Original Stories Fan Fiction ❯ Wings of the World ❯ The Meloncholy of Me ( Chapter 1 )

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Childhood moral lessons never amused me. Take for example “the early bird gets the worm. Now if logically thought about, there are many flaws to that plan. One, the birds are in an area where worms are nocturnal and don’t arrive until night. Two, the weather condition prevents worms from coming out. Three, other birds might be smart enough to simply wait for the elderly to feed your family. So in fact, the early bird is really the lucky bird that does extra hard work for nothing.

This is what happens when your mind wanders too much.

Chapter 1: The Confucius of a Dilemma

In the world I live today, everyone is on the same level. If history can be examined without personal bias, then it can be proven that language is what separated people from each other. Language links to race difference, culture, tradition, and ultimately the well-being of nations themselves. Now that everyone understands each other thanks to some foreign tower deep underground in the Earth, the world stopped having wars and other nonsense.

Of course, that still doesn’t make history class any less boring.

“Hey, hey! Remind me which book we got to check out again?”

My long-time friend Terry, which you can call a mix of decent intelligence guy in a Californian blonde body, has decided to ask now of all times our book assignment. We were in the library of North High School as our sophomore level history class was told to check out three source books on our current topic.

How can you forget? You chose the Tower of Babel, among all things!

“Oh right. That’s the one where the people went against God, right?”

He tapped his head with his fist as his way of ‘punishing’ his mistake. I have no idea where he picked that habit up.

Yes. They made a big tower, God didn't like it, Tower falls down and poly-language was created.

“Cool. I heard there’s a comic book also called that. Do you think I can use that as a source, too?”

No, you cannot use a JLA comic series as your source.

I walked away at that point and headed towards another hallway of books, most likely the one that Terry can’t easily follow. Avoiding his dumb questions seem to be for the best. As I delved deeper into the large library, I was thankful each second that the constant warm weather of East Coast USA prepared me to only wear light-layered pants and an under whelming button shirt. I would figure that after a timely feeling of ten minutes, Terry has forgotten about me and would leave me to my business. As I searched through the shelves of the scientific section that held my sources for time paradoxes, a glimmer of a light caught my eye. I passed by a hall for a moment, but slowly backed up and lurched my head over to see what the light was about.

It was nothing more than the shine off of some girl’s glasses. For some reason though, my current goal to find the books was muffled and I walked towards this girl. It felt like a magnet was pulling my metallic body closer as I was drawn closer to her. I shoved my hands into my pocket and stood in front of the girl, sitting on a foldable chair and reading the very same book I was looking for.

Hey, there! I was just wondering where did you get that book.

I tried my most cheerful attitude, but she didn’t bat an eyelash or even a reaction. I tried a more normal approach, seeing as how extremely happy people result in insanity. In my opinion.

If I really think about, I’ve never seen this girl before. Granted I don’t pay much attention to girls anyway, but her features were most unusual. Her hair had a bright shade of lilac in a short fashion just slightly reaching under her ears. She had a pretty small figure, but her skin was the kind of white women would jealous over. It was all wrapped up in some Japanese-style school uniform that was compiled of a green kneecap length skirt and a sailor blouse with a tiny bow tying up the collar. She also wore black socks that ran up all the way near her knees, and her glasses were slightly bigger than her eyes.

I guess I stared too long while my eyes unconsciously scanned her features. She lifted her head with a straight expression and simply looked at me. For some reason, I became more nervous as the stare down went on. I gave a cough and looked at some book on the top shelf, but I glanced a bit and she had me locked on.

Uh, sorry about that. That was very rude of me. I’m sure you just came here just to read the Paradox theory.

She went back to her book and lifted up the cover towards me.

“You don’t need this book.”

Technically I don’t, but it would be very nice if I could write it down as a source for my class.

She shook her head before going back to the book.

“School here is useless. You will be moved soon.”

I felt a tinge of annoyance at what she said.. I asked her if that was so.

“Correct. Your presence here will be not needed soon. The situation will go beyond the control of the United States.”

The girl didn’t look at me once since when she started talking. What is with her weird accent, anyway? It’s like she’s from a military base or something with ‘correct’ and all these other proper adjectives. Maybe I should just walk away now and forget what happened here. I got to the walking point.

“Your life expectancy will increase infinitely if you choose to stay within my area of vision.”

That’s it. I turned around and gave a sound of disgust as I look at her. Before I could give a lecture about manners, Terry found me as he was breathing heavily.

“Hey, hey! Whoo! Jeez I’m tired. This place is a lot bigger than I thought. Listen, man. We got trouble…hey, that girl’s pretty cute!”

Amazing. Even as he said there was trouble, a girl’s presence instantly changed his mindset. I can already see the wheels turning as he went into courtship mode and started preparing some catchy one-liners.

Never mind the girl. What’s the trouble?

He snapped back to this world.

“Oh right. The school’s evacuating! There’s a report of something fast that’s approaching the coast. We got to go now!”

“Incorrect. The highest chance of survival is staying in this area.”

This girl was becoming a broken record. I turned to her with more force in my voice.

Listen. I’ve known you for less than ten minutes, but I’m more pissed off by you than I’ve ever had of Terry!

“Hey! What did I ever do to you?”

I ignored his whining.

At least give me a name.

“Rin Xenon.”

Cold stranger? What a strange name. Never mind that. It suits her perfect, actually.

“Um, man?”

Terry started pulling on my shirt. I tried ignoring him whilst in my pursuit to continue my discussion with Rin, but he went as far as almost ripping off my head. That really hurts!

What! What do you want?!

He pointed at the huge window paneled wall beyond the hall of books. I can now see why he was panicked and almost snapped my neck for it. I would be too if I suddenly saw a huge rock falling from the sky about to crash into the beach shores.

Damn! Take cover!

I took both of their arms and ran behind the edges of the bookshelves, bracing for impact. As unfortunately expected, I heard an explosive sonic explosion so great that it shattered the glass into millions of sharp pieces. If we weren’t behind the layers of books, there would be three filleted people right now on the floor.

My hearing returned not far off, and I opened my eyes to see the carnage. Terry was next to me crouched and in a shelled position, but Rin was nowhere to be found. Actually, she was back in the hallway with the wind blowing her hair and clothes back. A slight mention of this got Terry out of his endangered mode and tried to peek, but I slammed his head back behind the shelves.

Rin, what are you doing? Get back here!

She didn’t hear me or ignored me, but she reached into her skirt pocket and took out a razor cell phone. Who in the world wants to hear about this?!

I could barely make out the words, thanks to my non-existent lip reading. I did manage a ‘platform’ and ‘situation’ but the rest were carried by the wind. When she was finished, she threw away her phone (is she rich or crazy?) and walked back to us.

“The situation is under control.”

A huge rock just blew up the library wall and landed on the Californian beach. How is this in anyone’s control?

“Under the organization’s control.”

The wha?

As if my first ever blunder on completing a word opened up the mother of ‘can of worms,’ the front of the library cracked open like an egg and rubble poured in the two separating seams. Rin strolled along to it as though she was getting an ice-cream on a hot day. That’s not a cold sweet, that’s a big hole!

“If you want to live, come with me.”

She shouted at us as an offer. I was sticking to staying in this safe library and hopefully the military will find out where that rock came from. Is it an attack? A one in a million meteor large enough to survive atmospheric entry? Or maybe it’s an elaborate scheme that-

“Wait for me!”

…Or I’ll follow Terry so he won’t hurt himself. I staggered a bit as Terry blindly followed Rin to that ever-increasing hole in the ground. What was coming out linked the two words I heard. For the ‘situation‘, they’ll send a platform. And on that platform is…a giant robot.

I am not kidding you. There is a giant robot rising from the ground like something taken out of Mazinger Z or maybe Power Rangers. Is there some scientist that will tell me I’m the chosen pilot that’s to save mankind? Or are there four more people that we have to dress up in some silly skin-tight costume that will somehow protect us from bullets?

The robot itself seemed frail. It was in almost total turquoise with a visor head piece and a small antennae sticking out the back right side. It had a jet backpack attachment with a rod sticking slanted, and attached to its left arm was a shield with two separated prongs on both long sides.

The platform stopped midway for the torso cockpit to open up. Rin directed Terry to enter in and like a naïve fool, he did. She gestured that I do the same, but now without some questions answered. I now stood before the robot, acting calm when really I’m high on tension.

What’s with the robot? Is there some sort of secret behind the rock?

“The rock contains a foreign invader inside. It will damage the world structure greatly.”

An alien, then. Are nukes non-existent nowadays, or are they not effective?

“Nuclear weaponry is inefficient, as the invader requires two hundred and sixty small nuclear-fission warheads.”

Do we even have that many?

And this robot is worth more than two hundred and sixty warheads?

“Correct. The survivability and efficiency is produced greatly by unit 01.”

How do you know all this, anyway?

She gave me the answer, all serious and no tricks.

“I am also a foreign presence. Please enter the cockpit.”

An alien of all things, she is. I was hoping for some logical explanation behind her behavior like repressed isolation, or troubled death with withdrawn symptoms. It just had to be an alien. Curses.

I entered as complied, then she came in and the hatch closed with a vacuum sealed sound. It was dark for a minute, but Rin went past me and sat in the middle of this place. The lights came on, and I really noticed how small this place was. There were large screens in the four sides of the cockpit, each showing different perspectives of the beach. I felt a rumble under my feet, which meant the platform started moving again. I grabbed on to the bottom of the seat and sat down to hold down myself.

“Jeez, this place is really small! I think whoever made this should find more room for people.”

I don’t think the designer expected visitors, Terry.

I looked over my side and saw the beachfront getting smaller and smaller.

How tall is this robot, anyway?

“Approximately 18.3 meters tall.”

Your organization likes them big, huh?

“The invader I will face will be the smallest of the scout task force.”

What the hell? There are more exploding meteors? Exactly how long did the world know this? Or more specifically this ‘organization?’ Why giant robots, and how? And why is Terry still focused on Rin instead of the situation?!

I heard a crackling noise. The meteor began breaking down like a newborn alligator ripping apart its shells. What we saw was uglier, though.

“Oh man, what is that? It’s a spike monster!”

An accurate description. Whatever this alien is, it liked spikes very much. The entire upper torso of this humanoid-structured alien was outfitted with various white spikes covering its scaly black skin. Its head was twisted and stuck out from the chest, seeing the Earth for the first time through its double triple-stacked eyes, totaling six in all.

It also stood a full meter taller than us.

This is the smallest?! What’s the biggest then?

“There is no comparison to the structure size currently in this world.”

I think we need more robots, then.

“Unit 02 is currently under construction. It is ninety-two percent complete. Our mission objective is not to engage completely against the target.”

You mean we’re decoys? How is that safer than staying in the library?!

Just then, the alien twisted its head at where we were just minutes ago and screamed out some sound wave that crushed the innards of the library.

“The target can-”

Yeah, I get the point. So what’s the plan to distract this thing?

“I would recommend you two to squarely attach yourself in a stable position while I engage.”

“We have to what?”

She said shut up, let her work, and find yourself a nice spot. It’s going get bumpy.

The two joysticks on the arm rest panels were pushed forward, and the G-force of acceleration pushed me back a bit against the back side. She brought her shield back a bit, then drove it into the middle of the alien’s body. All of us kept going in one way in mid-air as we rose higher and higher. The alien used the same sound wave attack to rattle us, but it seemed the robot was equipped with a dampener that lessened the effect.

Seeing that the attack didn’t work, the alien took its right arm and enlarged the spikes and focused the curves into one direction. Specifically our direction. Rin disengaged her contact and the shield separated before the spikes could pierce through us. We landed safely on the sand and used a combination of jets and thrusts to increase our distance from the thing.

“Well that didn’t work out too well.”

No duh. The first strike usually doesn’t win the fight. If it was that easy, then it wouldn’t be such a big secret that the world has giant robots underground. Our lives would go on normal, save for a little robot bashing in the horizon.

“Target is approaching with hostility. Preparing for counter-attack.”

Rin activated the rod on the back, which was a miniature energy generator. She toggled the button and red sparks appeared and formed into a mass of raw energy. The shape switched from an axe, spear, and settled on a simple blade.

The alien charged ahead with its spikes in front. We charged along with. Why are we charging at the one with spikes?!

“Engaging maneuver Counter-point.”

She stopped the robot right before the alien, crouched down a little, then swung the face of the shield and pressed it against the torso of the alien. It was lifted over us riding on the shield, then as the alien fell behind us Rin carried her blade and side-slashed the vulnerable backside. She backed off the fallen body and covered it with supporting fire from 20mm bullets that was coming from the headpiece.

“Direct hit! Do we win?”

Like I said before, it can’t be this easy. I bet even that huge of a blow only slightly miffed its body.

“Target is recovering from extensive damage. Time remaining until full recovery is T-53 seconds.”

Why the hell am I always right?!

“But we can still fight, right? That didn’t take much of us.”

“This is a prototype unit. It is only working at seventy-eight capacity and lowering as we speak.”

Then why didn’t you take the ninety-five percent robot in the first place?

She looked at me as she spoke. Now what?

“All En units are designed with a security device that prevents thievery, and only works at full potential for the registered being. If not, the unit works at less than ten percent capability.”

What’s the problem, then? Can’t you remove the security device and get a new one?

“Incorrect, also. The designer passed away and the security device cannot be removed. Now that it’s only the registered pilots that can use them.”

Then what does that have to do with us? Why are we ‘saved’ by you?

I didn’t like where this was going.

“It is because at your age eight, you fingerprints were encoded in the security device at the Geneva Convention for airplane designs.”

What?! I thought that was some lame toy that didn’t work! That box with the red knobs was the key to using these robots?!

“That’s awesome! You’re a destined robot pilot!”

Somehow…just somehow, I don’t see the shining light of this tunnel.

Where’s the light? Hell, where's my script?