Welcome back to "A Past Life of Noah and Mio: Extras!" In chapter 30 of the main story, Noah and Mio met Finn and Terelda, an elderly couple with whom their previous incarnations were friends and neighbors in the City. This extra chapter is an extension of their conversation in which the tale of how Noah and Mio met in the previous life is retold. Admittedly, I wrote it because this alternative idea for how they bonded on the battlefield kept nagging me to do so. The events in this memory have no bearing on the main story, with slightly faster pacing and some details omitted to fit everything into a single chapter. Think of it as extra lore for fun! All the same, I acknowledge that it might be confusing to go from one past incarnation of Noah and Mio to an even older incarnation of them. I hope you enjoy!
Extra Chapter 3 "Memory from the Previous Life"
"So…" Finn focused on Noah after a sip of tea, "according to, er, you, it was a battle in Fornis that brought you and Mio together."
"I think you said both of your colonies had come from afar," Terelda sat back with her teacup held over her plate, "searching for new territory."
"Ah yes, a canyon of some sort," his memory was already jogged, "near where Colony 30 holes itself up today."
"Hmm…" With this in mind, Noah briefly checked the appropriate map via his Iris. "Could it be… Terra Wastelands?"
"Perhaps," the bald senior bobbed his head in consideration. "Wherever it was, you two found each other amid the chaos."
"Mio was the one fighting," the old woman stared at the wall to visualize the scene, "while Noah was… trying to talk her out of it."
"Wha…? Are you certain?" The swordfighter deactivated his Iris, dumbfounded at the uncanny parallels. "That's how Mio and I met… in this, er, life."
"My word," she blinked thrice, slowly lowering her teacup. "I swear, it's fate."
"Have Mio and I been finding each other time and time again?" he wondered aloud, mouth agape. "In the same way, no less?"
"I suppose it's not impossible," Finn attempted to provide some form of an answer.
"It's all so bizarre," Mio spoke after having been silent for the last few minutes, tentatively picking up her tea. "If there really were other versions of me, then… I can only imagine what they, er, I had to go through."
"I guess this is what's called an out-of-body experience," the younger soldier sighed in resignation. Eyes now closed, Noah began to imagine this alleged meeting of his and Mio's previous selves. Every aforementioned detail about it was surprisingly easy to paint in his mind, as if his memories were slowly unlocking and carrying him back to that day.
The initial scene that came together was the charred field in front of Terra Wastelands where his Kevesi colony was engaged in combat with an unknown, unanticipated Agnian one. Both entities had simultaneously come to this spot, searching for a new base to call their own. If Noah had been the commander, then maybe negotiations might've been possible. Alas, he was but a foot soldier whose own squad had been whittled down to three.
"Noah! Where are you, man?!" A brown-haired boy of the same term franticly called out to him whilst blocking an Agnian's attack with his staked heavy sword. "I've got 'em stalled, so cut through already!"
"On my way!" the ponytailed soldier reformed his sword after it'd gotten jammed in an Avis which he'd just downed. Gritting his teeth, Noah dashed for his teammate whose silhouette was barely visible in the dust cloud kicked up from the battle around them. With deft and careful maneuvering, he knocked their opponent to the ground which allowed for the brunet to finish them off.
"That was close," the defender wiped his sweaty forehead before turning to Noah. "Why didn't you go for the kill? This is no time for sharing."
"Reil! Noah!" A female voice cut through the noise and wrangled both of the boys' attentions.
"We're here, Katalin!" the brunet's own holler directed their only other surviving squad member to them.
"No luck with our Auxilia," she strapped a wrench to her belt and summoned a small sharpshooter instead. "We'll have to fend for ourselves."
"As I have been, already," Reil grumbled at the bleak situation. Red motes from the nearby husk rose through the haze which blended uncannily well with the gloomy sky above. "This snuffin' bites. First we get ousted from our spot by an Agnian colony and now we're dealing with another one up here!"
"What choice is there?" Katalin sounded equally exhausted but more resigned. "We can't lose focus now!"
"Well, sure, but… what's our strategy anyway?" his smudged face was full of worry. "Haven't heard back from our commander in yonks."
"Let's keep going for the canyon," the mechanic made the decision for her squad, "since we were trying to take it in the first place." With no further suggestions, she and Reil forged onward with their Blades at the ready.
"Hey, wait for me!" Noah ran after his teammates who'd left him in their wake. They hadn't gotten far ahead, but already he struggled to keep them in sight amidst the scattering dust. "We need to stick together!" Frustratingly, his shouts appeared to have fallen on deaf ears as their silhouettes disappeared completely.
Resorting to Iris communication, Noah was about to raise two fingers to his temple when light from the Agnian Ferronis began shining through the haze. Every soldier knew the telltale sign of a large attack on its way to shake things up further, a tactic reserved only for commanders or consuls. Seconds later, the anticipated beam of ether blasted the ground not far from Noah who suddenly found himself tumbling down as a result. His head hurt, his eyes stung, and his ears were slightly ringing, but the resilient Kevesi wasted as little time as he could in climbing to one knee.
"Katalin! Reil!" The pacifist surveyed his scorched surroundings in hopes of locating his cohorts. No desperate breath he took was spared of dust particles from the explosion, more than enough to make him gag. It wasn't long before Noah could hear someone else coughing as well, though he couldn't tell who it was. Regardless, he strained to stand and sprinted to the soldier in need. "Here, take my hand!"
"Thank you…" the recipient of his selfless gesture rose to her feet, unsteadily. "Wait, you're a Kevesi!"
"Huh?" Noah noticed her catlike ears the instant she retreated from him. "An Agnian?"
"Spark!" It was none other than Mio, the zephyr of the opposing Agnian colony. Instinctively, she summoned a pair of ring swords known as moonblades and assumed a fighting stance. However, a previously undetected injury to her ankle caused her to stumble a moment later.
"A-are you okay?" he reached out to her once more.
"Are you daft?!" Her response came with an awkward swing of one of her weapons, easily missing him but successfully halting his approach all the same. "You're the enemy! You're the reason why we're dyin' out 'ere!"
"But that blast came from your Ferronis," the swordfighter attempted to correct her.
"It was gunning for you, wasn't it?" the cat-eared Agnian was having none of it. "I'll have to kill you myself!"
Able to ignore the pain this time, Mio sprang at him with her ring swords raised in the air. Noah had a second to react with his sword held sideways to block both pieces of her Blade. An audible grunt escaped her lips upon landing, but her attacks were far from over. Further aerial slices came his way as the two soldiers shuffled around their small share of the battlefield, the visibility across which was only just now starting to improve. With a quick glance over her shoulder, Noah observed several wrecked Levnises and fresh husks at rest before returning his focus on Mio.
"Why aren't… y-you fighting back?!" she huffed at him, her attacks becoming lesser and weaker.
"Please, you've got to stop this!" he implored upon noticing her debilitating state. "You're only hurting yourself!"
"You're a Kevesi!" the zephyr repeated one of her prior exclamations. "You can't pretend to care!"
"I'm not pretending!" Noah argued back, not quite so breathlessly. "We don't need to be fighting each other!"
"What're you talkin' about?!" she looked at him like he was crazy. "Your embers will keep me alive!"
"And yours will keep me alive," the ponytailed soldier relaxed his stance with their struggle winding down.
"R-right… so, why aren't you…?" Her interrogation hit a snag as she fell backwards, having put too much weight on her injured ankle. Without a second thought, Noah disarmed himself and rushed to her aid again. However, Mio held out one of her ring swords to keep him at bay.
"I'm not going to kill you," he insisted, not expecting her to believe him.
"Don't insult me," Mio grimaced at both the Kevesi standing before her and the throbbing pain now spreading up her leg. She could hardly keep her arm still, but the abject Agnian made sure that one of her weapons stayed between them as if her life depended on it. "I-I refuse to die this way…"
Noah had fought several of her kind by now, though each one had escaped death through his acts of mercy. While Mio was to be given the same treatment, there was something different about her that gave him pause. He wouldn't have long to ruminate, unfortunately, as her eyes and a slight turn of her head unintendedly telegraphed to him the presence of a new entity to their party.
Indeed, the pair had been caught by a Testudo, a towering, automated machine which had somehow received nothing more than a scratch from the battle thus far. Expecting it to target him, Noah sidled away from Mio while it charged its ether supply. To their surprise, however, the multi-faceted Levnis acted confused once they were separated and thus shot its beam an equal distance between them. The resulting explosion, though smaller than the Agnian Ferronis', sent both soldiers falling in opposite directions.
"W-what…? Why did it…?" Scrambling to his feet once more, Noah cut through the plume of dust and debris with his arms in search of Mio. Now as concerned for her as he was for his missing teammates, he found her not far from where she'd lied prior to the seemingly indiscriminate attack. "Hang on!"
"Ugh…" the moonblades-wielder's arms were wrapped around herself, partially buried in the dirt. Her white uniform was soiled and ripped around her shoulder, the strap of her camisole barely holding together underneath. Noah easily saw the anguish on Mio's face upon kneeling beside her, though the glow from the Testudo soon recaptured his attention as the next charge was building. With his Blade back out, the courageous Kevesi prepared to defend not only himself but also the grounded Agnian who strained to speak. "The thorax…"
"Huh?" her former opponent momentarily peered over his shoulder to her.
"That's its vital point," she slipped him a piece of advice while the Levnis continued to charge.
"Right…" With this in mind, Noah gripped the handle of his Blade to extract a thinner sword from within, a nifty trick which Mio had never seen before. Wasting no further time, he leapt at the Testudo and pierced its thorax in one swift motion. True to her word, the Levnis appeared to lose power and all functions to its arsenal. No longer connected by strands of ether, its parts fell to the ground one by one. Soon, the Testudo was the latest pile of junk of the nearly finished battle, its left wing now partially suspended off the top and wedged against the dirt.
"That was… incredible," the cat-eared Agnian remarked, allowing herself to roll onto her back.
"With your help," he offered his thanks before his concerns for her wellbeing returned. "Hey… how badly are you hurt?"
"You actually care?" Mio expressed her continued doubt, his ponytailed figure slowly creeping into her skyward view. "We're supposed to be enemies."
"Is that what you believe?" the pacifist had doubts of his own.
"It's what they tell us…" her face half contorted from a droplet of water landing on her cheek. "All I know is… I was attacked by my own colony… twice."
"I-I'm sorry…" An apology came out of Noah's mouth without forethought, feeling responsible for her injuries somehow. Mio's reaction wasn't much more than a sigh while she continued to lie still, eyes now closed. She looked like any other Agnian whom he'd left on the battlefield for someone else to finish off, though the circumstances surrounding her fall were quite suspicious.
Peering past the wreckage, Noah observed not a single sign of life in the distance. Despite the cease in combat, the noise had yet to subside as thunder overtook the brooding soundscape. A storm in the sky seemed fitting to follow the war on the ground, both of which made for a truly bleak situation like Reil had previously summarized. Worried for him and Katalin who'd long been absent by this point, Noah finally tried to reach them via his Iris. Unfortunately but perhaps expectedly, there was no answer from either teammate.
The rain was steady now, enough to replace the dust with an equally obstructive mist. It was poetic in a sense, the water from above attempting to wash away the mess that'd defaced the surface. From what Noah could fathom, Mio was the only other survivor of this unplanned meeting of opposing colonies who'd sought to make a new home out of the dark canyon. Never one to hate Agnians in the first place, the coolheaded Kevesi snaked his hands under her forearms and dragged her under the partially suspended Testudo wing. The wreckage wasn't ideal shelter, but it kept its two new occupants from getting wetter than they already were.
"Thank you…" Mio found it in herself to acknowledge his act, her flattened ears twitching slightly.
"You would've done the same for me," he got comfortable beside her.
"I-I'm not sure I would have," the zephyr challenged his claim while she stared disconsolately at her marred legs. "You're… something else." This time it was Noah who didn't have anything to say, though he allowed a cautious, temporary grin to form on his face. With a moment to breathe, the two youths reclined against the Testudo base, shoulder to shoulder. Noah knew that he could leave at any time, but he didn't have the heart to abandon the immobilized Mio. Thus, he stayed by her side, content to build a little warmth between them.
"Aha! There are a couple of stragglers left!" A filtered but no less ecstatic exclamation abruptly vanquished the peacefulness, followed by the appearance of the eminent individual who'd uttered it.
"Consul!" the ponytailed soldier addressed his ultimate superior, a masked man covered in red armor with a cape waving off his shoulders.
"My, my! Now isn't this cozy?" Seconds later, a female, similarly adorned consul materialized onto the plane, already assuming a haughty stance. Her presence alone instilled dread in Mio who'd long been made to feel like her tool.
"You!" the first consul recognized his fellow Moebius instantly. "So, this is your colony. I thought something looked familiar."
"I recognized your tactics as well," she turned to converse with him in the rain, leaving Noah and Mio to exchange looks of bewilderment. "Thanks for not destroying my Ferronis' deck. It's the best vantage point, you know."
"You could've at least spared some of my Levnises," the red-armored man took the opportunity to complain about the battle which they'd apparently controlled. "They're very good at slicing through crowds."
"Yes, but they would've gotten in the way of mine," the female consul was hardly sympathetic. "I only had one to spare for cleanup, and here it is."
"I see my well-trained soldier took care of it," he returned their focus onto the silent soldiers, scanning through his Iris for a name. "Noah, eh?"
"And this little minx is Mio," the caped woman peered down the nose of her mask at the Agnian in question. "Very fast on her feet but a bit of a problem child."
"I'd say the two of them coexisting like this is a bigger problem," the male dictator's tone took a downward turn.
"Indeed." The second consul concurred as the two bosses armed themselves with swords, the very Blades used for soldiers' homecomings. "Like a disease, we mustn't let these two infect the other colonies."
"Infect?" Noah questioned her phrasing, now armed himself and standing defensively in front of Mio. His own sword vibrated in his hands, though his focus remained on the confrontation. "What do you think we are?"
"Spoiled goods," his ultimate superior minced no words.
"You've outlived your usefulness," the female leader likewise offered an insight into the Moebius mindset, with the expectation of a swift execution for the two soldiers in the coming moments. "It'll be fine! You won't remember a thi-"
"Is that why I was struck down by… this thing?!" Mio hotly interrupted, pounding her fist against the destroyed Testudo.
"Mmm, not quite, Mio," the machine's overrider gazed at the distant Flame Clock in her Ferronis' mouth. Before she could expound, however, an undetected, ether-powered harpoon shot from the other side of the wreckage straight for the Moebius pair. The angle awkward but nonetheless sufficient, it lodged itself into the male consul's chest and cracked his embedded core.
"Gah! W-wha…?!" Motes were already billowing from the fatal wound before he could make sense of it.
"City ruffians!" she rambled the owners of the ambush out of hiding while her colleague faded away.
"One down, one to go!" a muscly woman with pigtails hailed her group's kill. Four more people emerged with her, all of them wearing clothes unlike Kevesi or Agnian uniforms. "Guess we'll have to take her down the usual way."
"Who are…?" the swordfighter glanced at the cavalry the moment a sudden burst of penumbral energy came from the remaining consul.
"Look out!" the leader of the so-called City ruffians shouted to him, but the warning came a second too late. Before he knew it, Noah suddenly found himself in a headlock by a massive, reddish-purple arm. Mio couldn't believe her eyes as the Moebius lifted him off the ground with his body shielding her exposed core.
"Not another step closer… lest I crush his bones!" the monster hissed at her adversaries, her voice now a garbled discordance in the soldiers' ears.
"Let him go!" the pigtailed woman demanded tactlessly.
"Now, now, you know that's not how negotiations go," the Moebius wagged her finger from her free hand at the City folks before turning to the other soldier. "Mio, I'm giving you a chance to redeem yourself."
"W-what do you mean?" the moonblades-wielder sat up, rigidly, nearly holding her breath.
"It should be rather obvious, no?" the disfigured creature angled a claw at Noah's head. "Kill this filthy Kevesi and I'll let you live, after all."
"You'll let me… live?" the cat-eared Agnian couldn't conceal her curiosity.
"Yes," her transformed consul relished in the control over the situation which she'd seized. "Surely, it's an offer you cannot pass up."
"But, I can't move," the grounded soldier whined, unsure herself if it was an excuse or not.
"Oh, but you can!" the Moebius encouraged her, patience just beginning to run thin. "Anything is attainable if you will yourself to it."
With these words wriggling in her ears, Mio took a deep breath before latching onto the Testudo base and attempting to lift her beaten body. Instantly, the damage to her legs incited a wail of pain from her, but she stayed on her feet long enough to grin and bear it. As for her new, impromptu allies, the snipers of the City folks sneakily aimed their Blades and another modified harpoon while they weren't being watched.
"Don't even think about it!" the common enemy swiveled back to them with Noah's body still blocking her core. "I'll kill him now and it'll be on your heads for the rest of your miserable lives!"
"You're not so well off and you know it!" the group leader dared to argue while there was a hostage to rescue. "We'll kill you the moment he can no longer protect you!"
"Nice try," another chortle came from the monster, "but I can get out of here faster than you can pull the trigger!"
Effectively a standoff, the battle of wits persisted with neither side appearing to have the upper hand. It wouldn't matter for much longer, however, as Mio put her less injured foot forward and flung one of her ring swords at the Moebius' head. It was a savage shot, one which the accurate Agnian had to take to free the captured Kevesi.
The ensuing, reverberated cry of death was not fit for words. Motes leaked from either side of the lodged weapon until it dropped from the Moebius' flesh receding back to her red armor. A clear fracture appeared on her mask which soon split in two to reveal an expressionless face underneath.
"Are you alright?" the pigtailed woman rushed to the soldiers while the rest of their enemy evaporated into the wind.
"I don't think so…" Noah palmed his severely bruised self, suspecting more than a couple of broken bones from the Moebius' grappling.
"C-can't… feel my legs… anymore," Mio likewise voiced her discomfort before collapsing onto the ground once again.
"Mio…" the pacifist called out to her, having inadvertently learned her name from her former consul. Like before, she had no response to give him, at least none that he could see or hear.
"One survivor from each side, huh?" their impromptu ally noted while her teammates helped them off the ground. "No wonder Moebius hunted you down."
"Moebius?" he repeated in question.
"Your consuls," her arms were crossed now. "They want nothing more than to see you kids killing each other."
"But w-why?" No sooner had Noah asked than he flinched from accidentally aggravating his injuries.
"It's a long story, but we'd better get you two medical attention first," she decided with a wave at her team's Levnis uncloaking timely nearby. "Please, come with us back to the City where we can get you proper care."
"The City?" his expression exuded both confusion and pain.
"It's our home," the group leader summed it with a slight upward intonation despite the soldiers' conditions, "a place safe from war."
"Safe from…?" This time it was Mio's turn to voice her curiosity before she and Noah caught each other's softened stares. Although his benevolent ways still mystified her, the now acquiescent Agnian saw clearly the concern in the compassionate Kevesi's eyes. They had saved each other's lives on this day, with not a shred of regret. Little did they know that this was only the beginning of a partnership that would soon grow into something deeper, extraordinary, and perhaps destined by fate.
Rain continued to fall, its mist on the surface clouding the rest of the scene until the memory had run its course.
A mere minute had passed, but Noah felt like he'd been daydreaming for hours when he returned to the present. In a few blinks, the wastelands full of junk and husks had given way to the four walls of Finn's and Terelda's cozy establishment. Both seniors sat quietly sipping their tea while Mio took in a whiff of hers. The idea of rebirth still hadn't completely sunken in, but Noah nonetheless appreciated how the elderly couple had kept the memory of the previous life safe for him. Maybe passing the story along was precisely why his past self had told it to them in the first place.