The Dancing Stars

The night breeze swept through a vast field of tall grass. This place was far from the city and only had the company of whatever grazing wildlife drifted by. At the moment, everything was quiet. When this far from city lights, you could see the expanse of stars filling the darkness above, mapping every corner of the visible sky. Anyone who saw such a beautiful view would undoubtedly sigh as they felt at peace.

However.

Two stars chased each other in the darkness above. Beams of light would burst back and forth from one star to the other, making it seem like the stars were playing a game similar to tag. Suddenly, the grey star plummeted from the sky and the blue star pursued close behind.

BOOM!!

The ground exploded with the impact of the grey star and the night air shook violently. Shortly after, a second explosion shook the night again as the blue star impacted nearby. Soil filled the air, blocking all vision in the area. Gradually, the earth fell to the ground again and the dust began to clear.

As the cloud of dirt began to dissipate, two pairs of glowing eyes could be seen floating a little over 2 meters off the ground. They remained glaring at each other for a brief moment. Suddenly, they both burst into action, lunging forward. The dusty air was pushed away and two mechanical bodies revealed themselves as the glowing eyes rushed towards each other.

CLANG!!

The armor with blue eyes held a longsword locked against the two knives of the armor with grey eyes. Neither had succeeded in this attack, as the weapons of each met with the opposing weapon at the last moment in order to block what would have been a fatal attack. In that brief moment of locked weapons, sparks flew as the blades met each other and enough light was generated to see more details on the mechanical bodies.

Each stood about a head taller than a normal human.

The armor with blue eyes held a longsword with two hands and had a rapid fire magi-gun mounted on each shoulder, each of them functionally similar to an smg. This blue-eyed armor had steep and straight angles and only had a few damaged sections where knife gashes and scorches could be seen. Overall, this mechanical armor would seem reminiscent of a medieval knight. However, although the knight's face couldn't move and had no expression, it seemed to carry a hint of arrogance in place of the expected chivalry.

The armor with grey eyes held two large combat knives and had a high caliber magi-rifle mounted to the right shoulder. The left shoulder seemed to have something mounted to it as well, but that section seemed to be fairly damaged and was covered in soot to the point where whatever component lay underneath was unrecognizable. The grey-eyed armor was in significantly worse condition than that of the other. Sections were torn open and revealed glowing, grey lights and intricate machinery that would move as the armor redistributed its power across different limbs.

The temporary standstill ended as the grey-eyed armor reacted first and kicked the enemy away to create some distance. As the opponent stumbled backwards, the gun attached to the grey-eyed armor's right shoulder shifted to aim quickly. This magi-rifle was slow to fire consecutive rounds, but delivered much more damage with each shot. In half a second, a series of five grey rings of light formed around the barrel of the magi-rifle. The blue-eyed armor realized what was about to happen and quickly raised its arm in an attempt to guard against the blast.

A sound like a low-toned bell rung through the night.

Static and heat filled the air as the grey light jumped the short distance and fired straight through the opponent's arm and dug deep into one of the previous gashes in its chest armor, destroying several vital systems. A blue light flashed as the arm was severed slightly below the elbow joint. One could imagine the pilot's scream of agony from the way the armor jolted and shuddered on the ground.

The man in the blue-eyed armor couldn't think well through the pain. Alarms blared in his helmet and warnings flashed, but he didn't need them to know that this would be his end. He had chased the grey-eyed armor all this distance on his own. He was supposed to stay with his strike team, but refused to let the grey-eyed armor get away. When the rest of the team couldn't keep up, he decided to rush ahead alone. Now his arrogance would mean his death.

The man in the grey-eyed armor didn't attack right away, but stared at the opponent for a few seconds. It seemed the knight had lost his will to fight and couldn't overcome the pain of losing a limb. The armor's life preservation system had already stopped the bleeding, but the pain killer would take a few more seconds to kick in. Even then, the pain killer would likely affect the enemy's judgement. He tried to stand, but fell immediately to his knees.

The widened hole on the armor's chest smoked with a sickening scent. The blue-eyed armor closed its eyes as the man within raised his head toward the sky, accepting his inevitable death with bravery. He shook heavily as he tried to regain control over his breathing for what would be the last few moments of his life.

...

Seconds passed and the man shook with each gasping breath for what felt like an eternity.

"Just kill me already!!"

More seconds passed as the pilot shook with unstable, ragged breaths....

If he had died, he didn't notice when it happened. The despairing man opened his eyes gradually to find that he wasn't dead yet, and the grey-eyed armor was gone. He turned quickly to look behind him, but no one was there either.

After a few minutes, anticipation and paranoia turned to bewilderment. The grey-eyed armor really let him live?

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Meanwhile...

The man of the grey-eyed armor slowed his breathing as he finally shook off the last pursuer. Not only had he taken significant damage during his escape, but he was also running dangerously low on mana from the continuous fights over the last several hours. He needed to find somewhere to hide, and fast.