Miho Chan
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Starbound Fox: Chapter 2
🕑 Added 2025-03-01 20:51:22 +0000 UTCThe blaring of alarms, their shrill cries drilling into my ears with the force of a sledgehammer, was the first warning that something was wrong. The thin keening sound that I couldn’t quite place that followed immediately afterward was my second.
The image that popped up in the Master Control Center’s core was all that I needed to know to upgrade this invasion to a potential calamity.
An ivory white exoskeleton, wings seemingly cast from dusk themselves splayed between that same ivory, the overall draconic appearance marred by an alieness that came from all those forged within the Legion’s Warforge… All of it pointed to exactly one thing. The Doomsday Beast, the Antimatter Legion’s planet destroyer. The remnants of the Dusk Leviathan cast with the agony of thousands of souls. The harbinger of the end. A being that had brought the end to many worlds, and that was responsible for the death of billions, if not trillions, of beings across the galaxy.
And it’s here. I breathed in harshly, sweat dripping down my face as my flight or fight response kicked into overdrive, my mind racing through potential strategies for any way we could combat this new threat. Direct combat was likely right out. While I was confident in my own abilities, I didn’t know the extent of the Nameless’ own capabilities in a fight, and I knew I wouldn’t be enough to stop a calamity of this magnitude. Not on my own. If the Nameless had enough combatants of my level or higher, that would be a different story, but I couldn’t- no, I would not count on it.
Granted, absolutely none of this would be an issue if Madame Herta was here.
The problem, of course, was that she wasn’t. About the only thing that could make this situation worse would be the appearance of the Lord Ravager. Thankfully, we seemed to have been spared of that. Then again, given how interesting my life seemed to get…
But that line of thought wasn’t productive. Glancing at the others of the Control Centre actually gave me some small measure of comfort, as insane as they’d consider it. Because I knew their journey didn’t end here. I knew that Herta’s Space Station had a role in things to come. And yet, could I rely on that? It was too easy to get lost in the spiral. Right now-
“Take the express and leave!” Asta’s voice cut through my attempts at thought, the girl putting up a brave face despite the way her body trembled. “I’ll stay.”
The pink-haired girl protested, words on her lips to deny the fate that was approaching them. Himeko cut her off immediately.
“Let’s go.”
I caught Asta’s eye. A question tickled the back of my throat, yet her subtle nod had it die there. I was to leave with them, then. I had expected no less. But- No. I couldn’t think like that. It wasn’t as if the Nameless would abandon the innocent. They were much like the Galaxy Rangers in that way.
A lot like I was.
I was moving before I really knew it, boots drumming against the floor as I burst into a brief sprint to catch the crew of the Astral Express before they could take the elevator down without me. I made it with time to spare, reducing my pace to a jog as I came up alongside the quartet. The determined expression on my face seemed to silence any questions, which was good. I didn’t feel like words. Not that they’d be able to truly reach me right now anyway, not through the adrenaline and cold rage honing my mind to a blade’s edge. Things not immediately relevant to the repulsion or destruction of the Doomsday Beast could wait.
We reached the elevator. Silently, we rode it downward, towards a zone of the space station I’dnever visited. The Supply Zone. A place for maintenance of the space station, storage, and the location of the platform for the Astral Express that Madame Herta had restored during the construction of this masterwork.
The intercom blared. “The supply zone's defense shield won't hold much longer. You all need to hurry…” For a moment, there was a heavy pause, the young woman at the other side taking a deep breath, “I’ll be here, you’ve got to fend them off…” Static interrupted the transmission, and I could only make out three words before it devolved into interpretable noise, “You… need… hurry…”
“... We lost communications,” Himeko remarked, evidently the resident stater of the obvious. Briefly, she looked conflicted, casting a concerned gaze at the elevator that we were leaving behind, the beating of shoes against the cold metal of the space station our only companion for the moment.
“Are you thinking of going back? Let me remind you, that's the Doomsday Beast, the Legion's planet destroyer,” the Xianzhou native interjected. His words contained a certain clinicality to them that most would associate with apathy. Yet, that wasn’t quite right. It wasn’t as if he didn’t care about the people here, no. But-
I could ponder any implications behind his personality or word choice later. Right now I needed to focus.
“The space station is Herta's creation. As long as a Lord Ravager doesn't intervene, there should be no problems.” Himeko responded curtly. Honestly, it was admirable that they were jogging towards their destination so fast while carrying on a conversation. It spoke well of their lung capacity and experience. My estimations of their potential combat capabilities rose.
My mind returned to the impending battle ahead of me as I put their conversation to the side for the moment. I didn’t exactly have anything useful to add, after all. Nor was I really the kind of person to casually chat with random people as was.
Snippets of their discussion did reach me however, twinging at long forgotten memories. Stelle; the name of the grey-haired girl, was important. With a capital I. She was the key to all of this, and though I didn’t know or remember why she was the key, I did recall a very specific phrase I associated with her. It had, after all, been a key theme of the story I remembered enjoying greatly.
When you have to make a choice, make the one you know you won’t regret.
Several pairs of feet continued to thunder against the floor, the normally ignorable sounds drumming against my sensitive ears. Yet that was not the only sound I heard.
The Anti-Matter Legion had their own unique bodies, and those forms tended to make very unique sounds, extremely recognisable to anyone that had encountered them before. Given that I’d been fighting the damned bastards for over two hours at this point, I was more than familiar enough to recognise them ahead of us.
“Contacts front. They’re waiting for us around the bend coming up.” I thrust myself into the embers of their conversation, Sasha once again appearing in my grip as I accelerated towards the fore “Be prepared to engage.”
I didn’t bother waiting to see if the Astral Express crew would react quickly. An ambush that one was aware of was simply an ambush for the ambushers, after all, and I wasn’t about to let this opportunity slip me by. My ears twitched as the hammering of feet picked up slightly, a quartet of footsteps increasing their speed to catch up with me.
“We’re with you,” Himeko stated simply, the words filling me with a familiar yet foreign sense of warmth that I wasn’t sure I should really be feeling from someone I had just met. Burying those emotions behind a mask of professionalism, along with my doubts, I simply nodded towards her. Silently as one could while sprinting forward we burst around the corner and were faced with our foes. A single Baryon, the Anchors of the Antimatter Legion. A pair of Voidranger: Reavers, arm-blades raised menacingly in anticipation. Finally, a single Voidranger, a Distorter, the field commanders of the Antimatter Legion’s chaff.
Taking full advantage of the surprise afforded us, I put a burst of lead through the ‘head’ of the Distorter. As it went down, the crew of the Astral Express pounced. The Xianzhou Native (I’d have to get his name at some point) engaged in a brief yet fierce melee with one of the Reavers, his spearwork more than sufficient to overcome the moderate skill the servant of Destruction possessed. Stelle closed in right behind him, baseball bat slamming aside the blades of her foe in an admirable display of strength and skill. Before she could follow up, an arrow from the pink-haired one brought the Reaver’s lease on life to an end. Finally, Himeko charged in towards the Baryon, eliminating it with a quick stroke of her suitcase that was also a buzzsaw.
Because why not.
The skirmish was over before it could really begin, the corpses of our foes dissipating into motes of light as the price of their existence caught up to them. I brought my racing mind to heel, taking a deep breath before we resumed our journey towards the Train Platform. For the moment, I remained silent, offering each of the Astral Express crew a nod of acknowledgement and respect. They had fought well, after all.
I raised my initial estimation of their capabilities even higher. The ease with which they’d batted aside the servants of Destruction was no small thing. That level of skill in combat was hard to come by, and the level of teamwork each of them had displayed was harder still.
Hopefully, hopefully, it would be enough to take on the superweapon that was rapidly making itself our problem…
__________________________________________________________________________
“Aww yeah it’s the platform!” the pink-haired girl cheered, her right arm pointed towards the location straight in front of us. Paranoia seeped through my entire being as deja vu slammed into me with the force of a rampaging truck. Something was coming, and it was likely coming to ruin my day.
“... The Express isn’t here.” Evidently, it was the Xianzhou native’s turn to state the obvious this time.
“It has to be nearby!” the first speaker interjected. I didn’t even need to look over to her to see the eyeroll laced throughout her voice, “Lemme go take a peak with my sharp eyes~!”
I froze as she began to sprint forward, the harsh sound of wingbeats slamming into my ears as the chill of fear began to aggressively way down on me. My voice echoed as one with my fellow Xianzhou native, “March! Wait!”
I didn’t know where the name had sprung from, nor why I had remembered just now that this girl was also important, that she was key to things to come in the future.
The girl stopped just as the Doomsday Beast came into view, fell wings beating through space through some foul fucking sorcery that I wasn’t remotely capable of understanding at the moment. It was definitely coming towards us. I took a deep, fortifying breath, eyes briefly closing as I sent a prayer towards whoever would be listening.
‘Let us make it through this fight with our lives and those behind us intact.’
“The Doomsday Beast.” There was a sense of awe in Himeko’s words, the respect towards a formidable foe combined with a touch of disbelief that this was actually happening, “It’s really here.”
“Hey! Get down here!” March yelled. My eyes remained fixated on the approaching monstrosity, Sasha springing to my hand as combat became truly inevitable.
It was do or die, now. Myself and my comrades against an apocalypse given form.
Truly, it was just one more Tuesday.
“Be careful everyone!”
Pandemonium erupted as Himeko’s words were drowned out by the thing before us touching down, an unholy roar that grated against my ears emanating from the closest thing it had to a head. Heart hammering against my chest as my flight or fight response kicked in earnestly, I sprung into action. A burst of lead leapt forth from Sasha as the Doomsday Beast began its attack, its gigantic left arm sweeping across the field. My inheritance sprung to life and I tore a hole through the imaginary sea to avoid the wide-reaching attack. I heard more than saw the results of the attack I had just avoided as I came out of void-space. The crash of the metallic-yet-ivory hand meeting something solid greeted my ears.
“Not on my watch!” the declaration from March shouldn’t have surprised me, yet to an extent it did. More memories were clawing their way up from where they’d lingered for over a decade. I pushed them aside, a brief pause the only indication of my distraction as I continued to fire upon the Doomsday Beast. A grimace briefly danced across my face as I realized that each impact was doing negligible damage, the main body of the monster standing before us protected by something that I couldn’t truly identify. Arrows made entirely of an unfamiliar ice rained against the main body of our foe with equal ineffectiveness. The “OH COME ON!” from March 7th was completely expected and an accurate summarization of our situation. We had to find some way to negate whatever force was protecting the body of our enemy or we were certainly fucked.
Slamming another magazine home into Sasha, I scowled as I rapidly ran through my options. I could try pulling off some fuckery with my relic to force my way past whatever nonsense was protecting the Doomsday Beast. Or I could try and figure out its weakness. There had to be something that would drop the barrier. I just needed to figure-
“Go for the hands and core!” the shout from the Xianzhou native snapped me out of my internal conflict. My eyes snapped towards the sound to find him impaling one of the fingers of our foe’s right hand with his spear. Finding the logic more sound than my prior idea for the moment, I switched my focus to the core. Sasha snapped into position as I took aim, my eyes peering through the hologram that served as her sight. My left pointer finger feathered against the trigger as I focused, space distorting as I drew slightly upon my inheritance’s power.
The bullet in the chamber warped slightly as I manipulated the properties behind it, trusting that the crew of the Astral Express would keep the Beast busy enough for me to stand still for the moment.
The clash of some unknown material against the Doomsday Beast’s left hand validated my faith moments later as I took a knee, stabilizing Sasha against my shoulder as I breathed in and held my breath.
My trigger finger depressed, a single shot spitting forth from her. The results were immediate. A horrific shriek that had to be pain slammed into us with palpable force as my modified bullet struck home against the Beast’s core, sending our foe staggering to the floor of the space station.
“Give it everything you have!” I barked, Sasha rattling against my shoulders and arms as I dumped my magazine into the now vulnerable foe. A hail of arrows with a peculiar shape followed as March added her own salvo to the fight, even as our three melee combatants began to savage the main body of our foe with bat, spear, and buzzsaw. For a few seconds, it seemed as if we would be able to end things here and now.
The universe, however, had other plans.
The core, previously laying idly on the floor, lit up. The Doomsday Beast shrieked in fury as it rose again, arms rising from their position on the floor as it gripped the edge of the platform with such intensity that it cracked. Alarm bells ringing within my head, I turned my head to face the rest of the Astral Express crew. My mouth opened to shout a warning, yet by that time it was already too late. The monster standing before us rose fully into the air, abandoning the platform as it hovered in place. A halo of purple and gold surrounded it as energy thrummed in the air.
Cold sweat dripped down my face as yet another memory slammed home. This was going to suck if I didn’t do things just right. As beams of Quantum and Imaginary energy began to rain down on us, I threw up the largest tear to the Imaginary Sea I could and made myself as small as I possibly could, throwing myself down from a crouch into a prone position. I couldn’t even spare the time to think of the others who were fighting this monster right now. Right now, all that mattered was surviving this onslaught.
In the span of a few seconds, what felt like an eternity passed. My ears were assailed by a deluge of conflicting sounds that immediately sent me right into sensory overload. I couldn’t even hope to identify each unique sound, and I could only squeeze my eyes shut to remove another sense from the equation from the moment in response to it all.
Then, it was over.
My eyes snapped open and I threw myself to my feet, Sasha snapping up towards the Doomsday Beast as it once more touched down against the space station. Out of the corner of my eyes, I noted an abundance of that unfamiliar ice; it seemed as if March had managed to fully protect the Astral Express crew through whatever the fuck that attack had been. Wasting no time, I began firing at the core of the monstrosity.
Once more, our foe began its initial assault, right hand sweeping across the field. Once more, I leapt over the offending appendage, bringing Sasha to my shoulder to resume my barrage-
‘Shit!’
I only managed that thought before the ground below me exploded with imaginary energy, a hastily torn rift depositing me high above the ground as I abandoned precision for the sake of speed.
There were… many regrets. Yet I didn’t let that stop me as I reoriented myself and took the opening to fire off another tight burst towards the core. Another rift opened, far closer to the ground and I took the impact with more grace than I would have managed if I’d let myself fall the full height. My legs strained as I skidded backwards, Sasha singing her deadly song all the while.
She clicked dry. With a click of my tongue, I slammed another magazine home.
“Last Magazine!” I called, awaiting no response as I pushed myself further than I had before and began twisting the bullet in my chamber just as I had before. I vaguely heard the responses from the people I was fighting alongside, yet I couldn’t afford to process them, the entirety of my focus dedicated to warping the bullet within Sasha to my whims.
I’d need to actually practice with this soon. I couldn’t afford to be standing still like this in combat.
An unholy crash that nearly disrupted my concentration proved my point immediately afterwards, a dome of six-phased ice (Thanks brain, for providing me with the name to something so… relevant) shielding me against the Doomsday Beast’s assault.
“Be more careful!” That, I heard. Grunting in agreement towards March, I took a deep breath and sighted the offending appendage (the Doomsday Beast’s left arm) and squeezed the trigger. Once again, my modified round tore through one of the monstrosity’s weak points. The arm fell to the floor just as both the core and right arm fell to the floor.
“Rules were made to be broken!” Stelle’s declaration ripped through the air as she charged forward, her baseball bat singing with power as it slammed into the Doomsday Beast’s main body with a satisfying crash. The beast fell backwards, seemingly defeated yet my instincts continued to scream.
Something was coming. I didn’t know what, but something was coming and I knew it deep in my bones.
My eyes swept the battlefield, noting the exhaustion on visible display from everyone I could see. The Xianzhou native was breathing heavily, his offhand pressed against his gut as he nursed what had to be a wound. Himeko was in a similar state, not visibly wounded yet definitely winded. March was practically collapsed against the floor, sweat dripping from practically every portion of her skin. Then, of course, Stelle was kneeling on the floor, baseball bat used as a crutch to keep her in that position.
I wasn’t fairing much better myself. I could feel perspiration drenching my entire body. My breaths were coming in ragged gasps and it was taking an immense amount of effort to keep myself standing at ready, Sasha trained against the defeated-
The Doomsday Beast’s head whipped forward, Quantum-Imaginary energy lancing forward in a beam.
“March!”
Himeko’s call resounded in my ears, the despair and desperation calling to mind a very specific memory.
I almost allowed myself to get lost in it. I almost failed to react. Fighting past the flames that came to mind and the echoes of a keening wail filling a broken night, I acted. Imaginary Energy spooled within me as the beam of energy raced every closer to its target. I began to metaphorically claw at the tear nearest to March, desperately hoping that I would be fast enough to prevent this.
I was reminded of my limits moments later as an agonized cry left my lips. Sending my body to the floor as I drew upon wells of power I simply did not have. My eyes squeezed shut. I couldn't- I couldn’t!
There was no mournful cry. No despair. Only the sound of energy clashing against energy. Cautiously, I opened my eyes. The sight that greeted me was one that I had not expected… No, one that I had simply forgotten. Standing before March with her arms spread wide was Stelle, the person that my near forgotten memories of another life had insisted was important. That she was the key.
She was screaming in pain. A barrier projected forth by-
My eyes widened. Shock filled me as tendrils of energy began to emanate from the grey-haired woman’s chest, intensifying into a corona of something that erased the Doomsday Beast from existence.
As she began to float in the air, clearly losing control of whatever the fuck was sealed within her body, another achingly familiar figure intervened.
Welt Yang pressed a cane against the girl’s head, sealing whatever the fuck had been happening to her body. As she fell, March sprang to hear feet and caught her.
“Uncle Yang, is she…”
“She’s okay.” Humanity’s hero reassured March, casting his gaze around the site of the battle. My gaze snapped towards the right as the Astral Express began to pull into the station. The unfamiliar yet familiar sight of the steam engine greeted my eyes as I began to push myself to my feet, “Let’s talk elsewhere.”
Without any fanfare, he began to walk forward, only to pause as my eyes locked with his. Something… intangible passed between us. Then, it was gone. Rising fully to my feet, I dismissed Sasha and began to put one foot in front of the other, following the crew of the Astral Express towards wherever they were taking Stelle.
After all, I had never actually gotten my food or sleep, and by everything fucking holy in the universe, I was going to get it now.
