User:SilverCrono/TL/4

"...No. No, I refuse to believe this."

Aaron grunted to himself as he pulled himself up from the ground for the third time in the day. Around him, the colony's structural pillars were collapsing, and the explosion had thrown him from his position on his mech. Looking back, he confirmed to himself that his hijacked mech was thoroughly and completely destroyed, considering pillar fragments had pierced it and it had lost most of its limbs. "You're fucking kidding me," he whispered in wrathful agony. Not only was his mech totaled, somehow the pilot's mech was completely unharmed. He could even see that the pilot, also flown from his perch like Aaron was, racing towards the mech in order to pilot it and get safe passage.

Now Aaron rubbed some dirt from his face and looked back towards the mech. Somehow he had emerged unharmed once again, but this time the colony hadn't fared so well; the damage was obviously heavy, and the atmosphere itself seemed to be peeling away. Endlessly complicated machinery and wiring could be seen behind what was supposed to be dark and dreary red skies, and their destruction could also be seen. Everything was happening so fast that Aaron couldn't completely comprehend it, but he did realize that staying where he was would be suicidal, and he couldn't get away fast enough on foot.

A realization clicked through his head. "Oh, that bastard!" He swore heavily to himself in Draconian as he scrambled up onto his feet and began to race towards the still kneeling AU that was intact. Its pilot was beginning to climb up the suit's gigantic feet, his helmet once again donned and hiding his face. Aaron ran past his own helmet, visor crushed and protective form melted away from the explosion. "You're not getting out of here without me, damn you!"

By the time Aaron arrived at the large, dusty foot of the Armored Unit, its pilot was climbing to its waist. It wouldn't belong before he was safe in the cockpit. "Not that I'll let that happen," Aaron thought to himself. As he rushed up the mechanical workings of the Unit, shockwaves of crashes and dust blew past him at a highly increased rate. "Like hell you're getting out of here and I'm not. After all this... this SHIT!" Even in his own mind, Aaron found himself yelling in frustration. By now he had stopped spitting remarks in Draconian in order to keep the dust out of his mouth.

The boy in the pilot suit arrived at the cockpit of his Armored Unit, dragging himself up its hatch and standing for a second amongst it as he looked into the chaos not very far in front of him. He spoke to himself quietly and thoughtfully, but now that his helmet was donned, there was nobody else that could hear what he was saying. "The colony is deteriorating... At this rate, it's going to be destroyed entirely from the sheer influx of the debris." With this thought, he paused and painfully let this thought digest. Just as soon as it had occurred, he purged the pain from beneath his chest and continued to rationally ponder what to do next. "This AU is running low on power... It'll suffice to get me back to the city, but I'll need to hurry." With this, the boy turned and prepared to sit in the cockpit again.

Before he could enter, the boy turned and found himself staring at the fiery haired refugee and his fist once again.

The punch smashed into the helmet of the boy, sending a spiderweb of cracks across its surface, and he fell from the perch of the cockpit hatch. With a desperate reflex, he grabbed onto the hatch with one hand to save him from falling. Not only did his face hurt from being smashed into the glass of the helmet when struck, his arm suddenly felt the jolt of the fall and pain ran through it. The boy, usually calm and logical, now found himself filled with an uncharacteristic rage at the refugee who now stood looking down on him. His chance at living was being threatened, and that was what destroyed his tolerance.

Without even thinking, the boy pulled himself back onto the cockpit hatch - now quite cramped - and ripped off his helmet so that he could talk. "What in the Milky Way is wrong with you?! Why can't you just stay dead like the rest of your roach family?" Angrily, the boy tossed his helmet off into the distance. He didn't realize exactly he had done until he was accomplished. He kicked himself.

The refugee spat into the atmosphere and grabbed the pilot with his hand again, finding little of the space suit to be malleable but managing to hold the shorter boy into the air by a few centimeters anyway. "I'll forgive that little remark, conryel an frietuvre." The last phrase was unfamiliar to the pilot. "You just shut your rohkran and get in that robot and get us the hell out of here." Both of their eyes shown a glisten of hatred and rebellion at each other as another gigantic tremor shook the ground. This time the AU itself shivered, further driving into both of their heads the urgency that was truly in the air. Nothing was said for a moment, and the refugee punched the pilot again with his free hand. Despite his angry eyes, the pilot's body showed an almost passive cowardice. "Do you hear me talking to you, reikravn?!"

The pilot slapped the refugee with his gloved hand. The attack didn't do much to move the much taller and heavily built man, but it was enough to shock him from his foreign sayings. "Don't you talk to me like that, you trash!" He now pushed up against the man, attempting to get free from his hold, but once again neither of them moved. "You... let me go!" His speech slowed from the strain of his actions. "Let me go! I have to get out of here...!"

Another gigantic explosion disrupted the efforts of the pilot. Both of them now looked towards the colony's southern sector, in which huge pieces of sheet metal and debris began to fall even around the AU that was once a fair distance from the calamity. Behind them, the situation was no better. The very sky in front of them appeared to fragment and fall, replaced by cold, fragmented steel. The pilot's eyes looked into the broken sky with hurt, terrified eyes, and the refugee looked behind him to see that the metropolis that was once his home was now in more of a ruins than he had ever imagined.

The refugee felt time around him slow as he looked to the pilot in his arms. All of a sudden, his malice and hatred had left, and he let go of the blue-haired boy. Without energy, the boy slowly fell through the air like a leaf and landed at his knees on the cramped hatch. Aaron, looking at the boy for a second, now looked up to the sky as well. The colony was obviously inert and its immense destruction began to haunt at him. His thoughts raced through his mind.

"I can't even recall anyone or anything from that wretched city. This place was always disgusting, I've hated it. Even if I was blind, I would have..." He felt a terrible tugging at his consciousness, reaching for him to lay face down and take his death peacefully. He instinctively resisted this urge but began to wonder if that was really the solution. "No, I was blind. There was never anything for me, not here. It's too late to escape... It's been too late since the day I was born." The boy next to him, apparently hearing Aaron mumble to himself despite the rushing dust and rushing winds, looked at him with a confused and unfeeling face. "At least I'm looking down on you..." His words were laced with scorn, yet they filled him with a confidence and a satisfaction that betrayed his situation. "At last I'm somewhere I want to be. Looks like, again... I welcome... I welcome death..."

Another wind, much more unnatural than the one before and this one only displacing fallen dust, came from the side of the two and caused Aaron to raise his hand up over his face. His shoulder-length hair began to fly behind him. With eyes wide open, he looked upwards, only to be greeted by a sleek yet bulky fighter that greatly outsized the AU that he was standing on. A ladder was outstretched towards him and the boy, one that hung from an open hatch on the bottom of the ship, and a girl was grabbing onto the ladder near the top. She looked down, her face covered by a helmet, and let out an open hand towards the two. Both of them were frozen as they realized that the girl was wearing the same space suit as they were.

Aaron was frozen, his expression disbelieving and hurt. He was afraid and truthfully experienced a multitude of emotions in that moment that he couldn't quite pinpoint. The only one that sprung up repeatedly, the one that stuck in his mind and grabbed at him and would not let go, was a poignant and striking disappointment. Tears began to rush towards his sea-green eyes even as the boy in front of him jumped at the ladder and began to climb its swaying heights to his salvation. Aaron stood in place, the wind continuing to brush past his naturally muscular form. A fragment of a pillar smashed into the AU, right above his head, and destroyed the main camera of it.

"Why can't they just let me die?"

****