Cocona cautiously stepped into the ruined stone structure, a bit of a small pantheon carved out of what looked like sandstone. She tried to prop herself up on a half-standing column, but her injured legs gave way, sending her crashing to the floor of the temple. Just then, she looked up at the back wall of the small temple and saw a flash of light, unveiling a strange floating object. She covered her eyes at the light as the voice in her head continued.
“Cocona… I leave this power… in your young hands… the safety of this planet…”
“Agh…what are you talking about?! I don’t know any--“
“No time… receive… my blessing…”
As the light receded, what was left behind was a large mechanical sphere-like object with several rings encircling it. The core of this object consisted of a red crystal with several shells rotating around it, the innermost shell being spherical while the outer shells were rings of various shape that rotated within one another in differing orbits. Just as she began to wrap her head around the strange shape, it dematerialized into a stream of photons that seemed to enter straight into Cocona’s body.
“A-AAHHH!! What are you--“
“Do not fear… I am the Heart of Gaea… one day you will realize… our purpose…”
Upon those words, Cocona began to feel an effect on her not unlike that of Resta…and all her wounds were healed. She could stand again like the wreck and the fall never even happened.
“Ahh…I…I don’t know how you did that, but, thank you. I-I really don’t know what the heck’s going on h--“
“The… key… I… the… key…”
And with that, she no longer felt the presence of the Heart. All was silent once more, as she gently clutched her chest where it seemingly merged into her. Cocona sighed depressingly.
“Well, this sucks…I get taken out of a race, my board’s busted, there’s some strange object inside me that can TALK, and now I’m nowhere near any sort of relay point! What the hell did I do to deserve this?!”
She angrily kicked up some sand, and while she felt alone…someone, or something, had noticed all her yelling. She wasn’t that far from the mineshaft the race course went through, and where there’s mines, there’s sentry robots. A pack of patrolling Spardan As locked onto her location, and buried themselves in the sands to prepare an ambush. Fortunately, Cocona had finally began to compose herself when the light sandstorm began to clear out and she caught notice of a satellite tower not far from her location.
“Wonder if that old thing’s still got any juice…with the mines being nearby there’s a decent shot. If I can get those capacitors hummin’ I might just be able to relay a distress signal…boo, wish I had my board…”
“Cro…I wish you could bail me out of this one…”
Placing the debris of her airboard into her pocket dimensional storage, she set off for the tower on her newly-mended legs.
---END TRACK 04---
- - - - -
Cocona’s journey was expectedly uneventful, and she had to balance her desire to reach her destination with the risk of tiring out, but as the sunset came rolling in she knew she was running out of time. There were very few lights out here, and a night alone in the open desert would be certain death. Before she could dwell too much on that, however, a Spardan burst from a sand dune and tackled her to the ground.
“G-gah!!” screamed Cocona, surprised, as the Spardan pinned her down with one of its legs and raised the other to attack. It slammed down its sharp foot toward her chest, but she managed to roll a bit to the side just in time as it instead tore through a bit of clothing, preparing itself for another strike.
“N-no! Get away!!” yelled Cocona defiantly, somehow finding the strength to grab the robot’s leg and used her momentum to roll over, flipping the robot over in the process. She rolled backwards onto her feet only to see five or six more beginning to fall in behind the initial Spardan. It was an ambush on a helpless young traveler…
“No…no…I am NOT going out like this! I may have never really fought before, but…”
On that thought, Cocona reached for her inventory and took out the only weapon she had--a training staff she recently bought when she took an interest in bo-staff combat as an art, a simple Nyoibo, spinning it around her body and making the staff elongate. It was do or die.
“Come at me, you boo jackasses!!”
Cocona leapt into action, taking off from a brief running start and smacking her staff onto the underbelly of the robot she flipped over with an overhead smash, throwing it into a shock before standing over it and letting out a yell as she thrusted it down through its core.
“So that’s the core…how’d I even perceive that, I’ve never--shit!”
Another Spardan dashed towards her, knocking her backwards a bit, but she retaliated by spinning her staff around her body and coming around to swing it under its legs, spinning around again and smacking its light blue core with a fierce smash, shattering it. Readying her staff again at her side, she ran in between two other Spardans as they both leapt at her simultaneously, dodging both in a backflip as they smashed eachothers’ legs, allowing her to easily finish them off. That left one more, which nimbly dodged her next running strike, allowing it to swipe her down with a leg as it positioned itself over her. It prepared to strike her straight through the head, but in the nick of time, Cocona spotted a wiring harness connected to that leg that she immediately grabbed and ripped out, disabling the leg immediately. Shoving the Spardan off her, she grabbed her staff once more, leapt up, and struck its core with a well-placed strike, leaving the robot motionless. She survived, breathing heavily, and sipped a Monomate to recover from her light scars.
“Phew…I can’t believe I did that…I don’t know how I did, but…that’s it, like hell I’m gonna die out here! I’ve gotta get off this sand rock…”
The radio tower wasn’t far from her now, and she ran after it, staff in hand. As the long shadows of sunset began to creep in, she finally made her way up to the main control panel, taking a moment to catch her breath. The unit fortunately still seemed to have power, though she quickly became discouraged when nothing in the panel was looking familiar to her, despite her shop experience. But the more she looked at it…the more she felt like the two rightmost switches were the correct ones to use, and sure enough, upon activation the tower’s transmission circuitry came to life and awaited her command. By some miracle.
---END TRACK 05---
“How did I…I’ve never even…man, must be my lucky day or something.”
And almost as soon as she got her distress signal sent to the nearest ARKS ship, a barrage of blue photon bullets whizzed right by her face and fried the panel, causing Cocona to jump back and draw her staff once more. She looked up, and a Gilnas was standing over her, core exposed, charging its core’s laser emission.
“Whuh?! Ack!” yelled Cocona as she dove for cover when it fired its laser. This one wouldn’t be so easy, but she readied herself nonetheless. Without a second thought she ran full speed at the enemy, preparing for a lethal strike with her staff, which got promptly interrupted by the Gilnas swinging its arms toward the girl, which she only barely dodged by jumping and rolling forward at the last second. From her position under the robot she whacked at its legs with her staff, but it was having little effect. Glancing up she saw it preparing to pound the ground near her, and she dashed out from under it to narrowly avoid its metallic arm crushing her into the sand.
“Man…this one’s…tough…” panted Cocona, exasperated, as she saw its core open and send another flurry of photon bullets her way. Thankful for the ancient machine’s degraded aim, she jumped back and suddenly realized that this thing looked to have the same core the Spardans had, but hitting it was going to be another story. She readied her staff once more.
“Eat this you stupid rust-bucket!!” yelled Cocona as she ran at the robot once more, ducking under its arm swipe, and leaped up to strike its core…but this machine was a bit more intelligent than its cohorts, and snatched her right out of the air with its other arm, smashing her up against its body.
“Agh…!! H-hey, lemme…g-go!!”
She squirmed and fought but couldn’t break its grip, and the Gilnas flung her back down to the surface with a nasty thud and a cloud of sand. It stood over her, ready to assault her prone body with a hail of photon bullets…until it shot backwards from a rain of heavy fire from above. A nearby recon ship happened to intercept Cocona’s distress signal and arrived just in time, opening fire on the Gilnas once more until it fell over. Seizing the opportunity, Cocona got up and smacked at its core until it was shattered, and the robot laid motionless. Exhausted and beat up, with night settling in along the desert landscape, it was finally time for her to go home. The recon ship arranged for campship pick-up with her home ship Ur and her unexpected nightmare was over.
---END TRACK 06---
- - - - -
The next day, a young bespectacled man with short dark purple hair was getting his usual fill of the latest news headlines in his room before his ARKS shift. While not much of a sports fan, an article caught his eye nonetheless--‘Bartel forfeits! Fails to finish race, Ryo widens championship lead.’ It went on to discuss Cocona’s disappearance late in the race and the enigma of her whereabouts, having not discussed anything about the race’s outcome with the media or the Grand Prix administrative body, putting a scorn on the man’s face.
“I keep telling her how foolish and dangerous this is…” The man shut his eyes and sighed. “Hoping she hasn’t seen this article, she’s gonna be--“
“WHAT the HELL is up with this?! They think I FORFEITED the race because that BOO jerkface Ryo decided to shove me down a ravine?! Urrrrrgh, seriously, this is so unfair!!”
“--pissed.”
The man looked up to see a very angry Cocona fuming in the doorway, holding a media tablet with a vice grip. The only reaction he could come up with while she continued to pace the room ranting was to put his palm to his forehead, though admittedly it wasn’t exactly a bad thing to see her with her usual spunk a mere day after she nearly lost her life several times and an overnight stay in the med ward. His thoughts were thrown off when she grabbed him by the shoulders and began shaking him.
“Cro!! Are you listening to me?! I’m gonna march down there right now and bust some freaking heads until--“
He simply put his hand on her head, and slightly smiled at her.
“Sis, calm down. Don’t you think you should slow this down a bit? Yesterday could have been so much worse, I really think you should reevaluate the--“
“Oh, HERE WE GO. Another one of Croix’s ‘why don’t you do something useful with your life and join the ARKS military’ talks. I can recite these word for word by now! Look, I’ll be fine, I just need to get my board fixed up and…erm…’discuss’ a few things with the Grand Prix guys!”
Croix sighed again, folding his arms. “Cocona…I still don’t get your disdain for the ARKS. They could create so many opportunities for you, as they have for me and so many others. They allow me to provide for you, the only family I have left. You haven’t been the same since I got promoted to General two cycles ago, so what is it?”
“I just…I just don’t get it! You guys spend so many resources scoping out these clearly-inhabited planets, disrupting who-knows-how-many habitats for some ridiculously impossible colonization crap! You really think we’re better off on freaking Amduscia than we are here?! What’s wrong with the ships??”
“These aren’t going to sustain us forever, sis. Look, there’s a lot of good resources on these planets and studying their lifeforms will help us understand more about this journey. We need a new home. And did you forget our original mission, the Darkers? If we don’t stop them…”
“Well…well…um…”
“What? You get to this point every time we talk, so come out with it already!”
Cocona looked away a bit. “Why…why does it have to take…you…gah, just, forget it. I’m tired, I’m just gonna catch a nap or something…”
Croix groaned a bit, watching her walk over to her bed. “Hey.”
“What?!”
“You never did tell me what happened down there. And I’m not leaving for duty until you tell me. Something’s clearly been bothering you and you won’t say a word, and there was evidence of combat in your old clothes. So…what happened?”
“.....”
---END TRACK 07---
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Originally Posted by AIDA
I haven't played Ar Tonelico so I'm probably missing some of the references. I have no idea if the Heart of Gaea or Croix are from that game... but on the other hand, it's also nice not knowing too much because it's more of a surprise when I find out.
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