PROTA ARC PART II: …Reach For Life…

“Run!”

He remembered the burning sands and the scorching sun. Vagrants behind them with their guns raised high, firing plasma that either flew past and torched the dead roots or nicked his skin just millimetres away from ending his life. “Run!” He shouted once more atop the dune, holding out his hand. The boy reached and grabbed the outstretched arm, only to be flung beyond the mound. Looking up, the plasma ripped a hole through his saviour, drilling through his hip. Bright red blood splattered onto the sands and steamed as the man screamed. But still, “run!” He shouted

“Run, Hoshi!”

*-*-*

“Do you kill her dreams… or your own?”

Heavy was the pistol, the plasma an end to a story. It floated between the two, a pendulum swinging ever closer. Who would feel the sting of the blade, who would taste the blood?

“Kill her. Prove you are Ryūsei, everything you have portrayed. This isn’t a mask you covered yourself with, it is who you really are.” Ghrian persuaded, his voice slow and quiet like a snake in the tall grass, patiently waiting for the kill. Astra was still dazed, unable to properly react but she knew the danger that faced her. “I… I don’t want to do this Commander” the boy muttered, “I promised, you promised.”

“That you’d get to buy her out, I know. Not often you show much interest in anything, ever since Liu brought you in you’ve kept your distance. I do apologise kid, a beauty like that doesn’t exactly make her way to these places often. I’ll make sure we find you a replacement to dip your wick… so to speak.”

“It wasn’t about that!” the kid shouted.

“Then what, Ryūsei?! What was it about?! What is stopping you taking the next step, what drives you from us? From the ones that saved you?!”

A gunshot from the past played in his mind, everything came back, all the hurt and anger. The kid switched his target to Ghrian “YOU PUT ME THERE!” His guards raised their weapons in reaction but they saw the fire in his eyes. “Drop them or I drop him!”

They complied… and Ghrian laughed, louder than the kid had ever heard, almost like some villain in a shitty movie. Fast as lightning he grabbed the barrel and held it to his forehead, still cackling. “Make my fucking day, Ryū. Go on!”

It was pure fear now, taking control and paralysing him. He felt so much like a child again. Those feelings back then, thinking that the world was going to change around him as he grew, he’d become a man and all his problems would work out with the plan he had. It doesn’t work that way. Nothing changed, he was still a scared little boy with his father’s blood on his hands, scared and alone. He thought he was in control, thought he was smarter than everyone else. No one could see through the act, and when he finally got to the end, it would all work out.

The world doesn’t follow your path, doesn’t listen to your tune. and now, he was a crying child acting as a man, a paper thin facade ripped apart by reality. It terrified him as he held the gun with Ghrian smiling at the other end. No fear, he knew what Ryūsei was, and he knew how this would go.

“You live in a fantasy, Ryū. This confidence you have now, all of it came from us, from me and Liu dragging you around and pretending you were something special. Well, welcome to reality” Hoshi had mistakenly dropped his guard for a mere moment and Ghrian had sprung, smashing his elbow against Hoshi’s chin and grabbing the gun from his hand. Now it was the commander holding the cards, holding the duo’s lives in his hands.

“Take the girl” he ordered his men. He looked down on his soldier with disgust. The kid was completely broken, nothing to fight back with, not weapon or will. His plan to escape was shattered glass on the carpet that Ghrian trampled on as he approached and took a knee. “We’re going to do this again. I’m going to give you a few days to figure out where your loyalty lies, and then you will shoot the girl and finally become a Vagrant. And if you don’t, I’ll make sure to make her days with the Govets as painful as possible. And when she’s been used up, and she begs for death, I’ll let you try again.” His words were accompanied by ruffled hair, and a quietened dark.

*-*-*

Prota was not alone in the system, not by a long shot, neither were the Vagrants. Two of them flew back into the atmosphere and set ablaze, spinning in the air to avoid who knows what and yet, it hit them all the same.

At the deepest depths of Vitu was the area where they kept their captives, Toharani. Here in the dark and dirt, a man is chained to the wall and left to fester. Through the heat of the day and the biting cold of the night they remain, until the Commander calls on them and becomes god or devil. The boy and the merchant were behind those rusted bars, waiting for their day to come.

“I’m never getting out of here” the merchant cried, “am I?”

The boy refused to answer, he couldn’t even hear a word anymore, his mind focused on only Ghrian and his revenge.

“I’ll never see my daughter again…” A photo lay in his hand that he cherished, bloodstained from the attack.

Daughter…family… he remembered his.

The streets of Prota were never safe, and when the last generation of Earthlings left their homes at its end, they found only hardship. Hoshi’s parents left Earth with nothing, no value to spend on luxury, no coin to ease the burden. It was up to them to make ends meat on this new planet, but due to such a massive influx of people the opportunities were few and far between.

“There’s nothing else left.” His father said, rummaging through their stock in their tattered home. It was just the two of them now, living in the slums and just barely surviving.

“I don’t want you to become a Vagrant.” A younger Hoshi replied, around five or six years old, wearing old tattered clothes and malnourished. His father turned to him, seeking a source of courage so that he could comfort his son. He pulled him close and held him tight. “This world isn’t kind, Hoshi. There’s bad people here, and they’ll do anything to keep us here. If we stay too long, we’ll never leave.”

The young boy looked up, his father’s face covered but he could see the night sky in the cracks of the roof. “But if I get us just a little bit of money, we can get a small ship and leave this place.”

He saw distant stars, and a nearby planet that shone so brightly they lit up the sky. “Where would we go?”

His father held him ever so close, looking into his eyes with wonder. “Wherever we want. To the ends of this great wilderness, to the distant stars of fire and storm, out of the clutches of bad people and into a new horizon… to Our Eternity.”

“Our Eternity…” he repeated weakly in his cell.

And then the wall exploded.

*-*-*

Ghrian was enjoying a nice rest in his office, a holographic report facing him on the desk, sleeping deeply. Then, it sounded like ground ripping open. He shot out of his chair to his feet before the shaking stopped. Racing out into the hallways and to the courtyard. He could see the smoke rising into the sky, and following it up, he saw the ship that fired the shot. An unmarked, silver and black Meteor. His building was burning, his land scorched and a few of his men dead. Not many had the guts to attack the Vagrants, few still with such a large ship.

“Lock down the city, no one fucking leaves without my say so.” He instructed one of the grunts still reeling from the blast. Fire burned around him and his bloodlust watched the ship above that focused on him. He saw no pilot or gunner, nor a sign or symbol to reveal this attacker, but he had a name in mind.

“Rose.”

In the rubble, the boy awoke. The dust caught in his lungs and blood seeped from the cut above his eye, but he was alive still. The same could not be said of the merchant. His picture survived, floating in a pool of his blood, his body lay lifeless under the bricks. The boy’s chain was loose, enough that he could pull it from the wall and drag the other away.

The coast was clear, all the other Vagrants were outside watching the rogue ship or still finding their dead. He stumbled down the corridor in the dark, with tattered bloody clothes and a pistol he scavenged from a guard whose fate matched Farid’s.

Round every corner with gun ready, but not soul, no he had not thought of that. He shook his head of the thought, killing was necessary now, if he turned the next corner and a Vagrant or one of the ones that attacked the base stood between him and his destination, there was only one solution. Could he fight? Certainly, could he guarantee it would be enough… no, no he couldn’t.

And where was his destination? That which was probably teeming with Vagrants hoping to fire off into the skies and take down the bomber, that which was on the other end of the base to where he was. The Hangar.

Astra woke similarly to the boy. Beaten and tied to the wall with arms outstretched. Her residence was more formal than his though, and she wasn’t with another prisoner, but instead another Vagrant. Her head was still clouded, her vision fuzzy, but she could feel his touch on her thigh. The warmth of it slowly sliding across her fairer skin.

“Quit stalling and do it!” she heard, noticing there was another one watching the door. “If the Commander catches you he’ll have us both skinned!”

“Would you stop rushing me!? You’ll get your chance!” He responded as he rustled his belt loose. She looked down past him and saw they’d unlocked one of the shackles on her legs so they could… get a better angle. All of a sudden his face was touching her, red and hideous. “We’ll enjoy ourselves before you get sent to the Govets…” His belt unbuckled and his pants began to drop, gave her just enough time to slip out of the other shackle and swing her knee into his side. She flipped over to her feet, arms still tied to the table.

The watcher heard the commotion, quickly rushing over to subdue their victim. She leapt over the table, spinning so her heel crashed down on his skull. The other one broke his blade on her skin as it lodged into her arm, he fumbled with the gun on his hip and fired, but she hid behind the plinth she was tied to. The shot burned through her chain, freeing an arm so she could free the other with her rough skin. The gun fired again, and then he dropped to the ground, a roundhouse kick to the neck left him twitching. Astra picked up his pistol, wincing as she pulled the blade out of her skin.

A quick check of the halls and all seemed clear. Through the double doors she went, readying her new firearm… only to see a familiar face drop a vagrant with a well placed pistol whip. He turned and saw her.

The girl he had refused to kill.

The boy that brought her here.

Neither spoke a word and the boy took a step towards her, wrong move. Her gun lifted quicker than his step and he stopped there and then, hands in the air. “Drop it.” She ordered.

“I’m not going to hurt you.”

“No, you aren’t. Because if you take another step or move your hands, I’ll put a hole in you.”

After a second of contemplation he dropped his weapon. “I just want to get out of here, same as you.”

“Your commander hasn’t ordered you to kill me again?”

“You were there, you know I didn’t do it…”

“Doesn’t mean you won’t now.” She interjected. “There’s only one way out of here and if you mean what you say, we’re both going the same way. I don’t trust you, Ryūsei.”

His eyes pleaded but they were beyond the point of no return now. “What’s it going to be Ryūsei? Do I trust you?”

Astra squeezed the trigger so tightly it was hard not to fire. “Or do I kill you?”