Second Encounter

Joe had already gotten about a kilometer away from the alien. By warping to the opposite side of his artificial hill, the alien was out of sight, and he was probably a safe distance away by now.

Slowly standing up, he looked around, analyzing his surroundings.

The town was still standing in the distance. It was silent, just like earlier. Nothing stood in the skies, there were no signs of battle anywhere, and yet, why was he so unlucky as to encounter one of the Fire Nation?

Shaking his head, Joe had added it all up to bad luck.

'I should head back to town. It's so quiet, so the battle is probably already over. Even if we lost, they wouldn't be so smart as to keep the town silent right?'

With his uncertainties in mind, Joe began to walk in the direction of town with his bruised and battered body.

He walked the whole way while warily looking around to see if the alien was following him.

After moving for about an hour, he finally reached the town. The gate was open, so he just walked in.

Limping toward where he originally was, he smelled the metallic stench of blood.

'The smell of blood doesn't necessarily mean that we lost right? Yeah!'

Trying to convince himself the town had indeed defended against the Fire Nation, Joe continued further into the town.

Bodies were strewn across the town's streets. Some bodies were missing limbs, or sometimes were just puddles of flesh.

There were also bodies of the Fire Nation strewn about as well, but there seemed to be much less of them than the town's defenders.

Holding in his nausea, Joe began to see cracks in the road.

'A battle must have taken place on the ground near here...'

Continuing onward, he walked closer to the source of the deformation.

The amount of bodies from the Fire Nation had begun to increase in number the closer he went to the source of the damage. Looking around, he saw corpses of the Fire Nation splattered onto buildings and impaled on poles.

'What happened here?'

After walking several more meters, Joe began to see the edge of a pile of bodies. The pile was in a small crater, likely the source of the cracked road.

Gulping, Joe lightly hopped into the crater and tried his best to scale the pile of bodies. Upon reaching the top, he heard light wheezes.

'Who's there?!'

Swiveling his head around, he found a familiar face. On the top of the pile, laid Josh.

His left arm had most of the flesh ripped off of it, whilst his right leg seemed to have been twisted into a pretzel. His chest was slightly caved in while his face was burned and scarred.

"Josh!"

Josh only moved his pupils toward Joe, before speaking in a light voice.

"Well. This is the end for me..."

The former put on a light smile. "I've got something for you... You'll probably need it..."

Gaps began to form between his sentences as he struggled to breathe.

Joe held onto his right hand as Josh spoke. The latter wriggled his finger.

"Take it... My space ring... It has stuff you need... Racks... Grams..."

Joe slowly took off the ring as Josh continued to speak.

"Make sure... to use them... appropriately... Grams are for cultivators..."

Joe nodded through all this silently, with a depressed aura. Josh seemed to be unable to speak anymore, as his right hand went limp, and his eyes became empty.

Joe's eyes began to heat up at this. 'Am I feeling more emotional because I'm seeing it happen?'

He began to reflect on his previous experiences, however his rational mind quickly told him to get out of there. Since there was part of the battalion outside the town, it was highly likely there were also some stragglers in town.

However, Joe decided to check inside the ring to see if there was a convenient device to leave with.

He took out the objects inside the ring, as he didn't know how to see what was inside. Several objects fell on the ground.

A couple of Large Racks fell onto the floor, as well as some food, water, and a map. Several irregular and opaque sculptures also fell out, about one cubic inch in size, with a few thick and old-looking books. Two broken swords and a chipped one also came out.

Seeing there was no escaping object he could recognize, he quickly put them back inside. After a second of deliberation, Joe decided to take Josh's body with him as well.

Upon sorting things out, Joe quickly began to steadily run away from the town. After several minutes, he finally got out.

He took out his map and tried to analyze where he was, and where he should go.

After taking a minute, he realized that he had to go up north to get back to the Nine Towers.

It was a long trek, and it was likely Joe would run out of food on the way. Water could be conjured, but food could not be made out of nothing.

'Damn it. Wait... Maybe that wagon is still around town?'

Deciding to look for the wagon, Joe made a circle around town. After about half an hour, Joe was exhausted, despite not having found the wagon yet. He had only circled about half the town.

'Guess I went the wrong way.'

Joe decided to have a seat to stave away his exhaustion. Breathing heavily with sweat on his face, he closed his eyes and tilted his head to face the sky.

Breathing in the air, he was slowly regaining his stamina.

Suddenly, a sound was heard. It was especially easy to hear in the silent wasteland.

Although it was quiet, Joe could hear the special sound of footsteps.

'Is it him? The straggler from the battalion?'

Joe internally estimated his height and his enemy's.

'Right now, sitting down, I should be about testicle height right?'

He had already formed a plan, but he didn't know if it would work, as he didn't understand the Fire Nation's anatomy fully, but it was his best plan at the moment.

Joe waited until the footsteps stopped. He felt a faint heat on his back.

'Now!'

Quickly turning around and opening his eyes, Joe grasped out his hand toward the enemy's crotch area.

Upon grabbing, he felt something big and long.

'Ah shit! It's burning my hand!'

Because of the heat, Joe's hand spasmed, jerking the alien's genitals in an irregular way, prompting a grunt of pain from the enemy.

Joe crawled backwards, finally getting a good look at his enemy.

'It's him!'

It was the very same person who attacked him. The alien was currently on his knees, with his hands on his crotch. Its face seemed to be contorted in pain

Rather than running away, Joe decided to continue his assault, as he had already confirmed the alien wasn't too much stronger than him.

Dashing over to the alien, he began to wallop the alien's head, continually smashing down on it.

Conjuring some stone gauntlets, he began to scratch up the alien's eyes and face. After this short walloping, Joe decided to run away. He didn't have any killing moves, and it was likely he would be overpowered by the alien once it recovered.

Dashing away, Joe covered the amount of space he crossed in half an hour in fifteen minutes. It wasn't likely for the alien to catch up with him now.

Exhausted, he looked around. He spotted something.

'Ah! The wagon!'

Jogging over to it, he sat down inside it, and tried to mimic what Josh did last time.

Putting his finger on the front of the wagon, a control panel popped out.

It had several words in a small font. One button said 'ENGINE' on it, while the dials had 'SPEED' and 'FUEL' on them.

The dial that represented fuel was about half empty.

Looking around the control panel, he saw several more buttons that represented wind shields and some kind of headlight. However, after looking around for so long, there was no way to turn.

'Is there some kind of special button?'

Looking around, Joe found nothing, so he decided to improvise.

'So long as I face the wagon in the direction I want to go, it's no problem if I can't turn right?'

Joe turned his wagon in the northern direction before sitting inside and pressing the "ENGINE" button.

He slowly began to turn the 'SPEED' dial. Turning the dial from 0 to 50, the speed suddenly increased tremendously. Wind began to blow violently in his face.

Pressing the 'WIND SHIELD' button, the violent breeze suddenly stopped.

'Whatever these measures of speed are, they certainly aren't miles per hour or kilometers per hour...'

Speeding through the barren wasteland, the fuel dial slowly began to deplete, soon reaching zero.

'I guess I'll have to go on foot now..."

To get the most out of the wagon, Joe decided not to press the 'STOP' button, and let the wagon drift forwards.

Upon slowing to a stop, Joe stood up and continued his trek on foot. Checking the map, he concluded he was about ten kilometers from the Nine Towers.