “Jade Phoenix, you are go for emergency launch. Godspeed, Captain Yu.”

Her holo flickered out as she barked orders to her crew, the Jade Phoenix’s engines already powering up for jump.

The command center fell silent for a moment—just Tui’s battered voice feeding them hope through a thread of static, and the Admiral’s hands trembling on the console, caught between the burdens of a commander and the ache of a father.

Outside, the universe burned. But in that silence, every soul at Qi HQ knew the battle was not yet lost.

The world had become a storm of sound and color—radiance shattering, metal groaning, Qi burning hot and wild in the air. TinTing gasped, breath ragged, her palm pressed to the viewport. Power vibrated through the glass—hot, ancient, alive.

Her mother’s words echoed in her mind: Qi isn’t quiet when the balance breaks.

She reached for her mother’s hand—but found only empty air. The hand she needed had already moved. Not to comfort. To shield. To fight.

Beyond the glass, the Jade Dragon manifested, its scales trailing living celestial code—hexagrams that throbbed with arcane power. Its eyes, older than stars, swept across the ruins. For one impossible instant, the pattern of its luminescence altered, gleaming in recognition—as if it saw her, a spark of hope buried in chaos.

Then the shriek came. Liánhuǒ’s laughter—raw, discordant—tore through the outpost, and the first wave of corrosive fire smashed toward the gateway.

TinTing stared, her eyes vast with shock. The world turned red-gold, heat pressing against the sealed glass. Her parents moved as one, Qi erupting between them—a desperate shield of teal and gold.

They didn’t hesitate.

“Protect her!” her mother’s voice broke, barely more than a prayer, flung into the fire.

“Our light, our TinTing!” her father roared, bracing himself as power cracked the decking at his feet.

TinTing’s lips moved, but no sound came. Her whole body shook, her pulse hammered a frantic rhythm against her eardrums. She wanted to scream—Don’t leave me! Please!—but the moment was already gone. Her parents had stepped into the fire. Into legend.

They knew they were outmatched, but their plea—to life, to the ancestors, to any power that would listen—was singular:

Save our child.

TinTing’s world shattered as she watched her father fall, a shadow blade piercing his chest. Her mother’s anguished cry twisted into a battle roar as she threw herself at Liánhuǒ, burning every last ounce of herself into one final attack.

“TinTing, live!” her mother’s voice rang out—a command, a blessing, a goodbye.

Liánhuǒ’s counter-strike struck home.

Radiance exploded.

And TinTing, alone behind the glass, felt everything break.

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