User:SilverCrono/TL/5

"...Am I immortal?" The breathless words of Rein Nitorius as he stepped out from his Armored Unit's cockpit betrayed his confident stride and triumphant nature. Standing on the outstretched cockpit hatch, some 2 meters from the ceiling of the Armor Harbor that he had entered, Rein now looked down at his gloved and uniformed hands. They still looked the same to him, despite the fact that they had changed, much like the rest of him. "Haven't I changed my future already?" With a scoff to himself, he pressed a button on the side of his helmet and it's visor slid upwards. With a hiss of escaping air, he lifted it from his head and attached it to its hinge on his uniform's belt.

Noise was accumulating at the feet of his Unit now that the mechanics had entered and the air lock had been closed tightly. Most of them were centered by Aaron's unit, considering how heavily it was damaged. Rein shook his head and waited idly for the lift to arrive at the height of his cockpit. "This is just beginning. With this power I have now, I'll be able to invoke the new stage of my destiny..." The lift arrived, and Rein stepped on it and looked down at those on the ground as the small rocket powered platform began to descend. Now that the large mothership was in space, there was no gravity, but he didn't feel like jumping off the Unit and floating down. Weightlessness disgusted him.

The slim boy continued to mutter to himself as the lift arrived and he instantly kicked away from the scene of uniformed workers who moved to swarm him. They spoke of his great performance and his unparalleled skill, but it didn't matter to him, and he ignored them. He let his movement carry him over to the door of the hangar and adjusted his glasses as he did so. Ever since the attacks started, they had grown crooked and loose; it irritated him.

"Wait!"

A voice prodded at Rein's back, and he grabbed at the washed-out cream walls of the ship to slow his velocity. Behind him, he heard someone else do the same, and the automatic door that led into the hangar slid shut. Now the hall was awash with dire silence. Rein tsked and pushed up his glasses again. "I have nothing to say to you."

"Like hell you do!" The person speaking to him pushed off the wall and slammed into Rein, pushing him against the wall. Turning and looking at his assailant, Rein was not surprised to find himself looking at the idiotic refugee from Tsidaal. Everything about this man was irritating and barbaric to him, and he even found it hard not to find fault in the two-toned hair or the dark skin color of the tall man. Apparently he hadn't been smart enough to realize that his helmet was able to clip onto his belt, for it wasn't on his person at all.

"How mundane," Rein sighed. "Don't complain to me about your inferior existence. Just stay out of my way and keep your mouth shut." With that, he pushed the man away and began to move again down the narrow passageway.

Aaron grunted and his fists clenched tightly. Tight anger brought his facial expression closer together than before. "What the hell are you trying to pull here? What did you do back there?"

Rein stopped and massaged his temples with one hand while the other weakly held to his hip. "You really don't understand anything, do you?" He looked at Aaron with a deep stare now, right into his eyes, and the former refugee was somewhat taken aback at the intensity of Rein's deep gunmetal blue eyes. "Those AUs we've got back there? We're the only ones who can pilot them. They're so outdated that they aren't even in use anymore, but that's what makes them so strong. With that kind of power behind us, there's nothing we can't do." He let his arms sweep out to his sides, now, with a dramatic flair that almost hit the walls of the narrow corridor. "I can't let go of this opportunity, you fool, and I can't die just yet. Like I said, I don't care what you do, just stay out of my way while I sever the ties of the planet-bound. What am I trying to do? That's what you're asking me, really?" With this, all of his theatrics seemed to disappear in favor of a light-hearted, condescending exasperation, and he looked down while his hand swept over his forehead. "I'm going to change this place." He looked into Aaron's eyes with a slight grin now, along with half-closed and mocking eyes.

Barely hearing anything that the boy had just said, Aaron still found his misplaced hatred boiling inside of him, now regurgitated by those pretentious eyes of his and those municipally insulting glasses. But at this point, Aaron was still amazed by what he had seen less than an hour ago, and he wanted answers, so he forcefully held off the urge to smash his fist in the boy's face once again.

"I... I don't know what you're talking about." Aaron's speech was slow and meticulous, as he basically spoke through gritted teeth. "I don't even know who you are. What are you going to do here? And why..." He started to choke up, thinking about what he wanted to say. The refugee slammed his eyes shut and tried his hardest to control the tears that pushed past his clenched eyelids. "Why don't you care about the colony? It's... It's gone."

Instead of Aaron's frustrated sorrow, Rein let out a light-hearted laugh and looked up, as if watching his good humor float away into the metallic atmosphere and evaporate. "Who I was or who I am? Well... I was just a petty nobleman back on that planet, but now...! I've been set free by the destiny around me. I have become that which is eternal...! So why should I care about that base hack, that prison?! I - no, we have been set free, and they gave us these amazing machines! They've given us the power of Gods! And I! I will use the power of the Gods and change this world. This universe! Everything that's gone wrong here... All these people that have died... I will liberate them. I will be the immortal emperor of this weak, stagnant system! I am all the changes in the cosmos!"

The man in front of him was speechless. He couldn't even think hard enough to punch, as he was want to do. His puzzled, bright green eyes looked first at the cerulean-haired boy before glancing around in further confusion. His mouth opened often to speak, but no words escaped.

Rein took this opportunity to reach his hand forward with a twisted smile on his face. "The wheels of time are ever grinding forward. Will you join me and leave your old self behind? Will you liberate this universe with me?" The same smirk graced his lips and his glasses still shone with the same blasphemous glint as usual, but he managed to look downright fanatical now with the passion that contorted his eyes. He glared right into Aaron's soul, daring the man to refuse him and his grandiose offer.

The refugee now knew what to do, and he smiled as he confirmed it to yourself. With a hearty grunt, he pushed himself forward and punched Rein right in his glasses. The impact pushed the small boy forward and Aaron found himself slamming into the wall at an angle. "Like fucking hell I am!" After gaining his momentum again, he pushed off the wall and launched another punch right at Rein's face again, this time satisfyingly breaking the boy's nose and "liberating" a stream of blood to escape into the weightless air. "You crazy little piece of reikravn!" In his paroxysm, Aaron unconsciously began to speak Draconian once again. Whether he was resounding off the walls, floor, or ceiling, he continued to ruthlessly launch himself at Rein and pummel the boy throughout the winding and quiet corridors of the ship. "You'll rot in Raevellionkreius, just like the rest of them that you've killed! We left all of them to die, and there was nothing we could do about it, and you want to go about with this crazy shit?! Those people - those pirates - destroyed everything that we had! They've destroyed everything that was orderly in this universe!" Rein's glasses were completely destroyed by now, and Aaron's hands were bleeding messes, both because of the glass embedded into them and because of his burst knuckles. By now he ceased the attacking and simply floated over Rein, crying. Neither of them could open their eyes. "We can't let them get away with this! Stop talking all this crazy stuff and think for once in your god damn life! We have to fight to save what's left...! To become real men in this horrible world..."

There was a weak silence for a moment before Rein found himself engulfed in a reckless, wild energy. He shoved Aaron off of him and scrambled to find his footing again. "No, I am revived! You are the fool! Before us was an infinite history of death and pointless bureaucracy! You can't know how much I hated it! You can't know anything about me! But know this: It's only logical for me to want to change this hell that we live in! And now I have been given the power to do so... What kind of useless fool do you take me as?! You speak as if I am misguided, but you are wrong, you are misguided! I am the birth egg of time and space - I am the purity, the harmony, the perspective of all that is right and must return to this world! All of the people of the world, of every world, will have to stand back and look at me with awe, because of the power I hold - I am the living body of the new age! And if you won't come with me... If you won't join me in the mysteries of creation..." Now, stained with blood and beginning to bruise and discolor, Rein's face twisted painfully into an expression of pure hatred, one that was matched shot-for-shot by Aaron himself. "...you will be just as them! Nonexistent to me - intangible - a faint sigh in the whispers of a once-dead cosmos. Be invoked by my power." By the end of his exuberant rant, Rein found himself whispering, and the two floated stiffly in the air, staring at each other and marveling at the ideals of the other.

They were startled from their energetic, absolute study by the sound of footsteps in the hallway that intersected to their passageway. The noise was irregular and light yet confident and evenly-paced, enough for both of them to deduce that the person was not only skilled and used to traveling without gravity, but that they were of light weight and likely a woman. They were proven correct within moments.

Confronting them with a calamitous expression was a woman, as expected. She was wearing the same uniform as them, except hers was unusually tight on her already curvaceous and voluptuous figure. She was of a respectable height, about as tall as Rein was, yet in contrast to the white all around her, her skin was a pure olive and her long hair was a bright red. Bright, enchanting blue eyes looked at both of them in turn with an exasperated glance, both of them framed so exquisitely by her impatient pose and her flowing hair that they appeared even brighter than they actually were. One hand of hers was firmly on one of her wide hips, and the other fell to lightly lay over her opposite leg. Both Rein and Aaron were enchanted by the woman in front of them, yet mildly intimidated as well.

The woman spoke after a moment of observation of the two. "You two the AU pilots?" Neither of them answered, and the girl scoffed as she ran a hand down her hair. With their focus on the movement, both of them were able to see that her hair extended down to her bottom, which was remarkable in its own way. She seemed to sense their attraction and was disgusted by it. "Come with me. The captain would like to speak to you." None of them moved. The girl's eyes narrowed. "Now." Without exchanging anymore words, she turned and went the way she came with a sort of jump-step that had far apart strides but succeeded to carry her through the weightless corridor.

Rein followed her instantly without a second glance, but Aaron was slightly more hesitant. Still shaken up from his explosion with Rein, he had been amazingly taken in by the woman and her reluctant charms. Among his unabashed lust, however, emerged a peculiar detachment, one that refused to allow full attachment without full investigation. Something about the girl was familiar, and enticing even more because of it. He shook his head, letting his long and curly hair waft against the back of his neck as he did so, and pushed himself in the direction of the two who had left ahead of him. Angered as he was, he couldn't help himself from being incredibly bewildered from both the idealism he had just seen in normally mild-mannered Rein as well as that which he had found within himself.

*****