He was going to see them again, and by god he was going to love them more than Hilston ever could.
—
Sil woke up to a killer headache.
His eyes were blurry, he couldn't see a thing. Instinctively, he touched a part of his head. It stung, and taking his fingers back, red covered it. Sil wasn't sure what exactly happened, he couldn't focus, where was he? What happened?. When everything came back to him, he frantically attempted to access the keyboard and type something.
Nothing sent.
Sil tried to check his systems, but everything was offline. Nothing worked. Was there even any power?
Sil attempted to get out of his cockpit, but more pain followed him in his legs. He fell to the floor. He was more injured than he thought. Sil took out his soul weapon and picked a regenerative ability. He didn't have the time to heal himself.
He shakily stood up and opened the door to the rest of the ship. The single room he lived in was a mess. The floor was littered with debris. It was saddening seeing the place he lived in for the past hundred years was torn apart, all the little customizations, the decoration from years of travel, gone. He needed to fix the communication, he needed to let them know he was still alive.
As he slowly healed more and more, Sil found it easier to move, even if his breathing was still fast. He dug through a compartment in the walls that held the electronics and spotted the communication box. He hoped he could've used Logan's ability on it, or maybe he would get lucky and all he'd needed to do was connect it to auxiliary power, but when he saw that the box was crumbled into several pieces, he knew It was beyond repair.
Sil stared at it, he almost couldn't believe it.
Tears began to well up in his eyes, and Sil screamed. He slammed his fists into the box. Sil couldn't do anything, he tugged at his hair, and punched the walls. Everything just had to go wrong, he was never allowed to be happy. Sobs broke up the yells, and Sill collapsed onto the floor. Everything was dark, the lights broken or dimmed, the floor cracked and dented, the ship's dying engine and ventilation whirring and sparking.
He just wanted to go home. Just wanted to see his family again. Someone other than his brief interludes with an alien. He would've done anything just to see someone else that could recognize him. Someone that would be happy to see him again. He would've taken several conversations of Logan and Vicky's incessant flirting if it meant he didn't have to be alone.
Sil sobbed harder, he was beginning to struggle to breathe.
No– that's not–
The air was burning him. He let out heaving coughs in a desperate attempt to clear his lungs. The ship wasn't airtight anymore. Sil took out his soul weapon in a frenzied haze and flipped through several pages for the right ability.
He kept flipping through page after page, everything seemed like it was useless, and Sil was finding it harder to focus.
He found an air ability and he controlled the oxygen to come back to where he was. He took a deep gasping breath. Of course he just had to land on a planet with toxic air. Sil couldn't help but recall that time that Logan helped him with his air filtration. He held back a whimper.
"No…" was all Sil could muster to say out loud.
He needed to fix the ship enough in case Logan and Vicky were going to find him. Sil grabbed his book and flipped through a few pages for a metal-bending ability. It was going to be a delicate process swapping between both his metal and the air ability, but it was something to do.
It was getting colder in the ship, the planet's atmosphere seeping within the cracks of the ship. The planet itself wasn't necessarily an ice planet, it simply lacked life. Sil went along the walls of the ship, closing and sealing any hole he could find. Sil doubted he could've gotten them all, causing a thought to enter his mind that it might've been a waste of energy. Sil shook his head, but the idea still stuck.
He trudged to the center of his "fixed" ship. He had cleared the air enough to comfortably breathe, even if the oxygen felt thin. Sil was breathing heavily, and with nothing else to do, he sat down to the floor to conserve his energy. The chill was creeping in, and he hugged himself to keep warm. Sil considered using a fire ability to stave off the cold, but with how little oxygen was left, it wasn't worth it.
He sat there, waiting for something. Logan and Vicky most likely thought he was dead, and Sil found he couldn't blame them for thinking that way. He would've thought he died from the landing, he might even be dead soon. Sil thought about them more, the messages he read from them, the stupid conversations from just a day ago. Sil wished he got to talk to them more under better circumstances before everything went wrong. Just a final moment of happiness without worry.
Was it too much to ask? For that happiness that he so wanted? Maybe he didn't deserve it. Maybe he never deserved to live a life of peace. Maybe he didn't deserve to live at all.
'At least I got to say goodbye,' Sil thought as he buried his head into his knees, waiting for the nature of the atmosphere to take him.
—
Vicky panicking was an understatement. Seeing as her messages suddenly were unable to be sent, she was freaked out. She ran to a window of the ship, trying to look out the glass. She searched for anything that might resemble something, anything that would show that her little brother is out there.
She had already understood that Sil was likely being ambushed, and she wanted to help as quickly as possible. They were supposed to meet up. It was supposed to be perfect. Nothing was supposed to ruin it for him. Vicky even had plans of using balloons and party poppers for her dumb little lie, now she might never get to use them.
In the distance, she could see 3 very faint moving dots. By diverting her qi to her eyes, she was able to look at them closer, and noticed they had silhouettes of fighter jets. Did they manage to finish the job? No, she wouldn't accept that answer, unless she saw that Sil was gone for sure. Vicky got up and marched towards her husband.
"How's scanning for Sil?"
Logan's eyes glowed green, and Vicky could only assume he was very focused on utilizing the ship's technology to scan and calculate Sil's location.
"I've detected some debris that matches Sil's ship," Logan quietly said. "The debris count is small. It was a damaging hit, but not an immediately fatal one."
Vicky almost let out a sigh of relief. There was still a chance. "Anything else?"
Logan let go of the ship and pointed out the window. "There is a chance that Sil crash landed onto the planet nearby in a desperate attempt of survival. We're going to need to be fast as the ones who attacked him are heading down there."
"Great! What are we waiting for? Let's go."
"Not so fast. The planet's air is toxic to most humans, and has a low temperature that would freeze someone if given enough time. When we go down there, we need to be prepared."
Vicky looked at the planet. It was a grayish green-blue sphere that noticeably lacked any distinguishing features. It was large. "Right… I'll take the supplies. You focus on finding him."
Logan nodded, and Vicky left to gather the supplies. He focused on scanning the area, following the trace signs of shrapnel, energy signatures and more, calculating where Sil landed.
Vicky looked around for electric blankets, first aid kits, masks, and more. She didn't know if Sil would be conscious or not, and until Logan gave the go ahead, she grabbed anything that might've been even remotely useful. Vicky wanted to go down as soon as possible, but without any abilities aside from Logan's she needed to focus and not think brashly. Once Logan got the coordinates ready, and a smaller ship ready to fly, they both went out.
—
The sounds of whirring entered the atmosphere, the ground shaking as a large ship landed nearby. Sil heard it clearly from the otherwise silent world. He got up and began to walk towards the sound. Was this them? Could this have been Logan and Vicky? Sil shivered from the cold, and was desperate to get off the planet.
His slow walk turned into a jog. Sil was going to live to see Vicky and Logan again. As soon as Sil made it to a window, a tired smile turned into horror. It was the same white ships again. They were likely here to confirm his death. Sil immediately stepped back. How was he going to survive this? Several ideas ran through his head. Should he play dead? No that wouldn't work, he didn't have an ability like that. Maybe if he went out there and…? And what? Fight in air he couldn't even breathe in? No… he needed to do something else.
Sil quickly summoned his soul weapon, picking out several abilities as quickly as possible, then using the duplication ability to create at least 30 other Sil's. Each one summoned a weapon of demi-god tier or higher. He couldn't bring the fight to them, but he could fight on his own turf. All of his clones got into position and waited for the hunters to come in. Sweat formed on Sil's head as he awaited in a different room.
The airlock opened and a group of tall insectoid-like humanoids entered. They were all white in color wearing dark armor and holding large guns. Immediately, a clone with a demi-god whip wrapped the first one to enter with his weapon and threw it to the side, another with a pair of knuckle dusters began punching them. Promptly, the rest began to fire into the ship. A few clones got shot before they could do anything, but there were more than enough to account for them. The clones fired abilities at the entrance all throwing Lightning, fire, ice and more. The hunters hid behind the door and continued to fire away.
Unfortunately, more and more holes littered the walls of the ship, and the bad air came in. A clone started coughing midway through a lightning attack, giving opportunity for the hunters to kill him. The real Sil was in the cockpit room, this room was separate from the others and still held safe air. Sil could tell from the sounds that it was chaos in the other room.
More and more clones were subjected to the bad air. They were still able to take down the hunters from long range but were falling one by one. Despite Sil's advantage in numbers, the disadvantage in location was overtaking his army. To counteract this, Sil focused all his MC on filtering the air using the wind ability, any clones struggling too much were suddenly able to breathe just fine again.
Yet this was not an easy feat, one would need to not only control the airflow from the inside, but the air from the outside as well. The breathable air was thinning more. While focusing on this, Sil was hoping the bullets would avoid the cockpit room's walls. Unfortunately, his wishes were ignored, and bullets from the extraterrestrials' weapons began to unintentionally pierce their way into the room.
'Damn it.' Sil thought. He was hoping that as a last resort, he'd be able to hide in this room as they would kill all the clones and presume him to be dead. Sil was really concentrating on the finer controls of airflow, desperate to focus on all of the holes in the walls.
He really wished he could just seal the holes, but that might hint towards another person hiding acting as support, which he was doing. At least the air was invisible.
As one clone dies, Sil diverted the air to the next living clone. The fight in the main room got quieter, they were all very diminished in numbers, as less clones and hunters were left alive. Eventually, the sounds stopped. When Sil couldn't hear anything, Sil hoped that the hunters were all dead. He had very little MC at this point. Sil took a peek through one of the holes, and noticed there was nothing left alive.
Sil controlled the air to wrap around his head and stepped outside of the cockpit room. Did he really win the fight?
When examining the room's broken walls, the massive bullet holes, and the charred floors, Sil began to exhaustively chuckle at the victory. After all of that, he was going to eventually run out of air anyways. Sil immediately stopped as soon as he heard footsteps pressing on the rubble outside.
"Damn scouts…" a deep voice spoke. "I have to do everything myself."
Sil had little fight left, all the MC he had was supposed to used for his own air. He turned towards the sound, and through the massive holes, he saw a large member of the squad came out and was heading towards the ship. At this rate, Sil had to either book it or fight till his last breath. Although his MC was low, he could still use qi and the demon tier weapons he has collected over the years.
The large insectoid wore black scale armor covering its already armored-like body, making their body appear far bulkier than it already was. They glared down at Sil, who stood frozen at the center of the room.
"Fuck—" Sil swore as the alien spent no time waiting to attack. It bolted forward, shooting its first through the rubble of walls, slamming it against his side. Sil barely managed to block the attack with qi, and attempted to swing back hitting the alien on the head.
The being before him was only somewhat moved by his hit, and growled in anger. 'Well shit. So much for a punch' Sil thought as he went for a leg sweep as the insectoid began to let out a rage of fists.
He had managed to make them trip, but the insectoid soon reconfigured their fists to wherever Sil moved to. He was using his arms covered in qi to block as many attacks as possible, but as his MC dropped, his ability to breathe properly was diminishing and he began to take hit after hit.
Sil took the deepest breath he could, and swapped abilities. He sent a flurry of punches and kicks to the insectoid, making them begin to back away bit by bit.
Suddenly, the insectoid screeched in pain as they felt every fiber of their being get burned alive. They began to lose the feeling in their limbs, their body shaking violently with the electric shocks Sil was beating into them, overwhelming their senses. As they began to see stars in their vision, the insectoid summoned enough willpower in their legs to slam their knee into Sil's unprotected stomach.
Suddenly, Sil's ability stopped, and both the insectoid and Sil fell to the floor, both gasping for air.
Sil squirmed on the floor, attempting to lift himself enough to drag his body to the cockpit where there was more breathable air. His head felt light, his vision began to blur, and coming from his chest a stinging sensation vibrated throughout his body as he inhaled more toxic air.
The alien itself lay on the floor recovering and watching Sil struggle to breathe. Slowly realizing how screwed the puny alien was. It forced itself up, and limped over to a gun one of their brethren dropped.
Sil could hear the gun getting charged up and aimed at himself. Panic seeped into his bones as he realized he had nothing left to stop it. Sil was going to die.
He looked up to the insectoid, groggily staring at the weapon aimed at his face. There wasn't anything he could do now, his body was on the verge of giving out, and this alien was going to blow his head off.
With the last of his breath, he choked out "L-least I die as 'm-me.'"
A loud sound echoed throughout the room, and a body dropped to the floor.
Pulling her fist out of the piece of the insectoid that remained, a muscular blonde woman kicked the body away, rushing over to where Sil laid.
"You— yor— here—" Sil gasped as the woman reached to her side, pulling out an oxygen mask.
As she lifted his face, she immediately dropped his head in fear.
"Shit— sorry— " she cursed under her breath, lifting Sil's head back up and placing the mask on. There was just something about his face and bloodshot eyes that brought out an old fear.
He began to take deep and heavy breaths, his body feeling a wave of relief and finally being able to relax.
The woman lifted his head onto her lap, hugging his head as his consciousness slowly began to leave him.
"You're safe now… I protected you…"
A choked sob was heard before everything went dark, and no more could be done.