Sigma/Star

Chapter 97: After

There was a strange calm across the battlefield. It was like a cold, a numbness that permeated metal, that sank through enormous warmachines and wrapped around the pilots within. Things slowed down all around Porter, almost came to a complete halt. He could see motion but it was so sluggish everything may as well have been frozen in time.

The teen freed himself from the Bahari pinning him down, finding he had crushed its heart as he lay atop it, eventually killing it. He stood next to Chase, moving all around his comrade's body and examining the carnage from every angle. There was the biological spear-arm piercing straight through the chest. There it was bursting out the other side. There was the Bahari, stiff as a statue as its core leaked out its front.

Porter pulled the two apart, slowly removing the weapon from the South Star's frame, leaving a gaping hole that oozed oils and shot out sparks of electricity from exposed wires. The cockpit within a Goliath was not incredibly large, and was deep within the chest unit for protection from surface abrasions. But in this case there was no mistaking it: the monster had pierced straight through the cockpit. There was practically nothing left of the control centre in the middle of the Goliath, most of it shredded and torn apart in the thrust and then ejected out of the back in tiny pieces.

Realization of what had truly happened began to sink into Porter's mind and his heart. At least I got to protect my friends. Porter laughed a bit at it, feeling the surge of air force its way up his throat as he tried to hold it back, creating a choked laughter that shook a tear from Porter's eye. It landed on his palm, the warm liquid splashing onto his skin then pooling in the centre of his hand. That was all that came out though. Just one tear. There was nothing else, no other tears following, no weeping or crying. It was the just the one that sat in Porter's hand.

The pilot stared down at the tiny droplet, watching curiously as it was absorbed into his skin ever so slowly, fading away until it was just a wet mark. Then it was no more. Was Chase dead? Porter couldn't believe he was asking himself those sorts of questions but he couldn't help it. It was almost like he still hadn't entirely clued in, like a portion of his body was ready to mourn and another still clung to Chase's life.

Porter sat at a crossroads between reality and memory, his imagination overlapping with his cognitive functions, leaving him with nothing more than...numbness? That was all there was to it. There was just this numbness and nothing else and that is exactly what seemed to be wrapping around the battlefield, blanketing the different members of the Crisis Rescue Unit and disabling Porter's train of thought.

The entire world seemed to cease rotating, coming to a halt all around Porter as he sat up, pulling away from the Bahari that had pinned him down. He looked down at it and noticed he had been crushing its heart over time, eventually killing it. The White Storm stood tall next to the South Star, and Porter began examining the frame of his fallen comrade before...

Porter stared at the tear in his hand, the only tear he had shed for his friend, the only one he had been able to force out of his body with a laugh...

A calm settled on the battlefield in the moments after Chase was stabbed...

...as Porter tried to stifle the laugh, causing him to choke a bit on his own laughter.

Porter sat at a crossroads between reality and memory, his imagination overlapping with his cognitive functions, leaving him with nothing more than...numbness? Numbness and pain at the same time. He could feel the pain spreading through his body, almost like a disease, but he was also immune to it, unable to feel what he desperately craved to feel. He almost wanted to be punished, wanted to be hurt but his own mind wouldn't let him, and immediately began burying the emotional burden of everything going on around him and everything that had happened to him, scrambling his thoughts and forcing him back down into his own memory...