Three weeks trapped within the humming, sterile womb of Merus's starship felt like an eternity scraping against Shinji's soul.
The vessel, a marvel of iridescent alloys and softly glowing control surfaces, was spacious enough, equipped with nutrient synthesizers that produced surprisingly palatable food and a sophisticated entertainment network offering glimpses into countless alien cultures. Yet, it was a gilded cage. The endless starscape outside the viewport, initially awe-inspiring, had devolved into a monotonous tapestry of distant suns and swirling nebulae, a constant reminder of the unfathomable distance from everything he'd ever known; and everything he'd lost. The recycled air tasted stale, the constant low thrum of the engines a maddening drone in his skull. His muscles, honed by years of martial arts and recently amplified by Voidheart Surge, craved exertion, space, anything beyond these smooth, curved walls.
Shinji paced the central chamber, the vibrant yellow and green ends of his hair seeming dull under the artificial light. He kicked lightly at a bulkhead, the soft thud echoing his frustration. "I'm tired of being in this glorified tin can already," he grumbled, running a hand through his hair. "Three weeks, Merus! Three weeks of recycled air, synthesized mystery meat, and watching alien sitcoms or whatever. Even with food and 'connexion,'" he air-quoted the word with dripping sarcasm, "I'm climbing the damn walls. I feel like a lab rat."
Merus, a statue of calm cerulean amidst Shinji's restless energy, didn't look up from the holographic star chart shimmering before him. His pearlescent suit seemed to absorb the soft light. "Patience is a terrestrial virtue you might cultivate, Shinji," he replied, his voice the steady hum of cosmic certainty. "We traverse interstellar gulfs, not city blocks. We are almost there. This," he gestured vaguely at the ship, "is the fastest vessel capable of sustaining organic life over such distances. Were I alone..." He trailed off, a flicker of something like wistfulness crossing his ageless features. "...I would have crossed this void in minutes."
Shinji stopped pacing, fixing Merus with a look of pure exasperation. "Then why? Why wouldn't you use that… god-mojo and just take me with you? Wrap me in a bubble of divine air or something! This feels like torture!"
Merus finally turned, his glacial eyes meeting Shinji's. The look held no reproach, only the weight of immutable physics. "First," he stated calmly, "you cannot breathe the raw vacuum of the interstellar medium, divine bubble or not. Your biology, even enhanced, is fundamentally carbon-based and oxygen-dependent. Second," his tone grew slightly sharper, "the velocities I attain when moving unencumbered... they are not survivable for mortal flesh, Trascender or not. The acceleration alone would reduce your body to its constituent atoms before your neurons could register the pain. You would evaporate, Shinji. Not even your Immortality passive could reassemble you from subatomic plasma scattered across light-years."
Shinji scowled, crossing his arms. "But I am Immortal. And I regenerate. Instantly, if I'm conscious! Surely that counts for something?"
"Even so," Merus countered, his voice dropping, carrying an unsettling gravity, "your mind. The sheer, incomprehensible sensory overload of traversing folded space-time at such velocities... it would shatter your consciousness. You might regenerate a body, Shinji, but what would inhabit it? A broken echo? A vegetable shell? The 'you' that seeks vengeance, that remembers your sister's laugh... that 'you' could be erased long before your cells finished knitting back together. The mind is more fragile than flesh, especially under such extremes." He paused, seeing the dawning horror in Shinji's eyes. "It is... complicated. Unnecessarily risky. This vessel, while slow by my measure, is safe."
"Complicated doesn't even begin to cover it," Shinji muttered, slumping against the cool bulkhead, the fight momentarily draining out of him. The thought of losing himself, his memories of Kiyomi, his aunt, even the rage that fueled him... it was a terror worse than physical annihilation.
Suddenly, Merus stiffened. The holographic star chart flickered violently. A low, dissonant klaxon Shinji had never heard before began to pulse through the ship, casting the chamber in alternating washes of crimson and stark white light. Merus's head snapped towards the main viewport, his cerulean skin seeming to pale. "Oh, damn it all to the primordial dark!" The curse, raw and utterly uncharacteristic, sent a jolt of ice down Shinji's spine.
"What?!" Shinji pushed off the wall, heart hammering against his ribs. "What is it? Monarchs?" He instinctively braced himself, the phantom ache in his regenerated torso flaring.
"Worse," Merus hissed, his fingers flying over the now-frantic holographic controls. "Third-degree spatial instability! Rogue asteroid field! Not natural… the debris field churn is too violent, too… directed." His eyes narrowed, scanning the tactical display that superimposed itself over the starfield.
The command came a fraction of a second too late.
The impact wasn't a single blow. It was an avalanche in the void. Something massive and jagged, moving with impossible, silent speed, slammed into the starboard flank. The sound was a physical assault; a deafening, metallic SCREECH of tortured alloys tearing apart, coupled with a bone-jarring CRUNCH that threw Shinji off his feet. He slammed into the opposite bulkhead, the breath exploding from his lungs in a gasp that tasted of copper. Gravity fluctuated wildly, pinning him to the wall, then releasing him to float for a terrifying instant before slamming him down onto the deck. Sparks erupted from shattered conduits overhead, raining down like deadly fireflies. The klaxon became a continuous, mind-numbing shriek.
"Asteroids?!" Shinji choked out, scrambling to his knees, only to be thrown sideways as another impact rocked the ship, this time from below. Alarms screamed from every console. The viewport flickered, showing a chaotic ballet of tumbling rock the size of mountains, glinting dully against the starfield, filling the space where clear void had been moments before. "We're in open space! How?!"
"Warp wake displacement! Tractor minefield! Doesn't matter!" Merus roared over the cacophony, his form a blur of blue light as he wrestled with the controls. The ship shuddered violently, engines groaning in protest. A spiderweb of cracks raced across the reinforced viewport. "Hull integrity failing! Primary propulsion offline! We're caught in the gravity shear!"
Another impact, colossal and final. The viewport didn't crack; it imploded.
The universe inverted. Shinji felt the air ripped from his lungs not by impact, but by the sudden, absolute absence of pressure. A roar louder than any sound filled his ears; the scream of atmosphere evacuating into the infinite cold. He was flung towards the gaping maw where the viewport had been, towards the silent, lethal dance of asteroids. Debris; chairs, conduits, shards of crystal; tumbled past him into the hungry dark.
He had a horrifying glimpse of Merus, anchored by some unseen force, one hand outstretched towards him, eyes wide with an emotion Shinji had never seen there before: pure, unadulterated panic. "SHINJI!"
Then, the cold. It wasn't the chill of winter; it was the utter negation of heat, searing in its intensity. It bit through his clothes, through his skin, into his bones. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't scream. His vision tunneled, stars blurring into streaks of light. He felt something… tear. A jagged edge of spinning hull plating, whirling past in the explosive decompression, caught him across the midsection. There was no pain, just a shocking sense of separation, of profound wrongness. He looked down, his thoughts sluggish, syrupy. Crimson globules, shimmering with bizarre beauty in the zero-g, drifted away from his lower half… which was tumbling in a different direction.
*I-* The thought died unborn.
His consciousness flickered, a candle guttering in a hurricane. The last thing he registered before the dark claimed him was Merus's voice, strained and desperate, cutting through the fading roar in his mind: "Damn it! We were so close...! Wait... I see it! The Planet! The field boundary!"
Suchumus.
"SHINJI! HANG ON! JUST HANG ON!"
Then came the light. Not the gentle light of awakening, but the all-consuming, annihilating glare of the ship's breached fusion core detonating. Shinji Kazuhiko, or what remained of him, was engulfed in a silent sun. Limbs vaporized. Torso shredded. Consciousness extinguished like a snuffed spark.
Merus watched the detonation bloom, a brief, furious star snuffed out almost instantly by the vacuum. Grief was a luxury he couldn't afford. Calculation, cold and precise, took over. Unconscious already? Of course. Voidheart Surge amplifies, but even the power of a peak human is still dust before a starship's fusion heart detonating in your face. His gaze locked onto the largest remaining piece; Shinji's head, miraculously intact, protected for a split-second by a fragment of bulkhead, now spinning lazily amidst the expanding debris cloud. Suchumus filled the view now, its swirling blues, greens, and vast mountain ranges terrifyingly close, separated only by the shimmering, almost invisible barrier of the planet's divine-repelling field.
Time is tissue. Eight seconds. Eight seconds to cross the distance at speeds that would liquefy a planet. Eight seconds before Shinji's unconscious body drifted too far, or the field's edge caused unforeseen damage to the detached head.
*He won't feel it. He can't feel it. Unconscious. Neural activity near zero.*
The decision was made in a nanosecond. Merus moved.
Space-time folded around him. To an outside observer, he simply vanished from the wreckage and reappeared beside Shinji's spinning head. The transition was instantaneous. His form flickered, static dancing across his pearlescent suit. He dared not grasp the head directly; instead, he enveloped it in a cocoon of compressed space, a pocket dimension no larger than a fist, shielded from acceleration forces.
Suchumus loomed. The planet's protective field hummed against Merus's senses, a grating, discordant frequency that vibrated in his very essence. It was agony just being this close, like holding bare flesh against a plasma torch. He couldn't enter. Shinji had to.
"Alright," Merus gritted out, the words lost in the silent void, spoken more to himself than the unconscious fragment of his charge. "This… is going to be harsh."
He focused his will, channeling power not for speed, but for a single, precise kinetic impulse. He threw the spatial cocoon containing Shinji's head. Not gently. Not carefully. With the focused violence of a god hurling a comet.
The cocoon pierced the shimmering barrier of the divine-repelling field. There was a brief, violent flash of coruscating energies as incompatible forces clashed. Then, it was through.
Merus watched, breath held in a chest that didn't need air, as the tiny speck hurtled downwards into Suchumus's atmosphere. It glowed briefly, trailing fire like a meteorite. Then, impact.
Even from orbit, Merus perceived it. A silent bloom of light and dust erupting in a desolate, mountainous region far from any Acrosian settlement. A miniature sun birthed from a human head impacting at hypersonic velocities. Shinji Kazuhiko had arrived on Planet Suchumus.
Consciousness returned like a sledgehammer blow to a migraine.
*Ugh… My head… feels like it got used as a planetary impact crater…*
Shinji groaned, the sound raspy and unfamiliar in his own throat. Pain; a deep, pervasive ache that seemed to emanate from every cell; throbbed through him. It was different from the sharp agony of Kokuto's blade or the tearing sensation of the spaceship's demise. This was the bone-deep exhaustion of total systemic overload, the aftermath of complete annihilation and forced re-creation.
He blinked, eyes gummy and unfocused. Sterile white light filtered down from an unseen source. He was lying down. On something firm, yet yielding. A bed? He tried to move his arm. It felt leaden, unresponsive, but it moved. He flexed fingers. They worked. He tentatively touched his face. Nose. Mouth. Eyes. All present. He patted his chest, his stomach. Whole. Intact beneath a soft, unfamiliar fabric. The hypersensitive, raw feeling from his previous regenerations was gone, replaced by this deep, cellular fatigue.
*Where…?* Memory flooded back in a nauseating wave. The endless starship. The argument. The terrifying klaxon. The shriek of tearing metal. The impossible cold. The separation… The blinding light of the explosion. Merus's desperate shout.
*The crash. I lost consciousness… Deadly injured. Cut to pieces. Vaporized?* He remembered the sensation of flying… no, being thrown… and then… impact. Utter, final darkness. *Regeneration. Must have regenerated… again*. Voidheart surge's cold calculus: *Twice near-death before. Now three times? How strong does that make me?*
He pushed himself up onto his elbows, muscles protesting. The room came into focus. It was small, circular, with smooth, curved walls made of a pearlescent, opalescent material that seemed to glow faintly from within. No windows. A single, low archway led out. The air was cool, clean, smelling faintly of ozone and something herbal, alien. The bed was a simple, sturdy frame with a mattress of woven, resilient fibers. Hospital? But… alien.
*Merus!* Panic spiked. *Was he okay? He'd been outside the ship…* Shinji strained his senses, trying to feel the familiar, ancient presence. Nothing. Just the hum of the strange room and the pounding in his own head. *The planet's field… Merus can't enter. He must be outside… watching? Waiting?*
He had to know where he was. He swung his legs over the side of the bed, surprised at how steady he felt despite the deep fatigue. He was dressed in simple, loose-fitting trousers and a tunic made of a soft, grey, fibrous material. Acrosian clothing? He stood, taking a cautious step, then another. His body felt… heavier. Suchumus's gravity? Stronger than Earth's. Noticeably so. Good for training, he thought grimly.
He walked towards the low archway. It irised open silently at his approach, revealing a short corridor leading to another, larger archway filled with soft, natural light.
Stepping through, Shinji stopped dead.
*What the…?*
The vista that unfolded before him stole his breath, momentarily erasing the pain, the fatigue, the gnawing worry about Merus. He stood on a wide balcony, part of a structure seemingly carved into the side of a colossal, rose-quartz cliff face that glittered in the light of Suchumus's twin suns; one a brilliant gold, the other a softer, larger crimson orb hanging low on the horizon. Below, stretching as far as the eye could see, was a landscape of impossible beauty and staggering scale.
Verdant, jungle-covered plateaus gave way to valleys filled with forests of towering, crystalline trees that refracted the sunlight into dazzling rainbows. Rivers the color of liquid mercury wound through deep canyons. In the far distance, mountains scraped a sky streaked with hues of violet and emerald, their peaks capped with snow that glowed faintly pink. The air was crisp, clean, carrying the scent of exotic blooms and the distant cry of unseen, soaring creatures. Bioluminescent mosses clung to the cliff face below him, glowing with soft blues and greens even in the daylight. It wasn't just beautiful; it was alive with a vibrancy, a raw, untamed majesty that made Earth seem pale and domesticated.
"Welcome to Suchumus," The voice came from beside him, deep, resonant, and utterly calm.
Shinji whirled, instinctively dropping into a defensive stance despite his fatigue.
It stood beneath the archway;barely five feet, yet dense as forged iron. Wild white hair, tied back, framed a face lost in gloom. Only the eyes pierced the dark: two shards of cold, luminous gold, ancient and unblinking. Burnished copper plates;shoulders, forearms, shins;gleamed dully over shadow-cloth. No weapon showed, yet the air around it thrummed with coiled violence. Utterly still. Utterly watching.
A nod. Brief. Unreadable.
"We pulled you from the crater."
The voice was low, stone grinding stone. Those gold shards slid over Shinji;assessing wounds, exhaustion, fear.
"...Dramatic landing."