"Wake up Norea! Wake up already!"

Sophie's barely audible voice startled Norea as she suddenly woke up inside the Thorn's cockpit. Feeling disoriented and groggy, she tried to get the system back up and running again but is met with little success. Nothing was working, the screens were blank, the controls were unresponsive, and the one thing left undeformed was the hatch which had already been opened.

She climbed out to the forest outside, dense with tall trees surrounding her and casting long shadows on the ground. The air was thick with the scent of pine and earth, and the sun had just began to set, casting a soft golden light through the trees and illuminating the forest floor.

Right in-front fo her was the Pharact which had crash-landed with her in a small clearing, leaving a deep furrow in the earth. Its head had come to rest against Thorn's Chest piece, the sleek lines and intricate design marred by dents and scratches.

Norea's eyes darted to the hand gun lying next to her seat. She hesitated for a moment, but then picked it up, feeling its weight in her hand. Slowly, she approached the Pharact, where she found Elan fiddling with the machine, his back turned to her. She pointed the gun at him, making some noise while loading it to announce her presence.

"You can shoot if you want, won't help either of us."

She pulled the trigger anyways, a clean crackling sound came out of the gun. An empty magazine…

"Ouch," Elan said sarcastically, feigning an injury to his feelings.

"So you took the bullets. I assume my knife is also in your possession…along with many other things."

She wanted to go over to him and choke him out with her bear hands, but the moment she tried to move her legs refused to carry her, as she collapsed onto the ground below head first. Last thing she saw was blood seemingly coming out of her forehead before she lost consciousness once again.

"Hey Norea! Watcha doing here?"

"Sophie? Is that… Is that really you? I'm so sorry…"

"Man you are just no fun, there's nothing for you to apologize for. It's actually amazing down here, I feel amazing, here at the end of the data storm"

"But I failed…failed you, failed Naji, and the others…At least I'll get to be with you soon enough."

"You can't, not now."

"But why? You said we—"

Norea's eyes snapped open, only to be met with the sight of the dismal sky looming above her.

"Look who decided to finally wake up. Bad dream?"

Ignoring the voice, Norea frantically scanned her surroundings, searching for any sign of Sophie's presence. Her head pounded with a dizzying ache as her broken body struggled to stand up, eventually she gave in and laid back on the ground next to the flickering fire pit. Elan was there, heating up some canned food, his expression indistinguishable from the blazing fire light.

" I would advise against moving since you're hurt pretty bad. Score four is way too taxing for you to be abusing it like that you know."

"Why…"

"No reason needed for saving someone." Elan said as he barely held in the laughter from telling a lie nobody would buy into.

"I would've believed that crap except you are the one spewing it… If it is Thorn's data that you want you can forget about it already. The whole system is fried."

"I am fully aware of that…I've been tinkering with your antique of a gundam for quite a while when you were dozing off. Seriously who still uses that kind of system in this nowadays? " Elan replied with a forced attempt at his usual carefree tone, though a hint of desperation crept into his voice. "Pharact remains undamaged for the most part though, the system just needs time to be repaired. Guess I'm the better pilot after all."

He took the cans off the makeshift stove made from rocks and twigs and made his way towards her.

"Want some?"

"You offer me the ration you stole from my gundam? You Spacians really are all alike." She muttered as she reluctantly took the offering.

"You really are fixated on this whole race things aren't you? Would you hate me less if I told you I was Earthian?"

"Probably not."

"Aren't you the least bit interested as to why I said that?"

"…"

Elan's face lit up with a smile, sensing that he had piqued her interest. "Glad you asked, so it all starts with how Peil Technologies is structured…"

Thus Elan launched into what seemed to her a never-ending monologue about his life, giving away all the top secrets that should've gotten him a free ticket to the boiler had they been leaked. It was as if the man was unable to bear even a moment of silence and decided to get everything off his chest as much as possible.

It took quite some time for him to get across his complicated backstory, mainly because he kept on rambling about the most insignificant details like how much lighter he became after having a handful of his organs replaced, or the fact that his mouth was filled with stew half the time he talked. Norea just sat there and listened quietly until he ran out of breath, all the while eating some hot soup.

"Surgically altered face, a body implanted with data-storm resistance materials…Should've figured, no person of that status would come near to a gundam personally, and your aptitude for plotting the Pharact…So all this time you really are just a petty stunt double. For what purpose? Wining duels? "

"Well, there was that, but it was mostly for solving the curse of the Gundam. It's what Peil has been obsessed with ever since the technology was brought to the stage. Before becoming his double, I was...am...just another guinea pig they scooped up from some refugee camp to experiment on. I, along with a handful of others, that is, but you get the gist of it."

"Keep blabbering that mouth of yours, and I just might not get the chance to kill you myself."

"It's not like they would let me live even if I had sealed my lip. The mission was a bust, and now so am I. But I'll live on, even if just for an extra second, I'll live. I won't die."

She had heard him say many times before that he would never die. At this point, it was probably just a habit for him. However, listening to his voice as they sat next to each other, even in the midst of such childish bickering, she couldn't help but feel a sense of prayer emanating from him. She didn't know what to say or do. Just a couple of hours ago, she was dead set on a suicide mission to kill as many Spacians as possible. That was no longer an option thanks to him interfering. She then tried killing him, but even that thought seemed to be dwindling away as the seconds passed by. Could she really be warming up to him simply due to the revelation that he is an Earthian? Perhaps, deep down, she knew that his company, however annoying and grating it may be, was the only thing keeping her from being truly alone in this forest blooming with life yet so hollow within. Feeling a sense of loss in the darkness that surrounded them, she straightened her disheveled clothes and repeated the phrase "Please go die" like a child.

"Well, if you insist, I will be dying in the Pharact's cockpit until tomorrow morning. Time's not early, I'll tell you that much, but before that…" From his pocket, Elan retrieved a small, worn booklet and a stubby pencil before tossing them to Norea. "I believe these belong to you."

Her eyes lit up at the sight of her booklet. Reaching out with shaking arms, she barely managed to catch it mid-air.

"The drawings are nice, wish I could say the same about the artist."

"The tip has dulled down, I also need my knife back to sharpen it." Norea stated indifferently while inspecting the conditions of her belonging, ignoring yet another one of his clear attempts at provocation.

"Stop thinking about killing me for just one second, and you just might recover sooner," he said in an almost taunting voice filled with pride for seeing through her murderous intent. "Your body is still in shambles from all that reckless piloting, not to mention that giant fall."

Norea watched in silence as the man made his way up into the Pharact's cockpit before popping some sleeping pills in his mouth, the potent kind she also carried around with her. It wasn't long before faint snoring noises seeped their way into the silence of the night.

Days passed by in quiet monotony, with little to break the routine of Elan working to restore the Pharact, and Norea spending her days recovering while sketching the scenery around them. They avoided interacting as much as possible, until the crushing loneliness and the desire to communicate inevitably got the better of them(Mostly Elan) and drew them together, leading to conversations that often ended with Norea angrily chucking a pebble full force in his direction. After all, they both had no support and were in a situation where they could easily disappear without a trace, and as much as she hated it, she was forced to experience all kinds of aspects of him. His lack of stamina, his ruined sense of taste that made him a picky eater, and a piss-poor sleeping quality which she unfortunately was all too familiar with. In regards to having to deal with the after-effects from piloting Gundams and from human experimentation which had left traces all over their bodies, they were one and the same.

There were nights where she sat on the floor and watched Elan as he fell asleep, contemplating it all. Dawn of Fold is now nothing but history and memories. Her plans of attacking Benerit's headquarters failed before it even began, and perhaps worst of all, she couldn't even bring herself up to kill the single most annoying twat to have ever graced the face of the planet, not mentally willing nor physically capable. She wasn't sure how long it would take for her body to make a full recovery, if it was even recovering at all. Their only hope of leaving this place was for the Pharact to finish the last stages of its self-repairing program, but what then? What's to come after all of this? If what she had fought for no longer existed, if she was no longer able to fight at all, then what good was she for? What good was living for?