Chapter 2: A New World
My mind slowly started to float back into consciousness, bringing the beginnings of a massive migraine with it. My senses barely starting to come back to me, a began to smell something familiar, but I could not put my finger on what it was. As I slowly started to regain feeling to the rest of my body, I realized that I was in a sitting position, which meant the energy shield I had created around my ship had worked, although the ship sounded too quiet. I opened my eyes a little bit, to make sure I did not blind myself from the sunlight. After a few moments, after my eyes adjusted to the sunlight, I looked straight ahead and saw something I knew should not exist.
There was... trees. I closed my eyes for a good second and opened them again but to no avail, the trees stayed put. "Wha... how?" I mumbled under my breath, my brain unable to form complete sentences. Mental slapping myself, I glanced down to check on my ship systems and found a much bigger problem. My ship had lost power, which should not have been possible with the experimental generator siphoning energy from a contained black hole that was embedded in the rear of the fuselage. Twisting in my seat, I found that my right foot was stuck in the very morphed metal wall of my cockpit.
"Well that's just great," I mumbled, bending down to unfasten the straps on my boot. Sliding my foot out carefully, I gently tapped the metal floor to test the heat before placing the rest of my foot down. I went to examine the rest of my body trying to find the origin of the tingling sensation slowly crawling through my body. A moment after it started it faded away, so I told myself ill look over it later, focusing on the most important matters at hand. Popping off the canopy of my ship, I climbed out and surveyed the ship and surrounding area.
Taking a quick look around at my surroundings I started taking notes of the situation I was in. "Crash seems more vertical than horizontal, judging by the size of the crash zone," I noted aloud to myself, "Left wing partially detached and right wing buried in the ground." Moving towards the back of the craft, I opened a hatch leading directly to the power core. "The whole things dried up, but... that should not be possible... it was supposed to run on an infinite source of energy, more specifically, a black hole..." I murmured I a sat down to contemplate what could have caused any of this.
I started to piece together a mental list of things that I would need If I wanted to be active on this planet and find out exactly where I was. I needed food and water if I wanted to do anything physical, and a way to communicate if there was anything intelligent on the planet. There were other things that could be useful if I did, but I need to focus on the necessities at the time. Standing back up, I started to rummage through the storage compartments, pulling out anything that could be of use.
Sometime around an hour later, I had a few piles laid out in front of me. The first and smallest pile contained my food and water, enough supplies to last me a little over a week. The slightly larger pile next to it contained a bunch of equipment, ranging from tools to entertainment that would help make life easier while exploring or relaxing. The third and largest pile contained most of the weapons from my ship, which I intended to get rid of as soon as possible. I had had enough with war and this world did not need me to go around blowing it up.
Moving back to the cockpit of the plane, I removed two duffle bags and the ships black box. Heading back to my piles, I shoved the food, water, and tools into one bag the careful placed the explosives into another. Picking up both of the bags and slinging them over my shoulders, I started my march into the unknown.
Barely within five minutes I was getting jumpy, which didn't happen often. Hearing something move behind me, I spun on the heels of my feet to face whatever was there. My foot slipping on the mud, I slipped and fell backward. With a snort most likely of laughter, whatever was watching me from the bush moved away. Standing back up, I placed a lot of pressure on my injured ankle and felt it almost slip out from under me. Leaning back against a tree, I could not help but mumble, "Now that... is a problem."
Okay, so the ankle was not the huge issue here, but that fact that it had not healed almost instantly was a cause for more concern. Ever since the lab accident that one day so long ago my body had extreme regenerative capabilities, healing most of my wounds almost instantly. I knew some basic medical, but most of it involved wrapping wounds tight and using parts of buildings to splint broken bones.
Pulling myself back to my feet, I ignored the pain in my foot. Finding a fallen branch that was suitable did not take long, and I started to hack off the excess bits with my knife. Pulling out some tape, I tightly wrapped the bottom of my foot and my ankle with the branch. Content with my amateur medical care, I decided to settle down next to one of the larger trees for the night.
Pulling some food and water out of my first bag, I turned my attention to the other, carefully pulling out a small tool set along with a small and complex key. I next pulled out a bunch of white metal containers and a sharpie, placing those to the side. Next, carefully and ever so slowly, I lifted one of the smaller missiles from the bag and proceeded to screw off its nosecone. Placing the key in the keyhole under the nose, I slid the casing off the missiles and stared at the maliciously crafted weapon.
Slowly throughout the night I would take apart the missiles, removing the payloads and organizing them in the metal jars. Resembling the now useless missile, I would place the empty bodies of the missiles aside. Whenever a white jar got filled or I finished with a weapon type, I would put the lid on a label the container based on its contents. I continued throughout the night, exhaustion dimming my senses to what was going on around me.
The sun woke me up, shining down through the canopy of the forest, and my first thought was that it is much too hot. I mean, compared to having napalm checked at your face, the weather was like getting ice dumped on you, but it is not every day you have napalm flying at your head. My eyes began to wander before resting on one of my duffle bags and the trail of rappers that was leading away from it. Groaning, I pulled myself to my feet mumbling "Day one, food supplies raided, off to a great start so far Flare," under my breath.
Approaching the bag, I heaved it up and noticed a few things. First, it was heavier than when there was food in it. Second, there was a nice big hole torn in the side and third, a wild animal fell out. Startled, I shuffled my feet back a bit and looked down at the creature. Upon hitting the ground, the creature snapped awake, and obviously startled, ran into the underbrush. It looked vaguely familiar, with its dark brown and light gray color scheme, sort of like a raccoon.
I could not help the feeling that I had seen it before and it was not the "hum... I am sure I have seen you around before," feeling. It was definitely more like the feeling of when the newest enemy tank rolled into the battlefield demolishing everything when I had only seen the blueprints before. I shrugged it off, knowing the answer would come to me in all the time I had doing nothing around here. I collected the rest of the edible food and water and placed it in my remaining bag and marched downhill, hopefully towards the water.
I had just started to head down a very large slope when I noticed a problem. It was not the fact that every living thing that could move moved away from me when I came near. That part was understandable, they probably have never seen a human before. The problem did not come from my ankle either, altho that was still giving me some pain. The problem was that I was being followed, there was always a rustling behind me when I walked but never when I stood still. I had no clue who was tailing me, or more accurately, what was following me.
"Well, there's my water... and a massive cliff, just my luck" I muttered as I looked down the cliff face. There was a lot of rocks, roots, and outcrops that would make climbing down easy. Shrugging, I slid off the edge of the cliff and started my long descent downwards. Sliding my feet from foothold to foothold and careful scrambling down the side of the cliff, I made it about halfway down before taking a quick rest.
I was about to start heading down again when a loud explosion sounded somewhere overhead, shaking the entire cliff face. My right hand and footholds both snapped off the cliff, sending me spinning towards my left. My back slammed into the cliff as my bad tumbled off my shoulder and started to fall down into the canyon. I leaped off the canyon wall, chasing down my bag, realizing what I needed to do.
The bag contained an Air to Ground Anti-Personnel bomb, the AGAP for short. It had the destructive power of a 1 megaton nuke, along with a blast range of a little over half a kilometer. Its main weapon core was condensed plasma, so it did little damage to anything non-living but shredded apart living organisms. I knew the bomb would detonate when I hit the ground and would create a lot less of everything in its blast range. I also knew my suit could absorb most of the blast, saving everything but those right at the epicenter of the blast.
Streamlining my body, I reached the bag in seconds, grabbing onto it and placing it right up to my chest. I moved my body into a more skydivers position, but leaving my arms clenching to the sides of the bag. In half a second, I hit the treeline and felt my leg break while I curled my body tighter around the bomb. Moments later, I hit the ground and felt a microsecond of pain before it all went black.
"What do we do with him?" a voice said,
"He's dangerous, he single-handedly punch a hole through time and space," said another,
"He also sacrificed himself for living creatures he didn't even know existed," noted a third,
"He could save the world..." said the first,
"Or destroy it..." mumbled the second voice.
"So what do we do?" said the second,
"We gamble," stated the first,
"We give him back to the shadows," said the third.
The darkness was suddenly filled with a blinding white light and a rush of pain followed by numbness. Thinking myself dead, I was curious to why I still felt the wind, still heard the rustling of leaves when I heard something land next to me. I opened my eyes and stared in disbelief.
I found myself looking at something I knew should not exist.
I found myself looking into the eyes of a Pokemon...
More specifically, the eyes of a Zoroark.
Well, there's chapter two, hope you liked it.
If you have any suggestions on how I could make my writing better, go ahead and drop me a PM or a review, I'm always looking for ways to improve my writing.
I will be attempting to upload chapters every two weeks but that may or may not change with the start of my Sophmore year in High School starting soon.
And finally: Thank you to those who liked and reviewed my first chapter, all of that really helps to keep me writing
