Porter rolled out of the bed in his room, promptly flopping onto the ground and shocking himself out of his daze. Last he had been aware, he had been fighting against the Silver Hawk and Sigmeund. Now he was lying on the cold floor with blankets tangled between his legs.
There was a terrifying moment of attempting to remember (did I win or lose?) before Porter decided he must have won or been saved, otherwise he wouldn't be waking up at all. Most of the battle was a total blur though, melding into the time when he was in the cave, with his brother. That brought forth another flash of thought: where was Sigma? Surely his brother had come back with the rest of the group when they had returned to the academy. They wouldn't have just left him down there in the mountains to be hunted.
The teenager began rummaging for clothing, trying his best to straighten himself out so that he could look presentable as he wandered the halls searching for a big, purple android. He finally managed to change into some decent attire and headed out to fulfill his quest. It didn't take long before he ran into Mr. Shotuku, who seemed a little shocked to see young Porter out of bed so soon after the fight, but he didn't say anything otherwise.
Instead, the old man seemed kind of sad and melancholy, with a twinge of empathy in his eyes that appeared downright bizarre to Porter. He didn't think he had ever seen Shotuku show compassion towards a student before. On the other hand, why would the elderly teacher be giving such a look to Porter in the first place?
The two passed one another, each in their own rush for their reasons. This was a Friday, and apparently late in the afternoon, for classes were all clearing out into the hallways, filling them with human bodies that coursed along the path like a wave, shifting in their flow constantly. It was rapidly becoming very difficult for Porter to make his way around, though he was sure he could spot a massive cyborg regardless of any crowd.
Among the sea of moving people, Nami's cat-eyes picked out Porter in an instant, watching him wander with a cluster of people, caught up in their momentum and trapped along their confined pathway. He didn't see her, though his eyes were certainly darting back and forth in search of somebody. Obviously it wasn't for a little girl. Probably for his brother. But he should know his brother had let him go alone and disappeared again. Or did nobody tell him?
Nami gasped, realizing that none of them would have gotten a chance to relay Sigma's message while Porter was passed out. She tried to spin around and chase after her friend but it was too late; Porter had been swept along with the crowd and disappeared around a corner. The little girl felt a great pang of sadness and empathy for what Porter was about to go through when he discovered his brother had purposefully abandoned him.
Porter stumbled out of the bustling crowd into the doorway of a classroom. He looked up to see Chase sitting on one side of two desks that had been pushed together. On the other side was an athletic student, his opponent in an arm wrestling match. Chase threw down his enemy's hand, causing a roar to go up around him from his supporters, who immediately began to high-five the superstar. Eventually, Chase caught eyes with Porter standing in the entrance and strolled over to see him, a bit of shock crossing his face.
"Wow Porter, I can't believe you're out of bed already." Chase pounded the pilot on the back as he spoke to him, congratulating him for his achievement in waking up. "I would've thought you were going to mope around a lot more in your room after what you went through and all."
"What do you mean?" Porter tried to think back to that faded memory of a battle. Had he actually lost it and been rescued, thus he should feel depressed?
"You know, what with your brother running off again and leaving you all alone..." Chase trailed off, his brain process catching up with what he was saying as he realized this was probably a bad thing.
Porter stood quite still for a long time, his face unwavering, his eyes not even blinking. His mouth remained flat, not twitching in the least and he stared straight ahead, right past Chase in front of him. "Oh. He did that did he?" Chase placed a hand on Porter's shoulder, attempting to comfort him as awkwardly as possible.
"Look, I'm sorry, I probably shouldn't have said that I wasn't really-"
"I'm going to go now," Porter whispered, cutting off Chase. He brushed aside the hand on his shoulder and backed away into the hallway, caught up once more by the surging crowd. Chase tried to grab his teammate but his hand closed on air, too late to stop the brooding boy.
* * * * *
Ardwen zipped up the space suit to his chin, then latched on the accompanying helmet. He stepped into the airlock while shouldering the small jetpack on his back. Suits had become so much sleeker over time, looking more like a jumpsuit and less like a bubble, building in all the necessary requirements for survival in the vacuum through nanotechnology.
A small cable uncoiled itself from the floor of the airlock, wrapping around Ardwen's leg and squeezing tightly before relaxing to a more comfortable grasp. It would tether him to the interior of the school, preventing him from drifting away were he to let go to the hull. The teenager looked down to see another cable that was poking through a hole in the wall to the exterior, latched to someone else who was on the outside.
The door into space opened up with a grand hiss as the air was instantly sucked out, and Ardwen felt his body tugged out by its pull. There was an instant when the frightening cold met with Ardwen's skin before the suit kicked in, quickly heating the pilot's body before it completely shut down. The young man drifted outwards, clutching a handle built onto the exterior of the academy and hauling himself to the wall. He then began to slowly reach out, pulling from one handle to another as he made his way to a section designed for observation.
Sitting on the small platform built onto the hull of the school was Porter, his knees pulled up to his chest as he stared at the passing moon. His eyes didn't flicker as Ardwen approached and sat next to him, feeling the tug of the isolated gravity field around the platform. There was silence between the two for a while, with Porter gently rocking back and forth in place and Ardwen trying to subtly glance at his friend without getting caught.
"So you're here then." Ardwen broke the silence, though Porter didn't shift at all.
"Yes. I am." The response was empty. It lacked emotion, heart, any sort of soul. There was nothing behind Porter's eyes either, Ardwen noticed. They were as lifeless as a corpse.
"He loves you, you know."
"No, he doesn't." The quiet returned again, and Ardwen let it sit for a while.
"Do you think a robot like him has feelings Porter?"
"I don't know. I don't really care. Maybe they do, maybe they don't."
"I don't think I've ever seen one cry before. I never thought they ever could or ever would. He cried when he left you Porter, we saw it. He wanted to hide it but he couldn't."
Porter sucked in a deep breath at hearing this, holding on to a host of different biting responses he could make. "So what?"
Ardwen chuckled a little to himself, much to the annoyance of Porter. "When my brother left for his final mission, the one he never came back from, I thought he was a great hero. I thought he was strong and amazing and I would be just like him one day. But when he didn't come back, I hated him. I thought he was a terrible person who had abandoned his family and forgotten us and didn't love us."
"Then one day," Ardwen continued, "I just stopped. I thought to myself that it was rather stupid of me to ever think my own brother would suddenly stop loving me. He's my brother. Nobody in a family ever stops loving someone else they are related to. They are bound to one another through all their ups and downs and hardships. So I made peace with my brother's disappearance, and the day after the man from the army came to tell us my brother was presumed dead after being captured."
"He isn't a family member anymore. He only did it for his girlfriend. He left us before for her, he's left me again." Porter snorted and rested the bottom of his helmet upon his knees.
"He loves her, that we could all tell. But his love for a girl and his love for his family are two separate and different things. Sometimes the two cross and look the same and other times they couldn't be further apart. Right now, they are separate, and Sigma has picked a certain path. Just because he is on one of them though doesn't mean the other path disappears. It's still sitting there, and he will come back to it sooner or later. They will overlap one day and you can have your brother back on that day."
"But why would he-"
"It's not always about the why," Ardwen cut off Porter, knowing where the question was going. "The why belongs to Sigma and only Sigma. You can try to understand it but if it isn't yours then you'll never completely comprehend it. Trust in your brother. If you love him you will trust in him. That's what I had to do for mine."
Porter sat and simmered, muted by Ardwen's words and secretly happy to have someone to speak to. "How long has it been since you saw your brother last?"
"Oh..." Ardwen leaned back and thought about it a bit, counting on his fingers. "Well let's see, I'm eighteen now, and I'm fairly certain I was eight when he left. Yes because he was eight years older than me so it's been ten years. Ten years..." Ardwen peered at the moon in the distance. "Really? Ten years already. It hardly feels like it at all."
"I'm sorry you lost him."
"Oh it's not nearly as bad as the wait you had to see yours. So if you could be reunited with your brother after so many years, then I guess there's hope for someone like me too right?" Ardwen shared a laugh with Porter, feeling his heart sink a little on the inside as he thought about the time it had been since he last saw his sibling. Ten years already? Ten years was an awfully long time to be a prisoner of war and still survive.
"What was his name?"
"Hmm?" Ardwen shook his head, realizing he hadn't been listening to Porter as he got lost in his own thoughts.
"Your brother's name. What was it?"
"He was Carter. Carter Veillon. Well General Veillon I suppose is what he was last known as really. Considered the greatest rising talent as a strategist in the entire Enian army. Gone one day and never heard from again."
"That's awful. Didn't they send anyone to try and rescue him?"
"Well his capture was never confirmed and the war ended not long after that but the Eastern United States are notorious for never releasing prisoners during a war. As far as they are concerned, even when not at war, everyone is still their enemy and those prisoners may be useful again for a later day. So since we couldn't go in there without re-engaging in war, they had to leave him behind. Such is the price of the world, or so we were told."
"But we made a peace treaty with them recently didn't we? A trade agreement for the next three years wherein military personnel can enter into each other's country without penalty. Couldn't they get him now?"
"If he were still alive, possibly. But if they're caught then you're looking at a major crisis, not to mention I'm fairly certain my brother's case file was closed a long time ago. Maybe one day he gets freed though." Ardwen sighed and lay back on the platform, his eyes drifting between the different stars. "Oh!" he exclaimed, sitting back up again, his hand shooting to his pocket on his spacesuit. "I wanted to give you this."
Ardwen withdrew a small metal object that glittered in the starlight. It half floated, somewhat tugged down by the artificial gravity but not nearly enough to cause it to sink down completely. It was a chain-link necklace with an Enian emblem hanging from it of the cross constructed from a sword blade with a golden circle around it. It was placed into Porter's hands before the teenager could object. "My brother had that and he gave it to me before he left on his final mission. He said that so long as I had it I would always have a piece of him with me and we would never be separated. I think you need it a little more than I do right now." Ardwen stood up and stretched, surveying the vast emptiness of the space they travelled through. "Give it back to me when you're ready."
Porter clenched the trinket close to his heart and nodded to Ardwen, exchanging a smile with him. In his mind he knew what he had to do now with this great gift bestowed upon him.
* * * * *
Chase slammed another challenger's hand onto the desk in victory. The growing crowd cheered wildly at his seventeenth consecutive win and he stood up to shake hands and give out high fives. He watched as they all got smaller and further from him, and when he finally rounded a corner and completely lost sight of them, he realized he was being dragged away by his collar from behind.
The youth looked up to find Porter hauling him around the halls, and he nearly burst out laughing. "Porter? What the hell happened to you? Since when could you pull me around anyways?" Chase stood up quite easily and brushed off his pants, trailing Porter who did not stop for an instant.
"I need your help Chase, so you're coming with me."
"Woah woah woah, I don't take no commands from someone like you." Chase folded his arms, halting in the hall in defiance.
Porter wheeled around and transfixed Chase with the most serious, angry yet dirty look imaginable, so shockingly terrifying it caused Chase to shudder. "You're coming with me. I need your help."
Chase began to follow again, mostly out of curiosity as to where this was leading, but he never stopped complaining about it the entire time, trying to show how he wasn't agreeing to help or anything, just that he was wondering what was going on.
"Listen Chase," Porter said, suddenly stopping outside the hangar bay of the Goliaths. "We're going to go down to Earth, into the Eastern United States."
"What? Why?"
Porter sighed, his shoulders heaving as the door to the hangar opened. "We need to go and find Ardwen's brother and bring him back."
"What?! Hell no! Are you crazy Porter? We can't just go down into a random country and ask around for political prisoners from like forty years ago. We'd be killed."
Porter narrowed his eyes at Chase, wondering if that was a serious statement and then slapping himself mentally for even thinking Chase could have the brains to make that up as a joke. "You don't read the news much do you? Not to mention, this is Ardwen's brother, not his dad we're looking for. It's been ten years."
"Yeah but I'm not-"
The two suddenly stopped in front of the White Storm, interrupting Chase. "Look, if someone said to you they could bring your mother back, you would want them to do it right?"
Chase went very quiet and became withdrawn internally, his eyes darkening. "Yes...and I would help them do it too."
"Then you know what you need to do right now." Porter stepped onto the elevator that would take him up to his Goliath's cockpit and nodded at Chase. Moments later, the gate to space had opened, revealing the bright Earth down below, and the South Star and White Storm had been launched from the school, heading down towards the Eastern United States.
Mr. Shotuku watched the twin trails of light that flew out from the side of the school, descending into the atmosphere of the Earth and disappearing from his sight. Next to him stood Mr. Toriyama, who watched with a smirk on his face before taking a sip from his cup of green tea.
"You're taking this rather well Shotuku. You look fairly composed considering two of our students are going rogue and heading down to the planet yet again."
A black slipped smashed across Toriyama's face, sending him sprawling across the floor, his cup of tea flipping and spilling all over himself. The cup smashed on the ground after bouncing off the teacher's head. Shotuku swept past the beaten man, stepping over him a bit as he walked back to his office.
"I've never been angrier Toriyama."
A/N: A heart-to-heart has inspired Porter to go out on an adventure with Chase?! Only madness could lie ahead!