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I picked up Star Ocean in the summer of ‘99 (I can hear a song in that...)
and have played it through a number of times since. It presently holds
the title of being my favorite RPG, on account of a less cliche than normal
storyline, an absolutely fantastic combat engine, but most importantly,
the sheer variety of interactions that can take place between the available
characters.
In addition to the two core characters, there are ten other characters,
but you can only have six of them with you in any particular game. And
out of those characters, there's a great deal of potential for arranging
your own couplings and endings. Lots of fun and mischief to be had for
all ^_^
That having been said, I wrote this story more on a whim than anything else, in response to the hideous lack of fan fiction for the totally awesome RPG. And because I think there should have been more private actions in the game for this particular character. So I'm making ‘em up now.
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*DANGER*
"What now?!"
*FUEL RESERVES BELOW 2%. EMERGENCY FUEL TANKS
ARE EMPTY*
"I know that already! Go to HELL, you stupid
thing!"
*I AM A MACHINE. THE ONLY PERSON ON THE SHIP
WHO MAY END UP THERE IS YOURSELF WHEN THIS SHIP CRASHES*
The pilot's hand slowly edged towards a compact
blaster on the table, even as she cursed a certain somebody for buying
that aftermarket ‘personality matrix' communication module. It had a sense
of humor that she wouldn't wish upon a tribble, let alone herself. Unfortunately,
she'd thrown out the old communication module and hadn't had time to buy
a new one yet
*VIOLENCE WILL ONLY HASTEN THE DEMISE OF THIS
CRAFT*
She gave the speaker a slightly twisted grin.
"Oh yeah, but since you're part of this craft... besides, I'll feel
much better this way..."
*RECOMMEND IMMEDIATE EMERGENCY LANDING* the
computer suggested, almost sounding hasty.
"Don't you think I'd love to do that?
But WHERE?!?"
*UNCHARTED PLANET NEARBY*
Reluctantly, the pilot lowered the weapon
and sat back down in the command chair. The details were already appearing
on a screen to her left. The planet was an M-class plane, the conditions
nearly perfect for her, if a little hot. If she could land there, she would
be delayed several days, until she could find something to use as fuel.
But she didn't have much of a choice right now...
Buckling into her seat, she turned off the
life support and gravity systems to conserve power. The spaceship went
almost completely silent as the engines were reduced to an idle. Up ahead,
the target planet loomed, slowly growing larger as the
spacecraft coasted in under its own momentum. Already, the entire forward
window was occupied by its presence. She could only hope that her ship
had enough fuel to perform a landing that would let her survive.
Several moments later, the front of the ship
began to heat up from air friction.
*ALERT* the computer's voice rang out.
"What now?"
*Heat shields are deactivated. Entry heat
may ignite fuel*
She cursed. "But I'll run out of fuel if I
turn them on!"
*FIFTEEN SECONDS UNTIL FUEL REACHES CRITICAL
TEMPERATURE.*
And that meant that the ship would never even
have a chance to land. It probably wouldn't do much for her in the beauty
department either. Although she wouldn't be around to complain.
"Put heat shields to 25%," she ordered.
*NOW FORTY SECONDS UNTIL CRITICAL TEMPERATURE.*
"Can this ship land by that time?" she demanded.
*NO.*
She tried again. "Heat shields to 50%. Is
the fuel okay now?"
*SEVENTY SECONDS UNTIL-*
"I don't care!" she snapped. "Is the fuel
okay?"
*YES*
"Then find me a good landing spot."
*INPUTTING DIRECTIONS TO LANDING SYSTEM NOW.*
A screen in front of her flickered on, giving
her a readout on several possible landing locations. After briefly looking
between them, she chose a large plains area. A smooth landing would be
both appreciated and needed right now. She was already
descending at two or three times the recommended speed, in an effort
to reduce the amount of air time.
The ground was approaching fast. Maybe too
fast.
*WILL THE SHIP SURVIVE THE LANDING?* she asked,
her hands rapidly playing over controls, trying to keep the ship stable
enough to land.
*ODDS ARE TERRAIN DEPENDANT. FLAT AREA RECOMMENDED.*
"No kidding," she muttered, pulling the nose
of the plane up. The area was small, and there was a forest in front of
it. If she fell short... things might get bumpy.
The atmosphere was rather thin compared to
other planets she had experience with, and the spacecraft had never been
properly shaped for atmospheric travel. As a result, the ship's descent
was rapidly progressing from ‘unadvised' to ‘unhealthy'.
*FUEL HAS BEEN DEPLETED.*
Her face paled. "But you said the ship could
make it!"
*DEPLETED FUEL CANNOT CATCH FIRE.*
The screens in front of her flickered as the
main power went off-line, replaced with the emergency battery's power.
She was going to fall short.
"If I live through this, I'm going to melt
you down!" she swore, desperately grabbing for a helmet and putting it
on.
She had just thrown down the clear visor when
the ship hit a tree. Things went downhill from there.
******************
She wasn't sure how much later it was, but
eventually, she awoke to a bright light glaring down through her eyelids.
After some experimental shifting, she determined that her arms and legs
had feeling and could move. That known, she immediately used one hand to
help shield her eyes from the glare, the other to ease herself to a sitting
position. The feel of the metal floor told her that she was no longer sitting
on the command chair. Indeed, she couldn't even find the command chair
nearby.
Her eyes rapidly adjusted to the excess of
light, letting her size up her surroundings. She was on her ship
still. The cockpit was about ten feet away now, the chair about ten away
in the opposite direction. Whatever the crash had involved, it had been
bad enough to separate the two of them. Using a shelf to brace herself,
she gingerly got to her feet, immediately feeling lightheaded. She felt
sore all over, but nothing was broken. But a bruise or two might yet make
themselves known.
Making her way to the front of the ship, she
removed the helmet from her head, noting several dents in the surface.
Once again, she breathed a silent prayer of thanks to whatever had kept
her alive this far. The computer screens were blank, informing her of several
possibilities. One, she'd been out for so long, the battery had run dry.
Or two, the ship had been damaged badly enough that the power conduits
had been wrecked.
"Hey, computer?" she ventured.
*WORKING*
Her face lit up in a smile. "Wow, never thought
I'd be glad to hear you, you piece of crap. What's the status of
this ship?"
*NON-REPAIRABLE. ESTIMATED SALVAGE VALUE OF
45000 CREDITS.*
She winced. "That bad, huh? What still works?"
*PERSONAL WEAPONRY ABOARD IS INTACT. TOP PORTION
OF HULL IS INTACT. REAR FOOD STORAGE IS INTACT BUT POWERLESS. POWER GRID
IS SEVERELY DISRUPTED.*
"Could be worse," she admitted. "How much
power does this ship have left?"
*ESTIMATE 5 HOURS AT PRESENT CONSUMPTION.*
"Fine. What about the sensor grid?"
*UNKNOWN. NO POWER.*
"How about information on this planet?"
*SCARCE. NON-FEDERATION CONTROLLED. ORBITING
LARGE ENERGY BODY OF UNKNOWN NATURE. NO FURTHER DATA.*
"Any civilizations?" she inquired.
*UNKNOWN.*
*Go on standby mode," she ordered, "until
I get the sensors working again."
*STANDBY ENGAGED.*
********************
Squeezing out through the mangled doorway was
a task onto itself, but after several attempts, she eventually managed
it. Thankful for her short frame, but resolving to lose some weight in
the future, she carefully stepped out what remained of the left wing. Ten
feet of it had been torn off in a messy fashion and was nowhere to be seen
in the area.
As for the area itself, it was forest. And
nothing but forest. Aside from a long pathway behind the ship, courtesy
of the route her ship had taken to ‘land' here, everything was green. Many
of the trees had to be hundreds of feet tall, and thirty feet around at
their base. Interspersed among the giants, assorted smaller trees tightly
obscured her view beyond a few hundred feet. Occasionally, a creature would
fly overhead, letting out a squawk of indignation. For all she knew, she
had just bulldozed its nest into oblivion during her miserable excuse for
a landing.
No signs of any development.
With a sigh, she forced herself to concentrate
on the task at hand. She needed to get the sensors operational. With luck,
they would be in working condition, only needing power. Once they were
working, she could locate a city and get her hands on some parts and materials,
to repair her ship. If it was possible. If she lucky, this planet would
have a well-developed enough level of technology that she could just buy
a new ship and just leave her old one behind. She had the finances for
it, the only issue was whether they would be worth anything to the culture
that inhabited this planet. IF a culture inhabited this planet.
Carefully, she made her way down to the ground,
aiming for the outside access to the sensor system. Each step felt rather
light, as though she had lost half her body weight. Lighter gravity, she
guessed. The vast majority of planets had a lighter gravity
than the planet she'd grown up on. It came in handy a lot of times.
Like now.
After some rather undignified ground crawling,
she managed to get herself under the ship, facing the sensor array panel.
The protective panel itself had been torn off, hinges and all, but it seemed
to have kept the internals from harm. Unfortunately,
several handfuls of wiring had been attached in such a way that they
would travel with the panel as it swung downwards. Their absence suggested
that they were still attached to the panel, wherever it was now.
She sighed again. Time to start finding parts.
*****************
It was almost two hours later that her work
finally showed signs of success. Actually, she had been somewhat fortunate
to have gotten the work done so quickly. A lot of the parts she had used
had been taken off other devices, and a lot of them had
been buried in wreckage. The lighter gravity had been a bonus when
it came to shifting heavy objects around.
*POWER RE-ESTABLISHED TO SENSORS* the computer
informed.
"About time," she muttered. "So what's their
condition?"
*SHORT-RANGE SENSORS AT 50%. LONG-RANGE SENSORS
ARE INOPERABLE.*
It could have been worse. But not much. "Scan
the surroundings and tell me what you see."
Several beeps ensued, followed by a *SPECIFY
DESIRED DETAILS.*
"The nearest developed area with a repair
bay," she muttered.
*NOT FOUND*
"The nearest source of parts?"
*NOT FOUND*
"Well, how about the nearest city with a big
power plant?" The surest sign of high-technology was that it required a
lot of power.
*NOT FOUND*
She swallowed at that. "How about... any power
plant?"
*NOT FOUND*
"You gotta be kidding me! There's got to be
a power plant somewhere around here!"
*NOT FOUND*
"How about some life forms?" she inquired
weakly. It would be just her luck to crash-land on a planet with no life
on it...
*NUMEROUS LIFE FORMS WITHIN SENSOR RANGE.*
She let out her breath, abruptly aware that
she had been holding it. So there was life here. "How about intelligent
life? Any signs?"
*EVIDENCE OF INTELLIGENT LIFE WITHIN 30 KILOMETERS.*
Now the important issue. "How intelligent?"
*ESTIMATED TO BE BETWEEN 3.2 AND 3.5 ON THE
FEDERATION INTELLIGENCE SCALE.*
Silence.
"You've got to be KIDDING me!" she finally
protested. "You're telling me they don't even have electricity?"
*YES*
She slumped down, fortunately landing on a
bench. She was screwed worse than she'd thought. She could have taken the
prospect of having to repair her ship. She might even have been able to
stomach being killed in the landing. But... to be stranded?
She was screwed with a white-hot poker
to be exact. Her ship had a few hours of power left, and the only intelligent
life around still hadn't thought of the electric lightbulb. To be exact,
they still had 0.5 to 0.8 points to make up on the Federation Intelligence scale before the light bulb happened. Her knowledge that
this typically represented about 30 or 40 years wasn't very encouraging.
She had a hunch that particle accelerators and microchromatic deflector
screens would be scarce as well.
"Seeing as I'm screwed, anything else interesting
around here?" she muttered.
*PLANET EXHIBITS SIGNS OF HERALDIC USAGE.*
That was worth noting. It was considered rather
outdated, but heraldry could do a few interesting things outside of normal
technology. There were some interesting weapons around that used heraldry
as their basis. "How much usage?"
*ESTIMATED TO BE BETWEEN 9.1 AND 9.3 ON THE
FEDERATION HERALDRY SCALE.*
Silence.
"You've got to be KIDDING me!" she exclaimed.
*NO.*
A flicker of hope ignited in her heart. With
that level of heraldic usage... perhaps some improvisation could occur.
"Anything else of note?"
*SPACESHIP IDENTIFICATION BEACON DETECTED.*
Her mouth suddenly felt dry at that statement.
Someone else was here. Someone with a spaceship. "Where?"
*BASED ON PLANET'S MAGNETIC OUTLAY, NORTH
OF PRESENT LOCATION.*
"How far?"
*UNKNOWN. E.M. INTERFERENCE FROM NEARBY ENERGY
BODY PREVENTS ACCURATE ESTIMATE.*
"What's the identification of the ship?"
*FEDERATION REGISTRATION NUMBER NOT FOUND.
TITLE OF SHIP: HEARTBREAK HOTEL. PRESENT OWNER-*
She felt her mouth go dry. "No way..."
*-ERNEST RAVIEDE, MEMBER OF TETRAGENES EXPLORATORY
SOCIETY.*
It was him. She had experienced the biggest
stroke of luck ever. All this mess... and she'd finally crashed her ship
on the same planet as the man she was chasing. And why not? He'd been exploring
heraldic civilizations... and this planet seemed a goldmine in that respect.
"YESYESHOLYSHITYES!!!" she yelled in elation.
"I found the son of a bitch!!!"
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