[IC] Eternal Galaxy: Shards of Starlight - Part I

[Kristia]

Helios System
Delta Division Flagship | Excalibur
Cortana's Custom Simulation

Hearing Cortanaīs idea, the bioroid nodded "Allright then, letīs see what you can do" she spoke preparing for the AIīs attack

As the hammer was swinging, Mara started going just behind Cortana and was running for jumping over the black haired woman to make an aereal attack with her energy daggers

[bookdragon2000]

Sol Inceneron
Temple of the Lost

Nhiome used the last of the metal at his disposal and examined his work. It was not up to the standards he wanted, but he didn't have enough resources at hand. Well, it would hold at least. Nhiome then went back in, to the engines, and began splicing and repairing the circuits. He inserted the keystone like he would a normal aura crystal and as Dalia said, it worked, or at least it seemed to. Now to put it to the test.

(I realised I forgot to say Nhiome picked up the keystone on his way out ._. , for the sake of convenience, let's just assume he did XD)

Nhiome started up the systems, some remained dormant, but those were mainly the less important systems from which he had spliced the circuits from to fix the more important ones like life support. He looked back towards where he had exited from the place where he had found the keystone. Dalia said she would be fine, this is probably not the first time she fell in some place before anyway, she will probably find a way out. He turned back to the console and activated the thrusters, sending the ship up the hole it had fallen through. He then encountered the problem of the earlier damage caused by him, now blocking his exit. This place is supposed to be abandoned anyway, this should be fine.

Using the projectile cannon, he fired explosive rounds at one spot in the ceiling a distance away, until he finally carved a path to the surface. He guided the ship out and set a course for his base, then setting the thrusters to full output. The faster he got back, the lesser the chance he would need to scrap KuroiKaze.

[Cucoo5]

Helios System
Delta Division Flagship | Excalibur
Cortana's Custom Simulation

As the hammer approached him, Navarre back flipped away, putting distance between Cortana and himself. Seeing Mara coming over, he ran to the right, keeping three meters between him and the tag team. once he had gone about a quarter of the way around them he repositioned himself in a defensive stance, waiting.

---

Manor of Eternity
The Great Hall

"So, your purpose is something that doesn't matter? You are saying that fate could throw you away, dispose of you? Perhaps I should reiterate..." The High Guardian walked down the steps towards the two. "There is a reason why you are here, there is a meaning for why my brother sought you out. There is a meaning to why the Goddess Venturia revealed herself to you. So tell me...what is your purpose?"

---

Helios System
Delta Division Flagship | Excalibur
Pub

"What do you think? Why would fate bring you here?" Nero stared at the red liquid in his glass as though it were the most fascinating thing in the galaxy. "Why? Such a simple question...yet..." He took another sip. "Yet the answer will allude us..." Then he looked at Mima with a curious look, "Perhaps you have some ability...? Hidden away in your fragmented memories?"

[S121]

Helios System
Delta Division Flagship | Excalibur
Cortana's Custom Simulation

Now that Cortana had collected some data on Navarre's abilities, she could put a little more effort into attacking him. She didn't have much, but the longer they would fight, the more data Cortana would be able to collect, and the better odds she would have in hitting him with the deadly Gravity Hammer. Cortana performed a horizontal strike last time, so this time she would use a vertical one, to see Navarre's reaction. She would then be able to calculate his reaction time, center of gravity, and ability to shift his center of gravity.

Cortana charged at him this time and swung the Gravity Hammer downwards. As soon as it got within range, Cortana activated the Hammer, causing a wave of energy to surge out of the bludgeon and create a loud booming noise.


*BVVVVVVVVV*





Helios System
Delta Division Flagship | Excalibur
Combat Simulation 1

After ten more seconds of dodging incoming fire and retaliating, John's shields were back to full power, while one of the Gunships were almost unshielded. With one final shot from the heavy Aura cannon, the enemy gunship's shields broke down and was hit by a third Aura blast, ripping through the top of the craft. The enemy craft's Aura systems went offline from the extensive damage and went off line, causing the gunship to plummet to the ground.

(Much better.), John thought to himself as he turned his attention to the other gunships.

As John spun his gunship around, he was hit by a torrent of heavy Aura machinegun fire. John quickly increased his altitude above his enemies, but his shields were quickly shredded from the Aura bullets. The bullets ripped through the hull of the gunship, and the ship's HUD flickered out. Luckily, none of the major systems were damaged, but John was now flying without any information about his altitude, shield gauge, and radar from the ship's HUD. His armor's HUD was out, due to him channeling power to the gunship's shields, but he could change his suit's output, sacrificing the shield's charging speed for more information. Seeing no other alternative, John lowered the output from his suit's energy transfer. His suit's HUD flickered to life, and after configuring it, John was able to view the ship's shield gauge, radar, and altitude, all from his helmet.

Now that John was no longer flying blind, he now had to escape from the other gunships before they could blow him out of the sky. While the gunships flew up to greet him with Arua bullets, John hit one of the gunships two more times, then increased his ship's speed to its maximum setting, dodging the lines of heavy Aura machinegun fire in the sky.

[Cucoo5]

Helios System
Delta Division Flagship | Excalibur
Cortana's Custom Simulation

When Navarre saw the shockwave, he back-stepped to avoid the main hammer and then focused his shield along his sword to block the attack. When the energy wave struck, it shattered the shields and he used the bright light caused by the shattering shield to duck in to sweep Cortana's legs in an attempt to trip her. Regardless of the results he would have to move fast to put a safe distance between them. A wall of the room provided a point that Navarre could gain an advantage...

[Koishi]

Helios System
Delta Division Flagship | Excalibur

---

"We're here because I wanted a drink." Mima said quite simply, and gave a smile. "I was not disappointed."

---

Manor of Eternity
The Great Hall

---

"Fate is nothing but a construct of the mind, and your friends are nothing but creatures with too much power. My purpose is my own personal business, so would you kindly silence yourself before I do myself?" The Reaper threatened, fully knowing what this being it was talking to was capable of. Nova backed off a bit. Hopefully the man could take threats.

[S121]

Helios System
Delta Division Flagship | Excalibur
Combat Simulation 1

As John flew, his shields were slowly regenerating, allowing him to remain in the fight. John checked his HUD for the gunship's shield gauge and saw that he was now at 19.6%, at much better condition than how it originally had been. John was hoping for the shield to charge faster, but it would have to do, especially if he wanted to keep his HUD online. As soon as the shields had enough time to charge to 50%, John spun his gunship around and fired at the gunship behind him. The heavy Aura canon fired two Aura blasts, and luckily for John, the enemy craft wasn't expecting it. The two energy blasts slammed into the ship's shields, prompting the pilot of the ship to quickly maneuver out of the way, in case another attack came.

In order to keep the heat on both gunships, John quickly switched targets to the other ship and fired off two Aura blasts. The enemy craft was hit by one of them, but dodged the second and opened fire with all of its weapons. John hit the throttle and sped towards the enemy craft's flank and fired off two more, striking it with another blast. The enemy gunship's weapons quickly corrected their position and tried to lead their target, but John suddenly increased his altitude and struck the gunship two more times. John felt like he was gaining momentum as they fought, quickly dodging blast after blast, then retaliating with blasts of his own.

After John fired his heavy Aura canon and hit his current target twice, he received a blast from the enemy's heavy Aura cannon. The damage wasn't too severe, until he was then hit by a surprise attack from the second gunship. John's shields were quickly being depleted by the heavy Aura machinegun fire, but he managed to maneuver out of the way. As he moved out of the way, his current target joined in the attack, quickly depleting his shields and damaging the hull. Seeing that the situation was deteriorating, John hit the thrusters and flew away from the assault.

John needed to find a way to give the ship a boost in power, even if it was just a short time. Turning his attention to the console, John began to quickly sift through it's various commands, trying to find something to help him, all while checking the radar and dodging Aurafire. Finally, John found a command that was risky to use, but right now he needed to. After John input the command, three things happened to the ship. The shields began to charge at an almost instantaneous rate, the ship's speed dramatically increased to the point that the engines were beginning to overheat, and a timer popped up on John's HUD, giving him a countdown on how much of the onboard Aura crystal's power was left. To alleviate the overheating engines, John adjusted the engines to their minimum possible setting, but was still able to easily outmaneuver the enemy gunships.

As John spun the ship around and fired the heavy Aura cannons, something unexpected happened. Instead of firing two Aura blasts per second, it was firing as if it was a heavy Aura machinegun, firing ten blasts per second. The torrent of blasts slammed into John's target and decimated the enemy craft, reducing it to a scrap metal fireball that crashed into the ground below. Unfortunately, the heavy Aura cannon exploded from the dangerously high energy input. Now that the Aura crystal limiters were gone, the gunship was literally ripping itself apart. The ship's shields were quickly overloading, with the shield gauge showing its condition as 764% and quickly rising. The ship's various consoles were beginning to spark and blow circuits, while every light in the ship exploded from the intense surge of energy.

(Oh boy, this is bad!), John thought as the ship began to rapidly deteriorate.

All of a sudden, the Aura energy began to surge into John's suit via his hands, overcharging his shields to 760% and causing his HUD to glow brightly. As soon as this freak occurrence happened, John jerked his hands away from the controls of the ship, and deactivated his energy transfer circuits. John quickly grabbed the controls again and decided that there was only one effective way to take out the other ship. John was going to crash into it.

Hitting the throttle, John's gunship ripped through the air, straight for the enemy gunship. While the ship continued its suicidal charge, John got out of the pilot's seat and positioned himself near the opening of the cockpit. Right before the ship was to crash into the enemy gunship, John was going to jump out and fall to the ground. As soon as the enemy figured out what John was going to do, it was already almost too late. John jumped out of the ship, and enemy gunship strafed to the side, but were grazed by the rouge ship. John was surprised to see that his plan failed, but at least he was within range of the enemy gunship. As soon as his ship was out of his way, John pulled out his combat knife and as he landed on the enemy craft, he slammed his combat knife through the energy shields and deep into its hull. as soon as the pilot heard John land on the ship, he began to take evasive maneuvers to try and knock John off.

John slid to the side, but tightly held his knife, determined to keep a solid grip. In order to combat him being flailed around like a 1,400 pound ragdoll, John used his free hand and slammed his fingers through the gunship's armor, giving John something to grip. Now that John had a fighting chance, he began the dangerous task of sliding his knife out of the ship's hull and stabbing it closer to the cockpit. John may have been on the ship, but he still needed to get inside of it before he could hijack it.

[Kristia]

Helios System
Delta Division Flagship | Excalibur
Cortana's Custom Simulation

Noticing that the shield broke in pieces and it started shining, Mara focused closed her eyes and focused on her other senses. Hearing the swordmanīs quick steps and going for a slide, the bioroid made a fast move to get in front of Cortana

The golden eyed woman focused her energy on her right arm and it went towards her energy dagger as it started to glow. Mara took a deep breath and released it opening her eyes locking on Navarre

Bending her arm to her back, the bioroid made an almost full forward arc slicing part of the floor with the dagger as an energy spike traveled its way towards Navarre

[S121]

Helios System
Delta Division Flagship | Excalibur
Cortana's Custom Simulation

While the energy spike traveled towards Navarre, Cortana decided to follow up Mara's attack with her own. In a split second, Cortana lunged to the side and then towards Navarre with her Gravity Hammer at the ready. As soon as he was in range, Cortana swung the Gravity Hammer at his back, trying to make him fly into the energy spike. The hammer's roar could be heard as the hammer's gravity manipulator activated and sent a shockwave towards Navarre.


*BVVVVVVVVV*

[Cucoo5]

Helios System
Delta Division Flagship | Excalibur
Combat Simulation 1

An anomaly. The simulation shuddered for a moment where everything seemed to become unstable. No one noticed it as they were all apart of the simulation, though Commander Sullivan and the officers did. "Something's wrong...the code just changed." An officer commented. "Should we pull them out?"
"Not yet."
"But, sir..."
Commander Sullivan watched the screen carefully. "The simulation is still stable. Let it continue."

***

Storm clouds started to form on the horizon. Aion was transfixed by them...
"The skies bear ominous signs, brother. Shouldn't we pack up everything and just wait it out?"
"No we'll be fine. It's not going to be that bad..."
"Are you sure?"
"Positive. Don't worry, sis, everything will be fine."

...Everything wasn't fine.
"Joe! We need to get out of here, now!"
"We need to hold out until reinforcements come! We can hold this point! We can win this! We're doing fine!"
"Joe!!"
Right in that instance, a red-edged, black bodied energy sabre protruded through Joe's torso. Aion stared in horror as he recognized the blade. His gaze caught the look in Joe's eyes. It was slow realization as he looked down and saw the sword. Still dumbstruck, the man that had killed Joe threw his now limp, lifeless body aside.
Aion's lips formed the man's name but no sound seemed to escape it. Revere stood before him with eyes that seemed to bear no emotion, his black jacket stained by blood.
Now Aion screamed in anger, but the yell was overpowered by the sound of cruiser cannon fire raining down from the heavens, annihilating the gunships, leveling the buildings, and killing everyone in the area. He fell forward from the shockwaves of the blasts behind him.
Revere was still standing with his blood-stained sabre.

---

Helios System
Delta Division Flagship | Excalibur
Pub

"Hear Hear!" Nero said. "Aye if only everyday could be simple. Once this damn war is over...then we can all rest easy." He stretched for a moment before continuing. "What do you think it would take? Why do you think this darn War of Eternity lasted for a hundred thousand years?"

---

Manor of Eternity
The Great Hall

"Is that what you believe?" Aetheron began to pace slightly. "Then you fool yourselves into believing a lie. There's more to this War of Eternity than you believe. And everyone's fate is at stake if we lose. Even you're purpose will become trivial in the end. If the war is lost, then the Galaxy is lost and all that exists in it will be lost. Would you wish to bring about the end of both a galaxy and your own end? Or would you seek to end the war and bring peace, your so called justice to those that began this suffering?"

---

Helios System
Delta Division Flagship | Excalibur
Cortana's Custom Simulation

Navarre ran perpendicular to the attacks and ran straight for the wall. Once he reached it, he ran up it slightly and pushed off, sending himself over the two and landed so that he was behind them. "Good! Very Good! Against anyone else, that would have been beautiful!" He laughed slightly. "Care to continue?"

[Koishi]

Helios System
Delta Division Flagship | Excalibur

---

"Well that's simple." Mima started, taking another swig of sake. "Because people aren't drunk enough." Mima laughed.

---

Manor of Eternity
The Great Hall

---

"If everyone was gone, my job would be done. The innocent may suffer, but the unjust will die. I am expendable." The Reaper countered with an emotionless tone.

[Kristia]

Helios System
Delta Division Flagship | Excalibur
Cortana's Custom Simulation

Mara couldnīt help but notice the warriors sudden emotional surge "Interesting way to evade attacks, I suppose you are a speeder type of warrior" she said quickly going for a double attack with her energy daggers

[bookdragon2000]

Sol Inceneron
Nhiome's base

Nhiome stepped back to take a look at KuroiKaze. He had managed to return to his base without causing additional damage that would require him to scrap KuroiKaze, but as he had expected he had needed to give her a major overhaul. Again. He had fixed everything and made a single addition in case something similar happened again. He had added a third engine that would only activate during an emergency, say, if one of the other engines died again. This reduced the storage space on KuroiKaze but it was worth it to prevent such an accident from occurring again.

Nhiome had just returned from his test flight of KuroiKaze. Everything had been fine and nothing had gone wrong. Now he considered the other ships docked here at his base. Kamikaze was still not completed, and he had just used resources set aside for it to fix up KuroiKaze, so he had to go "acquire" more. He didn't want to use KKuroiKaze for this just yet. He also wanted to bring in a large haul, so this meant using more than one ship. This left NatsuKaze and ShiroiKaze, the first similar to KuroiKaze's before the overhauls, the latter a fast version. He immediately started planning, then shook his head. He was exhausted from all the recent action and had not slept much.

Nhiome redressed the wound on his leg, then collapsed into bed to sleep.

[S121]

Helios System
Delta Division Flagship | Excalibur
Combat Simulation 1

Right as John crawled his way to the glass cockpit, a large shockwave rocked the gunship and all of a sudden, the gunship fell out of the sky. As the Gunship fell, John activated his Armorlock and braced for impact. The ship crashed into the ground.

*BOOOM*

After a couple seconds, John opened up his eyes and looked at his surroundings. The gunship was in pieces, and the building they landed next to was in ruins. All of the buildings were in ruins. All the enemy soldiers were dead, but John saw no sign of his team. Upon having the realization that everyone from his team might be dead, John quickly stood up, grabbed his combat knife out of the gunship's hull, and put it away. He then sprinted towards the building his team was in as he pulled out his M6D Magnum Pistol, hoping to find survivors.

"Hello!?", John called out as he approached the building. John looked at his radar to see if anyone was still alive. Hopefully, he wan't too late.





Helios System
Delta Division Flagship | Excalibur
Cortana's Custom Simulation

As the fight continued, Cortana observed Mara fighting Navarre. Cortana closely observed Navarre's moves, how he fought, an how he shifted his body weight, calculating possible weaknesses in his fighting style, looking for an opening.

(There's sure to be one, it' just a matter of finding it...), Cortana thought to herself.

[Cucoo5]

Helios System
Delta Division Flagship | Excalibur
Cortana's Custom Simulation

Navarre locked blades with Mara, holding his rapier backhand. "There is a saying that Maverick Pilots have: 'You can't die if you don't get hit.' Seems like common sense, yet it's something many ignore these days." He then broke the lock and side-stepped quickly to the right. "Too many times have people ignored true skill. We see those who would rather hide behind armor than challenge themselves. That is a philosophy that I, nay, all Maverick Pilots bring from the air to the ground. It might not be without its flaws, but that is what we believe."

---

Helios System
Delta Division Flagship | Excalibur
Combat Simulation 1

As John entered the building, he saw nothing but bodies strewn about the rubble. The one girl, Christina was still alive, but impaled by a piece of metal with conduits arcing with Aura Energy. Her wound had already started to crystalize from the energy. Her eyes were red with tears and were beginning to become faded. Christina looked over to him and started to mutter "Please...kill me...please..." over and over again.

---

Manor of Eternity
The Great Hall

"...you will not waver from this resolution? Then so be it." Aetheron turned away, looking back to the great metal-work clock that was embedded in the wall. "I had hope that you could help. I was wrong."

---

Helios System
Delta Division Flagship | Excalibur
Pub

"Aye, how would the galaxy be if everyone loosened up and just took a swig, eh? Ha! Oh how things would be!" Nero started to sway slightly. "Hell might freeze over before then, but by the goddess it'd be a fine day. Aye..."