Chapter 3: The Reassignment

Arc I: Purge

Chapter 3: The Reassignment

Perspective: Miles Eremita

...Huh? Where the hell am I? I was just taking a nice nap on my living room couch… and now I’m suddenly in the Whitetail Woods? What the hell?

I get up and flare my magic, sending the lines from the circles on my palms and feet to my wrists and ankles, then jump up into the air and above the trees to find where I am. It seems I am about one and a half kilometers from the Everfree Forest. I only know of the Whitetail Woods because I passed them on my way back from crossing the Divide with Luna. I put the in the back of my mind for now and try to focus on where I’m going.

I start using the trees as boosters for my magic-powered jumps so I can move faster. If I got sent into some area like this as a cheap parlor trick, some ponies is getting shit on...

Thirty minutes later, and I find myself standing before the twisted trees and dead or tall grass that signifies the Everfree Forest. I go to walk in, but pause when I feel something out of place. I can’t put my finger on it, but something just feels… wrong.

I hear… is that an engine? No, can’t be, too quiet… I look up anyway, and to my surprise, I see a large sophisticated metal aircraft flying away very quickly. How the hell did aircraft get up to the surface? As far as I remember, everything’s still buried under three kilometers of solid, packed earth.

I promptly turn around and start running in the opposite direction, towards where the craft was coming from. Looked like it was traveling from the woods. There has to be something over there.

I flare my magic, bringing the lines back to my ankles and wrists, before jumping into the air, looking around. Wait, what is that? I suddenly see a bright flash of light from over near the clearing I was in last night.

I land and start sprinting in that direction, but when I get there, I find nothing. I quickly look around to search for anything, and I am surprised to find footprints on the ground, which I quickly begin following.

I run along the footprints for about five minutes, before I come to a stop in front of a large river that leads into a ravine. I look around, wondering where the person went, seeing as how the footprints just abruptly stopped.

I see two other humans… I’m still not sure about that… standing about one hundred meters away, near the part of the river that drops into the ravine. An unsturdy wood and rope bridge precariously connects the land on either side.

I start to approach the two people, wondering who they are. They don’t seem to be much of a threat, unlike the last guy.

When I’m almost to the two, the blonde man instantly turns in my direction. Upon noticing that the blonds man has seen something, the man with the dark hair turns to me.

He strides forward and meets me halfway, extending a hand for a handshake. “Nice to meet you. People call me Starkiller.”

“Umm… yes, you as well. Miles Eremita. I have to say, that sounds more like a title than anything. Mind telling me how you got that?”

Before Starkiller can respond, the blonde haired man walks forward and extends his hand out for a handshake. “What’s up? Name’s Naruto Uzumaki-Namikaze.”

“Miles Eremita, Captain of the Spartan Terradisian forces.” I shake hands with him, and notice that his grip is very strong. His calloused hands tell me he has some form of battle experience. That’s just not good, though; most people are supposed to be at least twenty before they can be drafted into any form of battle operation, while this Naruto only looks like seventeen or eighteen.

I turn back to Starkiller, who begins speaking as if that introduction had not happened. “Well, I didn’t actually kill a star. I just threw a starship into it. I also wrecked a starship the size of this country into a planet, and it punched through the crust. Two years later, glorified gigantic boomstick. Though the Republic wasn’t very happy about that.”

“Damn, dude. If you could do that, I don’t think anything stands in your way.”

“That’s where you’re wrong.” Much to my chagrin, I emit a squeak of surprise and turn to Starkiller in astonishment. “I’m just a clone. My progenitor was killed in battle with another of similar power, one they called the Emperor. He survived, though, and he’s been looking for me ever since I turned Light and told Vader to fuck off.” Vader? Eh, I’ll just set it aside, because he doesn’t even realize he said it, so it must not be very pertinent. “Once the Empire learns of Kota’s first venture here, they’ll come looking, and they’re going to bring the whole fucking armada down on me. No big deal, though. It isn’t like that stopped me the last time they tried to do something like that. I’m nowhere near his power level, though I could still beat the shit out of whatever tries to come after me.”

I notice it isn’t really arrogance in his voice, but something else I can’t identify. Naruto turns to me and asks a question. “You said you were a captain. Are you important?”

“Well, back on Terra, I would be.”

“The Spartans seem rather important, too. Who are they?” Starkiller interjects, looking at me quizzically.

“Okay, let me give you a rundown of how powerful we are. I lived in an underground city called Topaz Falls. Topaz Falls had seventeen million people call it home. Of those, one point two million were part of the Terradisian armed forces. Of those, four hundred thousand were in active duty, sent on the front lines to defend Topaz with all the power we could garner. Out of those four hundred thousand, only one hundred were able to call themselves Spartans. During my time on Terra, I was the Lieutenant of the Spartan forces, exceeded in rank by only one person: the Captain, who was actually someone I knew personally. So basically, I was the second highest military personnel in the Terradisian military, and I was the most powerful magic user of all Terra. Based on what you’ve told me, the two of us are at a similar power level.”

“Hey, don’t forget about me!” Naruto cuts across my little speech, and my eyebrow starts twitching, but I exert control and force myself to maintain a calm composure.

Starkiller turns to him. “Oh? And you would say you have our power, too?”

Naruto nods energetically, and quickly begins to explain. “Well, yeah. But it’s a lot more complicated than just ‘I have power because blank,’ and it’s too complicated to explain. Maybe once we get out of this mess, I’ll be able to tell you guys more. But I think the forest is trying to constrict our breathing, so we should probably get moving.”

I nod in agreement. For some reason, now that he’s mentioned it, it does seem to feel like the forest is constricting us. Maybe it’s the trees, with their gnarled and twisted trunks and sharp branches, or the stale, foggy air that I’ve been breathing in since getting back into the forest. Come to think of it, I don’t know how I didn’t notice this before. Maybe freaking the hell out during a pirate ambush put a little perspective on my life.

I just push that aside for now, noticing the other looking at me expectantly. “Well, Naruto’s right. We should probably get out of-”

I’m suddenly and violently cut off as the earth trembles beneath us, cracking and threatening to split open like a damaged sword. I leap to Starkiller and grab his arm, pulling him toward me just as the ground starts to cave toward the ravine. Chunks are torn out and fall into the river far below. Naruto jumps out of the way and grabs my arm, pulling the two of us back further, and it proves a good idea, as the ground beneath where I just was starts to develop massive cracks.

We run back, but we notice a path. What the others don’t see for some reason is the tacky blue mist that is flying away from a damaged castle that lies at the end of the path, along with yet another... human... flying after her, a blue shield with the mark of the crescent moon embedded on it and a sword with a sun as a cross guard, both traveling at nearly supersonic speeds.

They suddenly start running down the path, a sign to me that maybe they did notice. Starkiller is using his ‘Force’ to move his legs faster and get more propulsion, speeding along the ground. I don’t know how Naruto is attaining the same speed, but he’s doing it somehow. Following their lead, I power up my magic, sending the lines halfway up my forearms and halfway up the bottom halves of my legs, before taking off and catching up with them.

Whatever is going on out here, it seems the three of us are the only ones capable of figuring it out.

Author's Note

And they take off after the castle where Nightmare Moon and the unknown human did battle! Sorry if it seems like a bit of a cliffhanger to stop the chapter here, but the word count was getting ahead of me yet again. I intended to stop this as soon as I set up the introductions between Miles, Starkiller and Naruto, but then I realized that it would have left a huge plot hole that gave no explanation as to how they showed up at the site of the battle in the last chapter. Big plot hole means big fan base of pissed off readers, so I had to tie off some loose ends. The rest of that bit will be touched on in the next chapter.

Also, I'm currently working on a quick one-shot for a fellow reader and his author girlfriend, so I'll start working on Chapter 6 when I'm done with that, in about two days.