Fantasy Starscourge War

[Ranix Aurus]

"Heave-ho!"

The woman pulled him up with enough force to flung him to the sky. From up here, they could see the mechs closing in from all directions. The commander up in the clouds must had noticed her as well, but she had torn off all communication devices in her borrowed battlesuit, so his cursing only hit a figurative wall.

"Alright, get in, and-"

She paused. The pilot chamber was too small to fit another human in. Not to mention, the pressure inside would had killed him in seconds, Remnant or no Remnant. There should be another way...

"Change of plan. You're strong, right? Hold on to this."

She pulled out a few cables and pushed them into his palm. A few more strands were looped around his waist before she tightened them up, keeping him tied to the cylindrical capsule.

"Don't let go if you still want to hitchhike. Let's go!"

She jumped back into the chamber, letting the door slid close behind her. Right after that, the eye of the Cyclops they were riding on shone brightly for a split second.

Initiating evacuation sequence. Three. Two. One...

Zero.

The bottom of the pilot capsule flared up like a rocket. And then, it was catapulted off, bolting into the sky like a reverse falling star way faster than what the human eyes or ocular sensor could take in.

 

[Dirge]

Okay, getting yanked like that was unexpected. Advent damn near felt like his arm was about to detach from his body in his weakened state when the woman pulled him. Get in? Get into what, exactly? That one person mech? This chic didn't look very bright, and Advent fully expected to die at this point fucking around with her. Before he could say fuck this and continue with his initial plan of dying with a fight, cables were tossed around him as the woman asked if he was strong. That question was likely rhetorical because before he could answer, if he even planned to answer, he was tied to a cylindrical capsule and told to hang on... wait he was told to what now?

Initiating evacuation sequence. Three. Two. One...
​

"You've got to be fucking kidding me..." Advent thought as his tired eyes suddenly widened and he instinctively grasped the metal with his fingers. His grip was so strong that it slightly dented the metal before takeoff. He was going to die, he was all but certain of it now. Why did he ever let this crazy woman ignite hope in him? This was just beyond what he could handle...

 

[Ranix Aurus]

They said that a star crossed the sky that day.

Bursting through the sea of clouds, the pilot capsule sailed with the wind, reaching the edge of the atmosphere before slowly drifting back down and descended, once again, into the bosom of the loving earth mother.

To put it frankly: they were finally out of gas and now gravity was welcoming them back with open arms.

The capsule crashed like a meteor, rising piles of dirt into the air as it did some landscaping and made a huge crater.

Thankfully, or maybe the other way around, they didn't land in the middle of the ocean. Instead, it was a vast expanse of nothingness. Grassland spread as far as their eyes could see, with the shadow of a mountain and a faint silhouette of trees in the distant forest nearby.

The door to the capsule broke off with a violent kick, and the mad woman stepped out, looking refreshed.

"That was a good ride! Now, my dear Remnant..."

She held a hilt on the back of her suit with a reverse grip. As she pulled it off the belt, the blade began to reconstruct itself, grinding and swirling as unknown mechanism slid the multiple folds of tempered metal open. Before long, the single-bladed sword from before was already in her hand. She swung it around with ease, returning it to a proper grip.

"...Let's continue where we left off. Fight me!"

She declared.

...Without even checking if the guest she had forcibly brought along was still alive or not after that roller coaster to hell.

 

[Dirge]

There were a lot of things Advent could have been doing today. None of them involved finding himself clinging to the side of a mechanical war machine as it flew up to 30,000 feet up into the sky. The only reason he was still alive at this height despite the thinning air, extreme temperatures and the G forces of the suit carrying him, was due to his Remnant physiology and using the last half of his power to protect himself. A white barrier of swirling energy cloaking his body and shielding it from the environment as he strained to keep from burning out. Words could not express how agitated, tired, and flat out pissed off he was.

He was so irritated that he didn't even bother complaining any more as he found himself plummeting back down to the planet when the machine ran out of gas. Because of course, this psycho bitch lacked the sense to watch her fuel gauges and just climb higher and higher for whatever reason was going on in her head. As they plummeted down towards the terra firma below in a molten hot mess of metal, Advent strained his hardest to keep his energy barrier up against the overwhelming forces. When impact finally came, it was by a sheer miracle that Advent's remaining energy sufficed in keeping him from being turned to jelly from the forces. If there was one time in his life where the gods picked a one in a million odds, this was that one.

Using the last of his strength, Advent proceeded to violently rip the cables off his body and then fall down onto his back with a hard thud. His hair and eye color once again returning to their default gray as he laid there and just closed his eyes. He was done; he was drained. So when that psycho grabbed her sword and told him to fight her again, her words were met with silence. At this point, he didn't care what happened anymore. Death was probably a much better fate than being stuck with her.

"Just get it over with so I don't have to hear you talk any more," Advent choked out agitated.​

 

[Ranix Aurus]

...Eh?

The giant sword in her hands was still mid-swing when he dropped the bomb. Her movement paused at once, her body frozen in place as she processed what the young man had just muttered out loud.

Get it over with? Did she hear him correctly?

"Ahem," she coughed. "I don't think you understand the situation. There won't be any reinforcement coming to help you. I'm going to kill you if you just lay there, you know? Get up and fight me. Don't you want to live? Hey..."

When she realized that he wasn't kidding, her joking smile turned into a scowl. The blade cracked open, blinding light poured out from the slits as it was filled with undulating energy, heating it up to a dangerous degree.

"STOP JOKING AROUND!"

The woman swung down the sword with all her might.

The surrounding air blazed up as the flaming blade slashed through in a fraction of second, smashing through the ground and cutting through everything in its path.

...And it turned out that the blade had landed beside the young man's head, missing him by a mere inch.

"...Graaaaah! Damn it!"

She threw the sword away while throwing a fit, stomping on the ground and scratching her head in anger.

 

[Dirge]

"I don't think you understand the situation. There won't be any reinforcement coming to help you. I'm going to kill you if you just lay there, you know? Get up and fight me. Don't you want to live? Hey..."

Advent barely managed to turn his gray-eyed gaze to look at the woman. His expression blank, the look in his eyes worth a novel of words.

"STOP JOKING AROUND!"

Advent continued to stare at her without a word.
​

When the sword came his way, Advent just turned to stare at the sky. He had no energy to resist or even snark at her. He was just too tired. They say your life flashes across your eyes when death was imminent, and honestly, he expected his to do the same. Yet when it didn't, the sword had already landed, missing him by roughly an inch or so. He briefly glanced back at the woman now throwing a temper tantrum for whatever reason, yet continued to stay silent. Eventually, he looked back up at the blue sky, questioning if he was still alive for some savage joke the gods were playing on him. This situation was so fucked...

"Why are you throwing a temper tantrum..." Advent asked in a dry whisper.​

 

[Ranix Aurus]

"Why are you throwing a temper tantrum..."

The woman stopped her antics when she heard his question.

"BECAUSE!" She roared, "It's been years since I was allowed to join the battlefield, and now that I've finally found a worthy opponent, the bastard just want to fucking SLEEP! Balderdash!"

She swung her fists at the young man, spewing out incomprehensible words filled with rage before she finally stopped and fell on her back as well.

"...This is stupid..."

She muttered out loud, her empty gaze staring aimlessly at the vast blue sky.

 

[Dirge]

First time out on the battlefield? Hearing that made Advent laugh, even though it caused his chest to hurt some.

“I can see why they didn’t let you out till recently. You’ve got several screws loose in that head of yours.” He coughed while still looking at the sky. “You fail to kill me the first time, then you save me, and you recklessly destroyed two mechanical suits probably worth more than my entire house ten times over. No wonder you weren’t allowed to do shit. You act like a spoiled brat.” He added on. At this point Advent was slowly pulling himself into a sitting position.

 

[Ranix Aurus]

"You dare call me a spoiled brat!?!" The woman snapped as she jumped back to her feet and pointed angrily at him.

But then, she fell back on her knees.

"...Huh?"

She suddenly felt lightheaded. At that moment, her tummy let out a low grumble.

"...I'm running out of energy..."

She murmured as she frantically covered her belly, perhaps ashamed by the weird noise it had caused.

 

[Dirge]

“You dare call me a spoiled brat!?!"

Advent didn’t bother answering her.
​

For the most part the Remnant largely ignored the woman. Resting until he had just enough strength to finally stand up and popping his neck before starting to walk away. He didn’t know where the hell he was going, and quite frankly he didn’t care. But he wasn’t about to stay around this place. The Astral military would arrive soon to try and reclaim this territory.

“Maybe if you stop spazzing out like a chipmunk every waking second of your life you’d not get tired so fast.” He said without looking over his shoulder as he waved her off. He didn’t seem interested in offering her food. Instead pulling out a granola bar from his pocket and opening it. It was rather crushed and messy, but it was food nonetheless.

 

[Ranix Aurus]

"Hey, you! Where do you think you're going?!"

She hollered with the usual gusto when she saw him walking away. However, she currently lacked the strength to just jump on him and tackle him down. All she could do was to limply stagger over and try to catch up to him.

...Which didn't take long to achieve. He was already in a bad condition after all.

"I'll let you know that I'm not some kind of monkey! If you can stand already, then let's continue our duel! I-"

She paused for a moment when she noticed the half-squashed granola bar in his hand.

"...Is that food?"

Before he could stop her, she had already leaned forward and gave a quick sniff like a wild dog.

 

[Dirge]

"Yeah, and it's not for you. Go away," Advent scowled with annoyance when the woman started sniffing his snack like a dog. Every interaction with her just made him question more and more how the hell she got to become a soldier in the Machinan military. He pulled the snack away from her and tried to shoo her away with his other hand. His grey eyes looking more irritated by the second. "Bet you wish you didn't waste your fuel like a dumbass and crash land in the middle of nowhere now just for a fight huh?" He scoffed biting into the granola.

 

[Ranix Aurus]

"Grrrh..."

The woman growled at him, giving the young man a nasty glare. Even so, she didn't bother to try taking the food by force.

"...What should I do to make you fight me?"

After tossing and turning for a while, she meekly asked that question.

 

[Dirge]

"...What should I do to make you fight me?"
​

By the gods, this woman was still on that? Advent couldn't believe it. Before he opened his mouth and told her to fuck off, however, an idea flashed in his mind and he suddenly stopped walking. Staring into space for a moment, as if he'd just zoned out, the gray-haired Remnant would suddenly turn and look directly into the crimson-haired woman's eyes.

"You really want to know?" He asked nonchalantly taking another bite out of his granola. There was about one-third of it left.​

 

[Ranix Aurus]

"You really want to know?"

The woman immediately brightened up. She nodded fervently before raising her right hand. From the distance, the sword that she had thrown away soared through the air before entering her grip.

"Tell me!"

She replied with a bright, innocent smile, like a kid who had been promised a bag of candy.

 

[Dirge]

Advent had to admit, seeing that sword just fly into her grasp like that on a whim was somewhat concerning. Seeing her attitude shift so easily from sad to ecstatic was even more concerning. His eyes would watch the sword fly into her grasp with a hint of uneasiness; he should probably tell her to stop doing that. Deciding it was better not to focus on the murder tendencies she had, Advent cleared his throat after finishing off his granola bar and held up a finger.

"Okay, first of all, stop that." He said pointing to her face. "That smile is creeping me out."

​

 

[Ranix Aurus]

"Huh?"

She was dumbstruck for a moment. Don't smile? Don't smile. Okay, that's easy...

Thus, she switched to a frown instead.

"Can we start now?"

Meanwhile, her sword arm was still held at ready, too eager to start swinging the moment he gave her the go.

 

[Dirge]

When she started frowning instead Advent briefly thought about smacking her upside the head...
​

"... No." He replied, trying to keep his exasperation hidden as he pinched the bridge of his nose. "If you want to fight so bad, for starters, you're going to have to wait until I am able to use my full strength again. I'm tired and like I said before if you killed me now I probably wouldn't give a shit." He paused, looking back at her again for a moment.

"Quickest way to fix that is to get me the hell out of the middle of nowhere. Preferably somewhere without Machina machine horrors around waiting to shoot me. If you can do that, and give me adequate time to rest, I'll fight you. Sure whatever..." He promised with an eye roll.

 

[Ranix Aurus]

"..."

Contrary to her current pose, she actually listened to his entire list of 'demands'. Then again, it took her a couple seconds to process them all, because they sounded so... absurd, in her ears.

"...How long do I have to wait until you're able to use your full strength?" She cautiously asked.

The last time someone told her to wait, she ended up 'waiting' for several years before she could get out again. No way she would fall into the same hole the second time, she wasn't an idiot, alright?

 

[Dirge]

"...How long do I have to wait until you're able to use your full strength?"

Advent shrugged nonchalantly. Like her guess was as good as his.
​

"Hell if I know. Probably a few days, used a lot of energy back in the city," He answered while making eye contact. His tone of voice was so casual about it all that one could have easily assumed he was just fucking around with the girl's head. He could also be dead serious too, honestly. It was hard to read him when he was acting like he usually did. Sometimes people wondered why he was such a dangerous threat to Machina...

 

[Ranix Aurus]

"Just a few days? Really? Sure!"

It was just days. As long as it wasn't years, she would agree to anything. She didn't even consider whether the young man had lied to her or not, the underlying tone of his voice flying past her head.

She swung the sword to a reverse grip. The blade cracked open, the separated, tiny pieces sliding in in rapid fashion until only the hilt and a short, thick part of it was left, small enough for her to flip and attach to the back of her suit.

"Let's go, then! Let's get you rested up as soon as we can!"

She sprung forward with renewed vigor, her hand shot out in an attempt to pull him along. But then, she paused in the middle of her stride before turning her head back to him.

"...Where do you want to go again...?"

First and foremost, she didn't have any idea where they actually were...

 

[Dirge]

Wait, that shit actually worked? Advent couldn't believe it, but he sure as hell wasn't about to fuck it up by showing it. A simple nod followed while he watched her put away her sword, his features controlled and calm as ever. When her hand shot out to grab him, he had to fight the instinctual urge to evade. He never really liked being touched, let alone dragged along by somebody else. However, for now at least, he let himself be pulled along. That was until she stopped and asked him where exactly he wanted to go. A small deadpan crossing his features as he scoffed. This girl was truly a piece of work.


"There's a small town about 50 miles east from here I believe. Too small and out of the way to be worth any attention by Machina. I initially planned to stay there for a while but they didn't have good cellphone reception or internet, so I came here." He sighed heavily. Too bad his phone was destroyed, as was his laptop. Guess there was nothing stopping him from going there now.

 

[Ranix Aurus]

"Fifty miles east... got it!"

She resumed her march and dragged the poor Remnant along across the grassland.

East huh... those guys back at the city must be busy constructing their so-called 'forward base' right now. Oh well, it doesn't matter. Fighting this human here was more interesting than those weak Astra soldiers.

"-re you?!"

"Hmm?" She halted for a moment when the voice entered her head. Ah, the communication line was back on. She could imagine the fleet commander spitting through his tirade across the microphone. Of course, she didn't bother to set it on speaker. The Remnant didn't have to know about it.

"Where are you? Where did you take that mercenary? Come back!"

"No," She replied promptly. "I'm taking him for a stroll. I'll return after I finish my fight with him."

"Wha-" The commander got even more exasperated. "Turn on your location system at once! We'll dispatch a ship to get you-"

"Oops, it broke. Sorry. Unreliable parts, see," She said as innocently as possible right after deliberately breaking her GPS system.

"?!@?#-"

"I'm busy at the moment. I'll see you guys later," She said before deliberately, this time, breaking her internal communication system.

"Sorry, some bugs buzzing in my ear. I've taken care of it now," she lazily explained to the young man before breaking into a sprint once again.

 

[Dirge]

"Why is she twitching like that. What even is..." Advent wondered with a clearly apparent look of disgust and confusion.

Nope, Advent wasn't going to even question it.

"Sorry, some bugs buzzing in my ear. I've taken care of it now," The woman finally said.
​

"Kind of wish I died now, actually..." Advent thought to himself as he just nodded and smiled at the psycho. You know, out of everything that could have gone down today, this had to be the most left-field, unthinkable, and unbelievable thing that's happened to him. It was just... He didn't even bother anymore. Just humor her for a bit until they got somewhere where he could rest. After that, he'd entertain a stupid fight with her and what came after was pretty self-explanatory.

 

[Ranix Aurus]

She pulled him through the fifty-miles trek without break, a feat that perhaps would be impossible if they weren't combatants of their respective empire. The journey was mostly uneventful. After all, the continent had been living in relative peace even amidst the ongoing war, and the assault of Machina at the early hour of the day had merely grazed the outskirts of the land.

By the time that the crows were starting to caw, the outline of a town could be seen in the distance.

"Is that the town that you mentioned before?" She asked.