Chrome

"Who is this? How the hell did you get this frequency? Oh, I see. Coordinates. So that's how it's gonna be, huh? When I find whoever's pulling this prank, I swear..."


"Nice try. Those codes haven't been valid for... Wait. Wait wait wait. Can you hear me? We're sending help. I repeat, help is on the way."

---

Part of a group of robotic dragons designed to prevent the return of the Shade at all costs, Chrome was heavily damaged in a battle with a large group of Beastclan. They won, of course; none of those creatures left the battlefield with the number of limbs they had going in, and many didn't leave at all. But as far as Chrome knew, they were the last survivor of this project - until entering this clan and discovering Mechanical.

Mechanical doesn't remember, but he is a member of this group as well. Chrome is doing everything they can to jog his memory without letting slip what they are trying to do, but it is a long and difficult process. Mechanical recently started emitting a low-power radio distress "ping," evidence that some of his systems are coming back online. But how much he really remembers of the secret war against fragments of the Shade, Chrome is not quite certain.

Chrome was also overjoyed to find Pyrite, the old Chaplain of the Shade Fragment Eliminators, wandering around her lair. He had been active all this time, never faltering in his fight against the Shade, so he said. And if Pyrite said it, then as far as Chrome was concerned, it was true. She had excitedly informed the Chaplain of Mechanical's status, as even though Mechanical had been an early prototype he would still be an indispensable ally in the fight against the Shade. To her surprise, Pyrite reacted rather negatively, begging Chrome to not reactivate Mechanical's old memories before Pyrite could manage to run a full diagnostic test.

Chrome understood, once Pyrite had explained it. Mechanical was hundreds of years old at this point, and had been online for most of that time. He may have developed glitches, errors, and certainly the loss of his memory did not bode well for the idea of reinstating him as a warrior against the Shade. If the Chaplain said it, it was true.

She did not have doubts. Her cause was just, and, for lack of a better term, "holy." The destruction of the Shade was a goal shared by all the gods - including her own patron deity, the Shadowbinder. Even he, with his patronage of darkness and trickery, shuddered at this abomination from between the stars.

So, she fought. She fought the Beastclan that had become the embodiment of draconic struggle for survival. She fought fragments of the Shade, using her specially-designed techniques and partially-restored technology to destroy them. And whenever a small scrap of Shade had remained, she'd captured it in a special bottle that Pyrite gave her and given it to him. "Know your enemy," he'd always said. He always quoted an old human philosopher, known to dragons only though his teachings: "If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle."

If Pyrite said it, it was true. She gave him fragments to study. To know her enemy was to defeat her enemy. And to defeat her enemy, the Shade that had claimed so many of her allies and friends, even those she had, over the years, considered family - that was her fondest wish, her true purpose on this planet.

This was one interplanetary scourge that was hitting a roadblock, and she was determined to see that it would not break through.