Lost Stars (valiant hero) PART 1

Lost Stars (part 1)

"Hey... Henry? You there?"

Henry stared at the station, still in shock after what had happened moments ago.

"Man... That roughed me up."

Henry slammed his shoulder against the pod door, vainly trying to reach his best friend through the glass and empty void separating the two men.

"I got 'em, though."

Henry pressed his hands hard against the glass of the pod, trying to see closer to the station where his best friend was stranded.

"There's gotta be another escape pod around here somewhere,"

Henry heard the complete despair showing through Charles' voice. It was disheartening to hear his closest friend and ally, usually so jubilant and excited, this depressingly hopeless.

Charles made a small noise of pain, a hiss that Henry wasn't ready to hear. Henry could imagine his best friend, slowly sliding in defeat in the halls of the toppat ship.

"We did it, though. We got 'em."

Cold realization hit, and Henry felt cold tears prick in the corners of his eyes.

"It was a pretty good plan."

Henry let a few tears fall down the side of his face, leaving a cold track behind them, before wiping the tears away.

"You could say it was the Greatest-" (Eternal sadness and depression)

A burst of static cut off the remark from Charles, as the ship exploded in a ball of fire. Tiny parts of the ship were flying around, like tiny projectiles. But Henry didn't care about that, perhaps naively unwary of the small shards. He sank to the floor of the escape pod, despair from Charles' death rattling his core. Large tears streamed down his face, and he managed to take a shaky breath. The shock wave from the ship's explosion was delayed, but it was still extremely strong.

The shockwave of the explosion sent the tiny pod spiraling as the shards started to slowly shred the pod. Henry was jostled around, hitting his head on multiple surfaces as the escape pod was thrown like a toy ball in the cruel explosion. The pod itself was entering the atmosphere harshly. Henry was able to steady himself enough to stand, but one last tremor sent him reeling, falling forcefully onto the blunt, sharp end of the table. The impact left him dizzy, vision starting to get fuzzy and blurred. As Henry blacked out, his last thought before darkness engulfed his vision being, "What would Charles think if he gave his life for me in vain?"

The escape pods reentered the atmosphere at a quick pace. Henry lay unconscious on the floor of the pod, a ghash was left from the impact of scraps that were able to get into the pod. Luckily nothing was too broken, but Henry's bloodied body lay limply in an unceremonious heap in the bottom of the pod, knocked out cold.

The escape pod had crashed near the middle of a desert. There was a military base near it, so the government had assigned that team to look out for any survivors of the toppats to arrest. They had already found a pod with one toppat left in it, but they were looking for the luxury escape pod that contained the elites of the clan. "WE ARE ARMED! COME OUT PEACEFULLY AND WITH YOUR HANDS UP AND WE WON'T HAVE TO SHOOT, TOPPATS!" One of the officers spat out, emphasizing the word 'toppat'. at the crumpled pod. There was no response from anyone inside of the escape pod. "You leave me with no choice..." He said, winding up to ram into the door of the pod. The man's shoulder hit the pod's door, weak from reentry, and the door caved in, leaving a decently sized hole.

Gazing into the lone escape pod, there was only one person in it, and he was unconscious, laying limply on the floor of the pod. The officer heard a muffled gasp from beside him, and turned to see the officer next to him. The woman's mouth was gaping, staring at the ragged form. "That's... It can't be..." She huffed, not averting her gaze from the man in the damaged ball of metal. "Who is it...?" Her partner asked in a curious and nervous whisper. "It's THE Henry Stickmin, you idiot! And he's hurt..." She said, walking towards the unconscious man. "Wait, wait wait. I heard recently that he died trying to escape the Wall. How is he here?" He questioned, not trusting the man in the mangled pod. "We can worry about that later. Right now, he is hurt, bad and we should bring him back to the General." She argued, staring her partner in the eyes. He sighed, finally giving in to the pleas. "I guess we should take him either way, he's not going to get any better out here." He sighed, retrieving the man from the pod.