Ye Chong gave a stare of a husband looking at a dying wife at Yu Di. It was harshly devastated by the air raid, like Harmony back then. And this one could be better off at the dump. How fateful he met Yu Di, such fitting mech to his personality with such striking gadgets in-built and he lost it. The cool appearance, the cartridge, the four arms, everything had become the lump of iron on the ground. It was heartbreaking to Ye Chong as not only Yu Di was a rare all-rounder, the four arms on it allowed his overwhelming hand movement speed to exert the maximum output. After pairing with various models of mechs, Yu Di was undeniably the perfect consort!
And… the former glory was gone! He took a good look at it, his hands caressing it in sympathy. Nothing like Yu Di before was remained. It was fully charred. The body was cracked from the impulse caused by the energy collision. The arms… It was a pain in Ye Chong’s heart to even mention it. Only the arm with the cartridge was intact, the rest had probably raised upon the heaven, with a tiny bit of them stuck at the body. The state was hopeless, as the missiles were specially tailored by Fred the Great, those were unique and non-renewable, except if they encountered Fred the Great again… Wonder how many light years it would take if they were going to meet again.
Other than the engine, none of the other parts were functional…
Hei Zi felt the cracks and scratches on Yu Di with his hands, "Gosh! Did they cause these? But I must say you are fortunate to make it out alive!" exclaimed Hei Zi. Though the fact that he abandoned Ye Chong was haunting them. It could be for Nan Nan’s safety, still… Hei Zi couldn't forgive himself!
Nan Nan sat across Ye Chong’s shoulders with her hands clipped on Ye Chong’s collar to prevent falling as she began her commentary, "Poor… poor big, big mech!" Yu Di was about 20 meters tall, which was twice the length of an ordinary mech, hence the "big, big" statement from Nan Nan.
"Sigh," Hei Zi took a moment to inspect the mech, his face looked depressed, his head shaking. "There’s nothing we can do. What a waste to a good mech."
Ye Chong stood before Yu Di, his hands stuck on its body, hoping that a miracle could happen. Maybe he could still feel the heartbeat somewhere! Maybe he could ask Hei Zi’s master to try fixing it! Yes! "Ye." Mu’s voice came ringing in his head, "According to the outcome of my analysis, the probability of reversing the damage done to Yu Di is below 5%." An official declaration of death from the expert.
"Big brother…" Nan Nan’s words came weakly.
Ye Chong was calm on the outside but he was wailing on the inside! Although he had Guardian, which by any chance would perform way better than Yu Di in his hand, its attacking range was much smaller than Yu Di. It was also a typical model for usage within the atmosphere, which raised another issue of whether the miniature mech could travel in space like Yu Di before. And then capability of combating in space… you've got to be joking! Chances were Gu Shaoze never thought about using this suit to fight in space! The mobility of the Guardian was granted by Ye Chong’s own explosive capacity of muscles plus the magnification by the miniature engines. You could not find anything to exert forces on to produce movement! Ye Chong might have ended up in space and got stuck in the weightless state. There could be meteorites for him to step on but meteorites do not come every minute! Without the amazing burst of speed in short distance for survivability, the Guardian was merely a bullseye for the other pilots to aim on!
Frankly speaking, Yu Di was more balanced in all aspects. It was a brawling model but with the addition of the cartridge, the aspect of being able to do ranged attack was fulfilled. And it would still be a good model for brawling in space!
Ye Chong was in the Orbits - most likely he would encounter battles in space and fortunately he got the Guardian - the finest weapon on the ground, which had zero capacity in space. Ye Chong tried to be optimistic but he could not! How could Ye Chong not be sorrow about this? Moreover, thanks to the grand debut by his Guardian, the entire infantry of the Orbits should be coveting the miniature amazement. He could imagine how thousands of Dawn mechs would eat him up the moment he appeared in a golden suit, glaring at the pedestrian like the LED of the street!
You had finally found the Excalibur somewhere in the world, but you must hide it or you'll die, you could not wield it in front of people, you could not even use it to chop trees because the people would come like a nest of bees hunting you down and for all the trouble you broke the chopping knife of your house - this probably summed up Ye Chong’s gloomy salad days.
"Don’t be sad, pal!" By looking at how grievous Ye Chong was, Hei Zi smiled with his teeth shining brighter on his tanned skin, "The new does not come without the old leaving." There was some mystery running on his face. It was weird to see a sincere man like him to put up such a mischievous face.
Ye Chong stared at Hei Zi skeptically. Hei Zi quickly lowered his head. Huh… Ye Chong could see somehow Hei Zi was trying to hold his laugh the whole time. What was so funny?
It was dinner and Ye Chong had it with Nan Nan and Hei Zi as usual. The mentioned grandfather had never appeared before the dining table. Sometimes Ye Chong wondered if the sincere brother and sister were having a fictional grandfather who was in pink of health in spite of an old age.
Hei Zi was happily having his meal though. Back then, Nan Nan was a monster to tame during dinner time. It took him wrestling effort to get the girl sitting still to finish her food. Things had changed ever since Ye Chong arrived. Nan Nan was tamed by herself, where every dinner ran smoothly. The first time it was Hei Zi that could feel the family life was such wonder.
Ye Chong lay on the bed after dinner. Little Nan Nan was sleeping on her bed nearby. Soundly Nan Nan slept, anyone could have told the little girl had a great time in the day. Nan Nan did have her own room but… when Ye Chong decided to move in, she showed persistence of moving in along as she rampaged in the living room, demanding Hei Zi to take action. In the end, the kind Brother Hei Zi lifted her bed all the way to Ye Chong’s room.
Ye Chong was researching about mentalist. The training was sadly not as effective as he expected. Probably as the databank had mentioned, his talent was terribly inadequate in this. He was not going to give up however. He might had an inadequate mana to do mentalist efficiently but he knew his ability was being enhanced, just that the rate was too measly he could not tell. He needed it anyway. Every bit of improvement meant something!
He started communicating with Mu after researching for quite some time.
"Hey Mu, say if we were still at home, what would have happened?" asked Ye Chong, feeling nostalgic of Trash Planet-12. The world outside was more than entertaining yet it was bewildering to Ye Chong sometimes. It felt like Ye Chong started off like a blinded rat in a maze, heading into nothing, having no plan about his next move, hitting into walls and breaking them from time to time. He had nothing in mind and only acted upon the situation coming to him, only acted based on the surroundings.
What should he do the day after? Ye Chong did not hold a kind of concept for this. It was solely a matter of survival - it was not about what to do the day after, it was about whether if he could live till the day after. The outside world was known to be dangerous and Ye Chong was taking extreme care of himself the whole time but slowly he realized that, unlike the Trash Planet, the outside world did not seem to have a sense of alert all the time, since… most people were safe most of the time!
On the Trash Planet, Ye Chong’s sole purpose was to stay alive. However after leaving the planet, the purpose was no longer a thing in his mind, which confused him a little. After interacting with ordinary citizens from the other planets - getting into knowing them, talking to them, understanding their jokes, getting involved in their lives, somehow the nature’s law of survival he had strong faith on was cloaked by modernity and had transformed into something foreign there to him. Without the stress on survivability, with the new set of law so strange, his life felt relaxing yet unreal…
Sensed the paradigm shift in Ye Chong, Mu wanted to comment something sensible, but he was not Shang, his mood matrix was unable to compute the changes, "Based on the information obtained, possibly you are still fighting with mutated lifeforms and you should be 40% behind your training progress compared to you here." That was Mu's answer towards Ye Chong’s odd inquiry as he tried imagining life lingering on Trash Planet-12.
"Mhm. But that sort of life was boring anyway! Mu, do you have an ambition?" asked Ye Chong.
"Ambition?" Mu tried processing the term perceived but the definition puzzled him. Well if it was Shang, he probably should have a motivational talk an hour long with Ye Chong by then!
"Umm… Ambition is something like what you would want to do the most in the future!" Ye Chong tried explaining with the limited knowledge in his head.
"If that is the case, my ambition would be staying by Ye’s side," flatly his answer came.
It was a little touching to Ye Chong though!
"Hey."
?!
Out of sudden, Ye Chong was alarmed by the whisper, he heard the footsteps approaching him.
The door was knocked and was opened, oh it was Hei Zi. Ye Chong was relieved. "Ye, I-" Hei Zi shut his mouth abruptly upon seeing Nan Nan sleeping soundly in the bed. He then gestured Ye Chong to come out in excitement.
Ye Chong tiptoed to the outside of the room. Once he was out, Hei Zi came right to his face, whispering in leaking joy, "Come with me. My master wants to see you!"