The Orion Project - [Sci-Fi] [DED. SORRY :( ]

[ParagonTerminus]

Hello there, esteemed fellow writers/readers!

I finally decided to take a stab at writing a fanfic, and hopefully this will work out. As may be obvious, this fanfic is based on Firefly, Blade Runner, and FTL: Faster Than Light.

The way this is going to work is that I'll just post the synopsis and prologue here. Please do tell me your criticisms, but I would especially like to hear if you want to keep the chapters in the current short format, or if you would like me to extend them at the cost of frequency of publication.

So, here we go:

[LEGEND]
[This indicates a new section]
{This indicates a Galactic Knowledge Database entry *note: temporarily suspended due to popular demand, may return or w permanently eradicated*}
*This indicates an Out Of Context statement*
~This indicates some material that goes with the particular moment in the story (ie., art, music, etc)~

[SYNOPSIS]

In the year 2082, a long period of scientific stagnation begins where practically no important scientific discoveries are made due to a lack of resources and funding. This period is brought to an end, however, by an impossible chance: a drifting asteroid, its orbit nudged by old space debris, lands on Earth. Upon investigating the asteroid, scientists discover a previously unkown element: Terrius, which gives off strange particles called Terrions. With research, it is discovered that the incidence of a nuclear reaction catalyses the Terrions into moving at speeds faster than light. Within months of this discovery, it is soon discovered that this Terrion Catalysation can be employed to move very large objects between interstellar distances at high speed. With this knowledge, the civilizations of Earth, now almost unanimously united under the banner of the Inter-Pacific Coalition, sets out to achieve dominion over the stars.

By 2135, the IPC controls more than 90% of populated space, the rest being inhabited by pirate cells or the Centauri Confederation, a loose-knit nation of separatists. While the majority of the population lives in wealth and prosperity, those less fortunate are treated as dirt under the boots, the cold fist of right-wing capitalism beating them into submission. Some, however, have vowed to end this. Known only as Omni, they are pirates, renegades, mercenaries, drug dealers, men broken and bent on revenge... And yet they all share the common goal of watching the IPC burn.

This is the story of an Omni, and how they brought a mighty empire to its knees.

{GALACTIC KNOWLEDGE DATABASE}
{ENTRY #0000001}
{Galactic Knowledge Database}
The Galactic Knowledge Database is the modern electronic database for storing information on all manner of objects, concepts, people, and more in the known galaxy. Operated by the Database Foundation, a neutral organization of scientists and explorers, the Database's writers have been granted free passage through the space of most factions, including many pirate cells. *The GKD will provide simple explanations on new technologies exposed throughout the story*

[PROLOGUE]

The captain of the star cruiser bore what could only be seen as an apathetic expression as he watched the carnage unfold before him. Almost faster than the eye could track, plasma lances spiked out from his craft's artillery batteries and slammed into a nearby cargo vessel with extreme force, the plasma severely melting through an engine array with ease. Their crew's negligence in installing a Horizon Field Generator would be their undoing. The apathy on the captain's face transformed into a triumphant half-smile as he watched his prey slowly being beaten into submission. He had shot the antelope in the leg and had plenty of liberty to finish it while it limped away. The cargo ship responded to this volley with return fire from a small kinetic cannon, but it was laughably ineffective against the Horizon Field of the cruiser.

The captain turned to glare at a screen being watched by one of his gunnery officers and tracked a bar slowly filling as the lances reloaded. One more critical hit to the cargo vessel's command bridge and they would be done for, but the captain grimaced as he realised the sensitivity of the situation; he needed someone on that ship alive. He began to drift off into thought, quickly interrupted by a massive explosion filling much of the armoured window at the front of the bridge. The lance had been fired and had missed grievously, instead hitting something volatile.

"FUCK!" roared the captain. If the prisoner had been killed...

The explosion dissipated soon, showing that the majority of the cargo ship's hull was intact, but the engine section had been completely minced. The captain thought for a moment that he could see a few human shapes being sucked, flailing for any sort of grip, into the vacuum of space. Breaking the captain out of his stupor, one of the officers at his side tapped on his shoulder and pointed to his screen, where a grizzly man's face was seen.

"Well, you Collies got us, didn't you?" sneered the captain of the cargo vessel. He looked very calm and unwavering despite the carnage obviously visible behind him. He even had a broad grin across his face, as if he was the one winning the battle.

"Surrender what's ours and you go free," the cruiser captain responded drily.

The cargo vessel's captain laughed mockingly. "All this for some Niquesian spices? God, you Collies really are sticklers for harsh punishment."

The cruiser captain's face twisted into a scowl that carried his rage better than any number of plasma lances. "You know damn well we're not after that."

The captain on the screen seemed to consider this for a moment before resuming, "Well, I wasn't going to hand her over to a bunch of Collies anyways. Have fun with our premium spices."

And the transmission broke off, and just as suddenly, the cruiser captain was hurled against the wall by an earth-shattering explosion.

---

The men were herding her towards somewhere. They seemed panicked, really worried about something, and justly so; the girl could feel the tremors through the ship, could hear the screams of the dying. She nearly fell at one point when a particularly terrible impact shook the craft; she could feel the end being near but could do nothing but obey the uniformed men herding her somewhere.

A door. Another door. Past some bloody mess, what used to be a man, torn in half by some massive impact. Through yet a third door. And then a dead end.

Except the girl knew this wasn't a dead end.

These were the escape pods.

They told her to get in, didn't explain anything, just told her to hurry. She didn't argue, didn't say a word, only sat down on one of the steel seats and shivered with the knowledge of what was happening around her. They put a gun inside, told the girl to be brave, that her survival was all that mattered.

When the hatch slammed shut and she belted herself, she felt another shudder, but a different one; it wasn't the quick, violent crash of a projectile hitting the ship, but the calm and steady shudder of movement. This shudder became more and more agressive, rising into a whining crescendo as the escape pod ejected from its launch rails and flew off into the vacuum of space. The girl basked in the sense of freefalling she was experiencing before the pod's engine fired, sending her on a preprogrammed route to who-knows-where.

And that was when a massive eruption shook the girl's little safe haven, sending it tumbling before it corrected itself automatically. She took its lack of windows anywhere except in the front as a blessing; she knew well what had just happenned and didn't dare look.

The girl simply broke down crying, alone once more.

---

The cruiser captain had gone pale as he looked out onto the brand new debris field. He knew damn well that IPC Naval Control would have his ass for this.

He turned to his communications officer with a grim frown. "Wakawa, report the situation to NC and start counting your hours." Wakawa, grasping the significance of the crew's failure, turned the same shade of marble white as the captain and began typing commands on his screen.

Captain Kenji Setou, meanwhile, turned back towards the darkness of space, dotted with stars.

"I'll find you, you little bitch," he muttered towards the stars, expecting some sort of audience, "I'll find you."

The stars only winked back, poking their beams through the small patches of spice glued to the outside of the glass.

{GALACTIC KNOWLEDGE DATABASE}
{ENTRY #2928673}
{Horizon Field}
A Kinetic Field is an impenetrable energy barrier generated by a Horizon Field Generator to provide a number of different services, mainly defense against attack.

The field employs using Proxivons (a particle found after the Catalyst Revolution), the same particles that compose the Event Horizo, to create a barrier that will block all particles from entering; however, most modern versions allow through all of the visible spectrum save for a small amount of blue. The field suffers from one weakness, however, in that the more energy it is impacted with, the more energy it will drain from whatever is powering it; for example, an entity colliding at 50 Kilojoules will drain an equivalent amount of energy from the HFG. This makes the HFG very important for defense, but not infallible.


{GALACTIC KNOWLEDGE DATABASE}
{ENTRY #6282919}
{Plasma Lance}
Plasma lances are standard artillery weapons employed by medium to capital-sized spacecraft, and in rarer cases on ground vehicles and even in the form of infantry small-arms.

Plasma Lances operate on the basic principle of venting highly-pressurized plasma through a Focus Tube (effectively a Horizon Field shaped into a tube) to impact with a target. Plasma Lances have been proved to be highly effective against armour and flesh alike, melting through it with ease, and even Horizon Fields will take a beating due to the exorbitant temperatures involved. While Plasma Lances are fairly standard and the technology has been available many years, the technologies involved still put a considerable price tag on it.

[Mirage_GSM]

The writing is not bad, but...
So far I see almost no connection to Katawa Shoujo, and the scenario does not really lend itself to a depiction of disabilities that should be no problem to fix with such advanced technology.

[ParagonTerminus]

The writing is not bad, but...
So far I see almost no connection to Katawa Shoujo, and the scenario does not really lend itself to a depiction of disabilities that should be no problem to fix with such advanced technology.

Give it time, a disabled character with no fix gets introduced in the next chapter (I already have about 5 written, and I'll release the next one soon)

Also take note that the main characters are all poor Omnis, and simple fixes for disabilities are expensive in the future because corporate scumbaggery.

There's a definite connection to KS, but I'll need a benefit of the doubt lasting a few chapters to prove it.

[ParagonTerminus]

*I've decided that I'll post the chapters at a rate of about 1 per 1-3 days. That should keep up the suspense, keep the readers satisfied, and allow me to maintain that thing called "life"*

[CHAPTER 1]
[RONIN]

Lilly furrowed her brow in concentration, instinct and memory alone guiding her hand around the wiring of the engine array where vision couldn't. She had never let her permanent blindness be of any hindrance to her, and not least when she was performing repairs to her beloved Ronin.

The Ronin wasn't her ship, but it was a wonderful ship still. A modified Iwanako-class corvette built for deep-space exploration and cargo runs, though mainly used for hiding from the IPC. The Inter-Pacific Coalition, or "Collies", as their troops had been nicknamed, had been terrorising most of known space for a while, and the only ones who dared stand up to them were the Centauri Confederation, and even they spent their time defending rather than pushing at the IPC's heart. Them, and the Omnis.

Born out of a centuries-old military alliance, the IPC had quickly established dominion over Earth and almost all of explored space, but one of the few things it didn't control was the Ronin.

Lilly was broken out of her daydreaming by the sounds of footsteps clattering on a steel ladder; that would be Hisao coming down. One of the strengths she had but almost never revealed was her enhanced hearing.

The vibrations of the ladder ceased, and footsteps replaced them. Captain Hisao Nakai. A former IPC frigate captain turned renegade. The Yamaku Naval Training Facility had never turned out a finer captain in Lilly's belief, not least because he was one of the few that doubted the ideas of the IPC.

Hisao wandered into the engineering bay, obviously inspecting Lilly's work. She had never seen his face, but she remembered the time he had let her feel it just to get a mental image of all the contours. The memory was very strong.

"How's it going?" Hisao asked nonchalantly.

Lilly laughed. "Do you mean me or the engine?"

"Both, I guess," amusement entering his voice.

"Well, the engine's almost done, just playing around a little with tryi-"

"We don't have time to play around, unfortunately," Hisao responded coldly. All humour in Hisao's voice had vanished without warning. "A passing trade ship told me there's an IPC cruiser nearby, and that it just finished destroying a cargo ship. I don't think they're in the happiest of moods, so we need to get the Terrion Catalyst going again at any cost. Anything that won't keep it from accidentally exploding on us is irrelevant."

Lilly nodded in agreement to this, but she couldn't help but feel sad at how the mood had been spoiled. She listened to Hisao walking away and then turned back to her engine.

He's more tense nowadays for some reason, she thought as she felt out the edge of a small crater, the space for a control chip. Lilly had been building this observation for days, but now she had finally released it. Why was Hisao always so tense around her? The humour of when they first met seemed to have all but dissapeared, and that saddened Lilly. She enjoyed the back-and-forth conversations, the meaningless chats about irrelevant topics, but it was all gone.

And as for why, Lilly had a hunch.

---

Hisao walked slowly onto the bridge, feeling decidedly tired. He slumped down in the captain's chair and stared out the window into the empty space beyond, save for a small moon visible off the starboard bow. Hisao scanned some of the displays at his Captain's station, keeping track of the ship, and saw that Lilly still hadn't fixed the engine array. He was just getting up to go back to her when the proximity alert went off blaring in all its grandiosity. He sprang up from his chair by reflex alone and looked over at the screen currently being filled with alerts. Hisao hoped to god that it wasn't the IPC cruiser.

What he saw was something completely different: an escape pod, drifting, a small fizzling hole showing up on the camera feed. He first assumed it to be a derelict, a relic of the ages, the crew long dead of asphyxiation, but upon closer inspection he noticed two things: first, the hole was in one of the pod's four ion thrusters; the hull itself wasn't breached.

And second, someone was alive in there.

The pod wasn't giving off any distress calls, but why be in an escape pod at all if not in distress?

To create a trap, of course, Hisao thought. There's probably a pirate ship waiting nearby.

But couldn't he risk that, or else leave someone to die?

Hisao sat back in his captain's chair and found his controls. He switched to maneuvering mode, shutting down the Catalyst Engines, and began gliding the Ronin slowly towards the drifting pod, and also pressed the control for the scavenger claw. He watched out of the window as the Ronin's claw pulled in the crippled escape pod, listened to the soft alert sound of the outer cargo bay airlock being opened, and then got up from his chair. Hisao gave the bridge a look-around and noticed that lying on a nearby table was a holster with a Magrail pistol inside.

After a moment of thought, Hisao grabbed it and turned to the wall. On a small control panel, a few buttons stood out, and Hisao slammed one of these to activate the "scramble to cargo bay" alarm. He checked the bridge one last time and strode down the stairs out of the bridge.

{GALACTIC KNOWLEDGE DATABASE}
{ENTRY #0062829}
{Magrail Weaponry}
Magrails are the successors to the railguns of the past; while railguns are still in active use due to their cheapnes and power, Magrails are undeniably more powerful. The Magrail is an evolution from the railgun in the fact that projectiles launched from it use magnetic levitation to eliminate all friction, thus allowing the magnetic acceleration of the rails to be even more prominent. This allows Magrail projectiles to reach significantly higher velocities than railguns; however, Magrails are also know to have more firing malfunctions due to occasional destabilizations of the magnetism of the rail, causing bullets to sometimes fly far off target or even detonate within the barrel.

{GALACTIC KNOWLEDGE DATABASE}
{ENTRY #7929920}
{Iwanako-class Corvette}
The Iwanako-class is an IPCN Reconnaisance Corvette designed for patrol and operation on the fringes of IPC territory, cargo transport, light security, and as a support unit in battles. Modified Iwanako Corvettes have also been employed as smaller and lighter Artillery Frigates during battles.

The Iwanako is still technically an IPC-only vessel, but due to the large amount of non-IPCN people who have acquired the vessel, and due to its relatively low value, this law is rarely enforced, and even then rarely without another external reason.

The Iwanako-class carries space for 2 medium artillery batteries and 6 small support artillery batteries by default, but some modified versions boast 4 medium guns and 1 large artillery.

#The general appearance of the Ronin (just not out of Lego):#



#All credit to original uploader#

[Mirage_GSM]

Two things:
First, why is no one on the bridge when there is an enemy vessel nearby?
Second... This is mostly my personal opinion, but those database entries interrupt the reading process and pull you out of the story. In this chapter they were at the end, which is marginally better, but you could just as well put those explanations in the internal monologue - or leave them out altogether if they don't become relevant to the story later.

[ParagonTerminus]

Two things:
First, why is no one on the bridge when there is an enemy vessel nearby?
Second... This is mostly my personal opinion, but those database entries interrupt the reading process and pull you out of the story. In this chapter they were at the end, which is marginally better, but you could just as well put those explanations in the internal monologue - or leave them out altogether if they don't become relevant to the story later.

Lilly can't man the bridge due to her blindness, and Hisao needs to oversee the opening of the pod. Since he didn't detect any other nearby ships, and cloaking doesn't exist, Hisao accepted the risk.

Also, I'd rather interrupt the flow of the story than confuse the reader. "The hell is a Horizon Field? What's a Magrail?" I don't want that. If I put it in the internal monologue, it would sound odd; why would a character suddenly think about a technology that's been with them all their lives? I could equate it to leaning on the 4th wall, even.

I do see your point, however, and in future I may host entries on an external site to clean up these posts.

[brythain]

Also, I'd rather interrupt the flow of the story than confuse the reader. "The hell is a Horizon Field? What's a Magrail?" I don't want that. If I put it in the internal monologue, it would sound odd; why would a character suddenly think about a technology that's been with them all their lives? I could equate it to leaning on the 4th wall, even.

The trick, if you can pull it off, is to use terms that the reader can provisionally accept. For example, the thing is in a holster. It makes Nakai feel more confident. It is likely a gun, and the reader doesn't need to know what type yet.

[Mirage_GSM]

Lilly can't man the bridge due to her blindness, and Hisao needs to oversee the opening of the pod. Since he didn't detect any other nearby ships, and cloaking doesn't exist, Hisao accepted the risk.

So Lilly and Hisao are the only crewmembers on that ship? That would have been information way more relevant for the reader than exactly how the gun works^^°
You call this ship a corvette - I'm no sailor, but with that classification I'd have expected at least two dozen crewmembers...

Also, I'd rather interrupt the flow of the story than confuse the reader. "The hell is a Horizon Field? What's a Magrail?"

As brythain said: Trust your readers more. Everyone is going to know that the Horizon field is some kind of force field or shield just because it has "field" in its name and the fact that you are talking neither about sports nor about agriculture. Adding some treknobabble about how it works is optional and can wait until someone really has a reason to think about it, such as during an actual battle.

I do see your point, however, and in future I may host entries on an external site to clean up these posts.

Uh... You think having to go to an external site will break immersion less?

[ParagonTerminus]

Lilly can't man the bridge due to her blindness, and Hisao needs to oversee the opening of the pod. Since he didn't detect any other nearby ships, and cloaking doesn't exist, Hisao accepted the risk.

So Lilly and Hisao are the only crewmembers on that ship? That would have been information way more relevant for the reader than exactly how the gun works^^°
You call this ship a corvette - I'm no sailor, but with that classification I'd have expected at least two dozen crewmembers...

Also, I'd rather interrupt the flow of the story than confuse the reader. "The hell is a Horizon Field? What's a Magrail?"

As brythain said: Trust your readers more. Everyone is going to know that the Horizon field is some kind of force field or shield just because it has "field" in its name and the fact that you are talking neither about sports nor about agriculture. Adding some treknobabble about how it works is optional and can wait until someone really has a reason to think about it, such as during an actual battle.

I do see your point, however, and in future I may host entries on an external site to clean up these posts.

Uh... You think having to go to an external site will break immersion less?

Okay, fine, I see your point.

On the size issue, the Iwanako-class is meant to have about 20 crew members; however, two people can easily man the ship so long as they don't get into a battle. Many of the systems work fine automated.

[Mirage_GSM]

You see, that's the kind of information your readers need to follow the story:
The ship is undermanned and that's why they have to avoid a battle.
Now, why is it undermanned and what are they doing there?

[ParagonTerminus]

*By popular demand, I'm suspending the GKD indefinetely. If you have any plot-related questions, feel free to ask*

[CHAPTER 2]
[THE POD]

Lilly sprinted along one of the Ronin's main corridors, a Magrail in one hand and the toolbox she instinctively carried swinging at her hips, the leather shoulder strap worn with use over the years. Her mind beat with excitement; it had been a long time since something interesting had happened. Lost in thought, she almost ran straight into Hisao, only her superb hearing saving her. He had run out from one of the connecting hallways. She noticed that his breathing was a little raspy.

"What's going on?" Lilly asked breathlessly as both of them ran, Lilly now following Hisao.

"Escape... Pod," Hisao pushed out between breaths. He bore a mixture of concern and annoyance on his face, and Lilly could tell the running was not doing well for him.

The two ran along the corridor until Lilly realised they were heading towards the cargo bay. Of course! Hisao would have used the scav claw to pull in the escape pod. When they finally made it to the cargo bay, the pod had already been pulled in by the claw and rested on the plated steel floor of the bay. It lay there, the glass window at the front fogged over and the engine still sparking. Lilly and Hisao drew their guns and started circling the pod, Lilly following the sounds of the sparking.

After a moment's listening, they both realised someone was banging on the pod's walls.

---

The troubles had started right after the explosion of the girl's refuge. As the proximity alert shrieked away, she had felt the jarring shock of a piece of debris smashing into the pod. Diagnostics showed that she had lost one of the four engines and was leaking Terrions at high speed.

The girl knew she had no choice but to Catalyse her final Terrion reserves and warp out of the area as fast as she could.

As she rammed the flashing red Catalysation button, she felt, rather than heard, the high-pitched whine and shaking of the nuclear reactions inside the pod's reactor sending Terrions into a frenzy, blasting the pod across lightyears of space in seconds. The girl didn't feel time passing, as usual, but the chronometer read that a few minutes had passed since Catalysation.

She checked the diagnostics screen again and drooped her head in despair as she saw that the Terrion reserves were depleted. The nuclear engines of the pod would suffice to carry her around this general area of space, but what cou-

And that was when she looked out the window and saw the imposing ship in front of her. It was made of sterile-white metal, and fitted a description she had vaguely heard before. It looked fast, and the girl most certainly noticed the railgun turrets facing her general direction.

In her focus on the guns of the craft, the girl failed to notice the metal claw extending towards her pod in the silent way all things glid through vacuum. She only understood just what was going on when she heard the dull thud of the metal claw impacting. The girl had heard many stories of vicious pirates using these scavenging claws to grab and tear apart small ships, usually ripping out chunks of the plating to decompress it and picking over the remains.

She braced herself for that explosive decompression, and was acutely aware that she should have put on the Armoured Vacuum Suit inside one of the wall compartments, but it was too late now, wasn't it? But then the girl realised there had been no decompression, and she was being towed in towards the white spaceship.

She watched helplessly through the porthole as a massive bulkhead opened ahead of her, and then a hissing sound vaguely audible beyond the pod walls. Bulkhead ahead of the escape pod opened, and the girl noticed for the first time that the scavenger claw seemed to be attached inside of the airlock. It reversed its grip on the pod, turning it around, and proceeded to drop it very unceremoniously on the ground of the cargo bay below.

Teeth chattering from the impact, the girl grabbed her gun.

---

"Well?" inquired Hisao.

Lilly looked up from where she was trying to cut through the escape pod's door, her foggy blue eyes seeming to pierce Hisao."The release mechanism is fried, so I have to be really creative and cut it open completely."

"Be quick about it," Hisao stated nervously, "We don't want whoever's inside to suffocate."

Lilly gave a sly grin. "I can shoot some holes if you want."

Hisao laughed, some of the tension broken. "And can you trust yourself to not hit them?"

Lilly seemed to muse over this question for a few moments before dropping it. Hisao realised he may have accidentally insulted her, and also decided to go quiet lest he make the situation worse. He simply looked on as the blind girl kept working at the door with the blowtorch, never wavering.

---

Hisao and Lilly were about the same age, both 18, and had met on Praxis. Hisao had already run away from the IPC with his stolen Ronin, and was desperately in need of a mechanic. When Lilly had shown up at his ship's ramp after Hisao posted a "help wanted" alert on the local spaceport network, Hisao had laughed. A blind engineer? Ludicrous. Hisao knew he was desperately understaffed, but he wasn't that desperate.

But Lilly was the one laughing when she pointed out a number of mechanical failures Hisao had completely missed. Had he not met her, the IPC would probably have followed the tracking beacon nestled very deep within the Ronin's circuitry and hunted Hisao down. Hisao had hired Lilly on the spot, but she offered to work for free; she just wanted to see the galaxy, and Hisao was all for it.

That was months ago, and Hisao and Lilly had stated that their relationship was a strictly businesslike one.

Increasingly, though, Hisao was seeing indication of something else entirely.

---

Hisao snapped back to reality as he heard the clank of metal hitting metal, and saw the smoking hole where the escape pod entry hatch used to be.

Lilly ducked down to drop her blowtorch, and that saved her life when the bullet flew out.

The sound of the Magrail firing was unmistakably loud, and Lilly dodged to the side as quickly as she could. Hisao stumbled back and corrected himself.

"GO AWAY!" Someone inside the escape pod shrieked, the desperation in her voice obvious. Hisao could almost hear the tears of fear flowing down her face.

"Don't worry, we're friendly," Hisao called back calmly, ironically unholstering his Magrail as he said this.

"Put the gun back. Please," the voice responded. Hisao stiffened, not understanding how she knew he had a gun, but holstered it anyways.

A short pause followed."Alright, I'll come out now..." The girl's voice was a little closer.

She walked out of the escape pod, Magrail in hand, and Hisao got a first look at his captive.

The girl was pale, with long and flowing purple hair straight at the sides, some of the strands near the front soaked with tears. Her eyes were a perfect shade of purple, and the girl's face looked like it hadn't smiled for years. She wore a mostly intact sweater and standard crewman cargo pants, though Hisao could see the noticeable outline of an L-1 undersuit underneath that. The most shocking aspect, however, was the most obvious.

A deep, pinkish-purple scar ran across the entire right side of her face and down her body, visible on the back of her right hand. It looked like nothing Hisao had ever seen before, and he was a little shocked.

The girl, obviously noticing his shock at the scar, scrunched up her face as if about to cry, but holding back tears. She backed away a little and dropped the gun, her stance wavering. Just like that, she collapsed on the ground, her breathing becoming shallow.

Lilly reacted immediately, rushing forward and kneeling by her head. She put her hands under it and nodded to Hisao, her foggy blue eyes indicating obvious distress. Hisao just stared at her for a moment before running over and grabbing the girl's legs. She was skinny and rather easy to carry, to they began to move down the corridors towards the medical bay. After about 2 minutes of slow trudging, Lilly and Hisao were both starting to feel the strain.

"I'm surprised, actually, that I would get another visitor so soon," Hisao began, breaking the ice.

A half-smile appeared on Lilly's face. "Fate, isn't it?" The smile didn't look all too natural.

Hisao nodded and looked at the face of the girl they were carrying. He began to say something, but they had arrived at the medical bay and brought her inside, laying her to rest on the single medical bed. Now, all that could be done was waiting.

[ParagonTerminus]

So, sorry about the long wait, I was flying and then arrived at a place with sketchy internet, but eventually got that sorted.

Anyways, here's your chapter 3:

[CHAPTER 3]
[TALES PAST]

The memory came from years ago, yet Hisao did not know why it appeared so suddenly.

He was running through an empty street, crying as the explosions rang near him. Two friends ran with him. Hisao had long since lost their names to time, but the event burned in his head with burning vividness.

A sudden stab, almost like a bullet through the heart, an invisible spear grinding through Hisao's body without mercy. He had collapsed, rolled around a bit from the sheer momentum, and fallen still. His heart beat like a simple motor, and when Hisao felt his left breast area his hand came away with a sticky red fluid.

More bombs, more screaming, more crying. The second friend had turned around, worry on her face, and now Hisao remembered, her name was Emi. She cried when she saw Hisao lying there, she ran towards him, but the bomb was faster, the shrieking whine as it hit metres ahead of her, detonating and flinging concrete all around. Hisao shut his eyes, not daring to look, but before he did, he saw his first friend running, his brisk sprinting getting him into a building. Hisao no longer heard Emi, but he did see her body, the legs torn off violently at the knees, her body mangled.

And so his eyes shut tight, and Hisao cried and cried until all he could cry was the redness from his chest.

---

The soldiers had arrived shortly thereafter; a caravan of old armoured vehicles, the Rimworlds being unable to afford more modern weaponry. The soldiers had left him lying there, until one of them came next to Hisao's weak frame and kicked it lightly to make sure he was dead. Had he not had the bare minimum of strength to cry out in pain, he would be dead.

The soldier had picked him up, and then Hisao had fainted.

He later woke up in the hospital, lying in bed, all kinds of monitors attached to him. The hospital orderlies had told him he would live, but it was bad. Shrapnel from a bomb, they said, had penetrated his heart and lungs. They had fixed it, they said, but Rimworld doctors had barely anything to work with; Hisao's breath would always feel just a tiny bit constricted, and he would never make it far on his own again, but his heart was worse. The actual impact of the shrapnel had torn it so terribly that there was no choice but a transplant.

But the doctors failed, and Hisao's heart had entered his body with the neurons wired just a tiny bit wrong and that sealed his fate: he would forever suffer severe arrhythmia, and no Rim medicine could fix that. Even IPC medicine could only help it a little, at best. He was forever a cripple, forever doomed to only have the chance to run as far as the length of a large patrol ship before having a massive chance to drop dead at any moment, and even without running that distance he couldn't guarantee his own safety.

Hisao refused to mention it, but his heart was stabbing at his chest, pulsating violently in his ribcage. It was a cornered animal, fighting until the end to break out of its tiny prison. The strain of running across the ship and then carrying the girl back became nearly murderous, and if it wasn't for the adrenaline surging through him, Hisao would be long dead. As it was, the primal instinct for self-preservation inside Hisao was telling him to shove the newcomer off the operating bed and lie in her place, to close his eyes and wait for Lilly to somehow repair him like she repaired her engines. He was remarkably good at resisting such urges, though, and he simply stood by, leaning on the medical counter, grateful for the fact that Lilly couldn't see his face, which had gone pale with a tinge of green poking out. Hisao felt nauseated to the bone, his defective heart barely able to pump blood and life to his brain, forcing him to shut down unless he discovered some alternative. He had pushed himself too far.

Hisao slammed open one of the nearby cabinets. Looking; searching; trying desperately to find something, anything to keep himself awake.

Finally, his hand hit the long plastic shape of a syringe. Inspecting the label with blurred eyes, he only had time to read "Solid Adrenaline" before he shoved it into the approximate location of one of his veins. Pain races through Hisao, the transport for blessed life. As he screamed, he knew it was not purely out of pain, it was also a scream of joy, that which a man will scream when he discovers that his pain was not for naught, that the light at the end of the tunnel was simply an escape back to life.

Hisao woke up, adrenaline pumping through his blood at breakneck pace. It was temporary, but every minute counted.

It took some moments before Hisao realised that Lilly was staring at him, face stricken with extreme concern.

"I'm... fine," Hisao told her reassuringly.

But it was a lie.

He had pushed the reaper back, but the reaper does not take kindly to resistance.

*Also, I've got a very short one-shot fiction coming soon, which should provide a nice break from this.*

[Mirage_GSM]

Adverse reactions to adrenaline include palpitations, tachycardia, arrhythmia, anxiety, panic attack, headache, tremor, hypertension, and acute pulmonary edema.

I'm no doctor, but in my opinion injecting oneself with adrenaline during an episode of arrhytmia is functionally suicide.
Maybe the Cook has a better informed opinion on this?

[Silentcook]

Wut? Someone rang? Oh.

Yeah well, aside from the fact that I have never heard about solid adrenaline (possibly discountable on grounds of "hey: FICTION", but then how does he squeeze it through a syringe's needle?), the stuff is not the kind of thing one doses ONESELF with. If you need it you're not likely to be in any condition to give yourself the shot, and if you can shoot it up by yourself it's likely not what you need at the moment.

[ParagonTerminus]

Adverse reactions to adrenaline include palpitations, tachycardia, arrhythmia, anxiety, panic attack, headache, tremor, hypertension, and acute pulmonary edema.

I'm no doctor, but in my opinion injecting oneself with adrenaline during an episode of arrhytmia is functionally suicide.
Maybe the Cook has a better informed opinion on this?

"Solid adrenaline" is a nickname for a futuristic medical innovation.

Exposition later.