Chapter 162
It was a while before Assassin woke up after being smacked around inside the recreation room, but thanks to her Servant body, all she had were a couple of bruises to show for it.
"Uuuu...this sucks."
Pulling herself free from the wreckage and debris of the furniture strewn across the room, now upside down with the arcade machines on the ceiling and the lights on the floor. Gray watched as Assassin lifted up chunks of the hardwood coffee table with ease, hurling them carelessly into the dark corners of the room as she freed herself.
"I'll need to replace the furniture again. Please let there be bounty targets on the planet."
Her fervent prayer for cash was familiar to her lips as she was frequently broke.
She walked over the debris until she came to the door. Dragging off a sheet of steel that was probably tabletop, but missing a few legs, the entrance to the room was revealed behind it. The hatch door groaned as she tugged at the crack in the middle, pulling on it until the gears finally relented under her strength, the crack expanding until she could fit through. Putting her head through the gap, she managed to wriggle through, her slender frame allowing her to slide through without much problem. Gray followed behind her, wriggling in a similar manner.
Traversing through the upside down hallways of the ship, Assassin padded through the ship until she reached the cockpit, with Gray following behind her to not get lost. Along the way, Gray saw other places, including a room sealed with yellow tape with symbols and signs that screamed danger, a room with a transparent door filled with robots, glass tanks bubbling with unknown liquid, and a kitchen with a plate of nasty looking curry-like substance that was dried up in some areas.
In the cockpit, Assassin flipped a few switches, the red lights and klaxons that were blaring all the way switching off, then she tapped a touchpad screen a few times.
It didn't respond.
*KON*
It lit up after she slammed her palm into it, lines of indecipherable letters and numbers running across the screen, while Assassin stared at them intently.
"Hmm, let's see, ok, ok. Low on that, low on this...alright, should be fine. Time to head out then."
Ascertaining the resources she was low on and the places of damage on the ship, she switched off the diagnostic panel and left the cockpit, heading to her room to change into proper clothes for her excursion on this unknown planet.
After putting on her signature clothing and getting her Secretcalibur from an armory filled with weapons ranging from lightsabers to water guns, she left the ship, some sort of gadget that Gray couldn't recognize in her hand, with a handle and a screen along with two long antennae sticking out the top like a on a FM radio.
Exiting through the emergency hatch, Assassin leapt out, and was immediately assaulted by burning rays of sunlight that threatened to turn normal humans into dried husks within a day. Sand shifted beneath her feet as she stood up, and the air shimmered from the heat, the refractive index constantly changing and distorting her vision. Gray slid down the side of the ship, her hands feeling the warm touch of the sun kissed metal that was in reality able to start frying eggs.
Assassin's eyes narrowed in irritation at the scenery in front of her, tugging her scarf closer over her face to shield it from the radiation, the brim of her cap lower, though it wasn't necessary with her body. It was so dry she could practically feel her skin crackle as moisture escaped it, every breath of air she breathed in scorching her lungs. Or that was what she felt, but her Servant body was functioning just fine.
Looking up in the sky, Gray could see three suns hovering in the pale blue expanse, two of them significantly larger than the third, with one closer to a bluish white, while the other two were brilliantly white. No clouds drifted in the sky, with any speck of moisture in the land vaporized in seconds under the harsh rays of sunlight.
Sighing, Assassin started walking, switching on the sensor for Artorium, energy sources and life forms, a slow beeping filling the air as it started scanning.
Under the burning gaze of not one, not two, but three suns, Assassin doggedly trudged through the sand, putting one foot in front of the other as she traversed the desert, doing her best to ignore the heat and the growling in her stomach that was subtly growing louder with each step.
She had gotten lost after her last bounty taking out a rogue Saber gallivanting in the Bit system, a madman who was supposedly searching for his wife and mistakenly seizing any females with red hair as her, which the Bit system happened to be full of. After ranting half a day about his wife, Assassin had simply cut him down when he was exhausted about talking about 'Siva', or whoever it was. He had ended up crying and wailing as he was cuffed and taken into the Galactic Police's custody, yelling at the heavens to see his wife again. It was a sad sight to see, but Artoria had little sympathy to spare for him as she was low on funds.
Before she had the chance to claim her rewards, she happened to bump into a couple of mercenaries contracted to hunt her by a crime lord she pissed off before after learning they shared a similar name. 'Mysterious M' was a serious ripoff of her own, and she had no choice but to act to preserve her dignity.
The gentleman survived, but his operations were disrupted, and he had sent people after her. An epic space chase ensued, with Assassin barely escaping them after using the last of her energy reserves to jump into a random set of coordinates.
She was then lost in a gravitational anomaly that threw off the last of her pursuers, and then drifted until a sudden spike in activity of the anomaly flung her ship into a warp that deposited her ship next to this planet, which thankfully seemed to be inhabited, though the population was sparse. After checking with her maps, she had plotted a crash course into the planet with her thrusters, and now here she was.
In the midst of walking in an endless desert, a ping from the sensor drew her attention to a blip nearby. It looked to be, around somewhere to the right. Picking up the pace, she started jogging towards the spot, eager to get out of the heat as soon as possible.
Slowly, a dot appeared on the horizon, then it grew in size, until it became close enough to see. A rectangular building appeared, with some sort of figure next to the entrance. It had nothing to distinguish it, no windows, no openings, no vents or anything. All the walls were caked with so much sand that they blended in with the surroundings, the entire building almost invisible from a distance. As she came closer, she realised the figure was a female statue, with a sword piercing a bowl of noodles. She came to a stop in front of the building, not even one-storey tall, and read the sign in red and white above the entrance.
"Seiba Menya (Saber ramen house)."
It was a ramen shop. In the middle of nowhere.
Shrugging, she entered through the curtains covering the entrance, her stomach growling for food. If it served ramen, then it was safe. A ramen shop could never be bad.