The End of Eternity

Fierce Battle

their one and only purpose is to power up the shortness of the last arc and create a surprise. I simply cannot rob you of the sudden ending. So yes, this is the end, but you can also enjoy some random copy paste magic if you want. Although I do not recommend it.

"You do not seem to be from these parts of the city, where do you come from?" Eric asked Mei, keeping reasonable distance from Claw, who had anticipated their fear and kept his distance in order to avoid any misunderstandings.

"We have been roaming around for a while."

"You are lucky to survive."

"We have him." Mei pointed at Claw with her chin. "He can kill just about anything."

"What is he? I have never seen anything like him."

"We do not know, we have found him in the open and managed to tame him." That was the best story Mei could conjure.

"He might be a runaway mutant, but they are not too inteligent." Eric thought about what she said.

"Regardless of what he is, we were patient and he apparently likes us." Mei smiled. She hoped the story was not too far stretched.

"You were lucky indeed. Well, I should say something about ourselves. " Walking back to the prison, Eric felt much safer, they were already quite close, the raiders were less likely to attack them here. "We live in this old prison building, we made a greenhouse on its courtyard, growing food is the basis for any larger settlement. I am surprised you have survived that long, the meat of wild animals is often irradiated and inedible." Eric rised his brows.

"It seems we are quite radiation resistant." Mei laughed softly.

"Lately, there were many attacks, as the people are turning desperate. Many people were looting the little, which was left on the planet, selling it for supplies, but just recently, a strict quarantine have been enforced on the planet, because of the growing tensions between Venus and outer planets. That made many groups unable to return home and anyone, who is not self-sufficient is in a big trouble. They are attacking people, who have food and supplies, hoping to survive longer."

"Yeah, they are trash. Attacking others instead of growing stuff themselves!" Mike joined the conversation.

"How many people are in your settlement?" Mei asked looking causally at Davena, who had been assailed by boasting men. Mei smiled and shook her head, Davena had always looked like an ethereal beauty from a fairy tale, with her dazzlingly white hair and blue eyes. Mei was sure these men had never saw someone even comparable to her.

"I do not keep count, but it is over four hundred." Eric said. "The prison is easy to defend, it is a big advantage, many people have joined our comunity during the years, but we cannot accept anzmore. There is a limit to how many people our greenhouse can feed."

Mei wanted to ask about their weapons, but she did not want to look like a spy and decided to keep that kind of questions for later. She could not ask any questions connected to this world's common sense either, it would have been too suspicious. She planned to find out much information by overhearing other people's talk, the first priority for now, was to enter their community.

"You do not have to be concerned with us regarding food, we can feed ourselves without problems." Eric was relieved to her her words, he did not want to feed that green monster, it had to consume mountains of food.

After a brief introduction and after physically pacifying one of Davena"s suitors, Eric showed them an empty room, in which they were supposed to stay. After the people found out, they did not require any food from the community, the relations improved significantly.

Claw began a new day by walking out of the prison building, ne intended to catch and cook something. Being able to hunt just about anything with little effort was a fact he tried to kept secret from the community. When he was about to leave the second perimeter of protection, which had been formed out of high fence, he saw a small group of people in front of him and gaped at them in shock. The group was probably leaving the safety of the prison in order to scavenge for any valuables around. That was nothing unusual, Claw's attention had been caught by the outfit of one of the scavengers.

"How is this possible? Can I be mistaken?" Claw sped up to get closer to the group, inspecting one of its members, who wore a set of wooden armor, the same exact armor of the elves of Emerald Down.

Marching behind the group, keeping little distance, Claw noticed the man had even the wooden sword, which the elves had used as their weapon.

"Excuse me friends, may I know where did you get such an extraordinary equipment?" Claw asked politely. The men looked at him, hands on their possessions. They probably thought, Claw wanted to rob them.

"All you need to know is, that it is ours now!" One of them snapped at Claw. He let them laugh and followed them, until they were a significant distance away from the prison.

"What do you think you are doing, you overgrown fish head?" The man from before pointed his gun at him.

"I do not think we should kill him Nick, he is one of ours."

"Says who? No one have asked me, if I want this creature in my camp and he is obviously asking for trouble!" In an environment in which a law "kill or be killed" applied, it was definitely more effective to be the one, who shoots first and everyone knew it.

"All I want is your answer, I do not want any trouble." The two stared at each other for a while. After a while, the man snorted.

"There is nothing there anymore, I can show you the location on a map." The man concluded, Claw was not worth the trouble and took out a map from his bag, while he was still pointing at Claw with his gun.

"We found it right here." A dirty finger poked into the dirty map. It took a while, before Claw realized, it was the exact same spot, where the three of them had woken up into this world.

"What are you staring at? It is not all you have wanted right? But the onlz thing I am willing to give you, is a bullet."

"No, it was all, thanks." Claw turned around and walked away, leaving the bunch of angry men behind him. They were sure, he wanted to rob them and had just been scared by their guns.

After the brief encounter, Claw went hunting, but he coudl not stop shinking about what had just happened. Hesitating at first, he ended up turning his steps in the direction the man had pointed out.

"Something weird is going on."

* * * *

"Can you explain your actions to me captain? Do you realize, what catastrophe have you almost caused?!" Admiral Izuma had the captain of battleship Kirov on the line.

"W-We were holding our position outside of the quarantine zone sir, but it suddenly pulled us closer." Amiral Izuma thought for a while, could they pull the ship by a tractor beam to cause this violation? Unlikely. They would have made an immediate political move, if this accident had been a setup, but the Consortium was apparently as surprised as them.

"Investigate the cause again, you explanation is just too bizarre."

"I will, sir." Amiral ended the communication and turned his head to face one of the technicians, who was sitting near him. Before he could ask him, the man was already reporting.