My name is Shouichi Kanoe. For five years, I toiled endlessly as a sell sword with one goal: survive. Well two if you count making enough money to keep my old man afloat. Now I will fulfill my father's living wish, to find my brother and clear his name. To do this I must become someone else, I must become something else.

And I think I’ve taken the first step towards that today. Or rather leap would probably be a better way to phrase it. Or maybe lunge? My internal rambling was thrown off as I heard the doc’s assistant through my helmet, “Launch Tube initiating. Good luck Shouichi.”

The lights alongside the launch tube lit up as the platform below me began rapidly traveling up the launch tube. I was sure my face would be doing that thing where your lips peel back because of how fast you were going if I wasn’t wearing a helmet. I’d be warned about the j-forces or whatever, but it was a totally different experience feeling it first hand. Reaching the exit, I could hear my bones begin to creak as I grit my teeth. I tightened my grips on the hand guards.

That was weird right? Conventional wisdom would say to let go of the grips so that the launcher could launch you right? Well what if I told you this was actually just the launcher for the launcher. Or rather, launchers. The hand guards slid out of a socket to either side of me as the launch pad pushed me up through the launch tube. I sailed through the air at ridiculous speeds, quickly hurtling towards the meteor. Yet, I could feel myself beginning to slow down.

It gave me a moment to catch up with the moment. My head had barely processed how many miles of the sky I had been flung through. I blinked, thinking back to that mother and her child again. I had barely registered how slow my ascent gotten as I wonder if they had been able to catch back up with their tribe. I hope that they had. And that just meant that I needed to protect them all. I gripped the hand rails in my hands and the air around me grew steamy. The rectangular ends of the hand rails began glowing.

You see these weren’t just simple guards I was meant to hold on to. They erupted with a bright orange red hue as I was propelled through the sky at ridiculous speeds. You see these oddly shaped hand guards in my hands were the real “launcher.” Luckily for me they packed more than enough “ooomph” to get me the rest of the way to the meteor.

“HAAAAAA! COMEEEE ONNNNNN!”

I tossed the launchers aside as I basically belly flopped into the golf kart sized asteroid. I was basically hugging and straddling this thing when I realized a few things. 1. This asteroid was a lot smaller than I thought. 2. I probably looked pretty silly like this. 3. Now that I was here, I wasn’t sure how I was going to deal with this.

“Hey uhhh Doc? You there?” I spoke into the helmet.

“We hear you Shouichi! Have you made contact?” I heard the doc’s voice respond.

“Yeah.” I responded kind of begrudgingly.

“Have you realized you don’t know what to do from here?” The doc asked.

“Yeah.” I responded kind of begrudgingly again.

“You need to destroy the asteroid! It’s the only thing you’ll be able to manage in your current shape.”

“I can’t! I’m already too low, unless I break them down into really tiny pieces they’ll still hurt someone!” I protested. Yeah okay, maybe it wouldn’t destroy an entire forest or something, but people and animals were still going to get hurt.

“What if… what if I just push it back into space?!” There was a pause for so long that I thought my helmet broke, until I heard the doc respond. “You want to push the asteroid back into space?”

“Yeah! Let’s do that!” I responded excitedly to the doc.

“HOW THE HECK DO YOU PLAN ON DOING THAT?! REMINDER YOU CAN’T FLY! YOU HAVE NOTHING TO PUSH OFF OF?! HOW ARE YOU GOING TO CREATE A BACK PRESSURE AGAINST IT?!”

The doc started shouting about a lot of things I didn’t understand. I narrowed my eyes as I began adjusting myself, “Look doc. I don’t know a lot about a lot of that stuff!”

“What I do know… Is that sometimes you don’t get to choose what to do,” I continued as I tucked the asteroid into my shoulder, posing my feet towards the planet. “Or even if you should do it.”

The vents lining along the legs and back of my suit began glowing. If it wasn’t already steamy from the heat of the meteor, it sure was as my suit exerted energy from every thruster it could. It wasn’t going to do much, these thrusters were meant to compensate for the bulk of the suit and help me corner faster. Regardless, I began pushing against the meteor as the thrusters provided some minor resistance.

“Just that you have to do something!”

I continued to concentrate my mana. That was all I was really ever good at. I never could form it into a spell or anything useful. I was focusing so hard I barely noticed the flaming mana mixing with the thrusters. I was just focusing on drawing up as much of it as I could. This was the trick that got me into the academy in the first place. Even if I was expelled for being unable to use it, I always told myself I was special because I had so much mana. That meant I could do anything.

“Professor the suit’s temp-rature -bzzt- going into d-ngerous territ-ries!”

“That ast-roid will burn him -bzzt-!”

“Prof-sor -bzzt- from ins-de -bzzt- s–t.”

The radio was breaking out. I was on my own, and I had to think of something fast or else this asteroid was going to burn me up along with the Free Territories. Despite the situation, I had to hold back a chuckle because I realized I was basically doing a hand stand push up against an asteroid. I grit my teeth and pushed as hard as I could.

“HAAAAAAAAAA!”

I shouted at the top of my lungs as I tried to pull every ounce of physical and magical strength from my body. I was glad no one could hear me over the radio right now. That meant I could scream as loud as I wanted. I guess it felt a little like hiding under this asteroid, despite standing in front of the entire continent. That was why I asked for the helmet in the first place. I’d been called a cry baby too many times in my mercenary life. With this helmet, no one would be able to see.

The downside was that I couldn’t wipe the tears that streamed down my cheeks. My arms burned and ached. The began to buckle as the asteroid pushed forward. I had bitten off way more than I could chew. As I began to give up, I couldn’t help but think back to that mother and her child. It was odd that I kept thinking about them, but it didn’t matter. That was right, I couldn’t give up because they were still counting on me.

“I… I can do this!”

I hit my forehead against the asteroid, pushing back against it with my head along with my arms. I pushed so hard that my faceplate cracked before falling away. I have to say, my head’s harder than a lot of rocks, but this asteroid kind of hurt as I slammed my forehead against it. Between the tears streaming against my face, I could hear my suit begin to beep rapidly as the blue gemlight on my chest began to glow red. Was this it..? Was the suit done?

“No… NO! DON’T FALL APART NOW!”

The magitech armor seemed to begin opening around the red gem, but rather than ejecting me from the armor it seemed to begin venting steam and orangish red glimmers of energy. Other ports along the suit began to follow. Then the thrusters that had originally only been providing minimal pushback began firing with the same force as an attack, adding to force against the asteroid. At the same time as the glow began to envelope the suit, my body felt lighter. I could do this.



“LET’S GOOOOOOOOOO!!!!”

I pushed forward with the magitech suit, feeding it as much of my mana as it could take. I couldn’t believe my eyes, it felt like I was actually pushing the asteroid back. I locked my forehead against it one more time, mustering all of my strength into my arms as the magitech suit focused my radiant energy towards my feet and back. I pushed with everything I had, finally launching the asteroid back where it came from.

“Nice…”

But that was about all I had in me. God that was tiring. Maybe I’d take a nap before I landed. How was I going to land again? Oh yeah that’s right, I can’t fly. Oh well, that’s a problem for future Shouichi. Right now it’s nap time Shouichi.

“Good work Little Light.”


[[Abilities Used: ExSEED, Burning Attack]]
[[To Be Continued In Next Training]]