A creamy yellowish haired girl wearing a black outfit which is somewhat revealing looks on over the hill as she questions her surroundings. She isn't entirely sure where she is at since she was forced to eject before the ship crashed into the earthen like surface. She peers around her surroundings as large wooden structures in the form of trees are within her glimpse as she closely examines them for any encounters that may be hidden in them. She surveys these trees from top to bottom as they stretch into the vast watery sea known as the sky that is above her. Her escape pod she evacuated in along with another red haired woman stands right behind her in complete ruin. Mechanical parts and wires are scattered throughout the ground on the hillside she stands upon as she continues to look into the forest. She turns toward the red haired individual as she asks her turning her attention from the vast forest ahead of toward the red haired girl who accompanied her in her capsule as she sighs a bit irritated, "Just my luck. We had to land out in the middle of nowhere and now we don't even know where we are." She paused then turned her attention toward Erica looking very upset and displeased with her accompanying her, "Why did you come with me? I am perfectly fine on my own. I don't need you babysitting me!" She barked at Erica as she tapped her foot down in outrage since she had no idea where she was or what to do at that exact moment. She wasn't sure what planet they crashed on. The group didn't have time to confirm exactly where they were when their ship encountered some kind of fatal engine failure. She was luckily able to escape before it crashed. She wondered if the others were all right even though she didn't really show it at the moment since it bothered her that they were stranded.

A metal sphere landed on the surface of the plant with a thud making a small impact marks on the ground. The metal then fold outwards until it was a flat sheet of metal, revealing a young man curdled into a ball with his hands on his hand. However, he was not quite human. Golden fur covered his body and he had a small canine like muzzle and a tail.
Strange marks covered the metal that he was sitting down on, glowing faintly with some form of soft, blue light. He looked normal, relatively speaking. He stood up and all of a sudden his left leg gave out and he fell back down to the metal, but somehow landed with a sound. It hurt, but he just steadied himself and more carefully stood back up, for the most part ignoring the pain.

He did a small motion with his hand, and in an inaudible sound exploded in all directions. After a short pause, he heard it return back to him as if he was a dolphin or bat using echo-location. He started limping in the direction.

It was not a particularly long walk, but did take longer as he had slight limp in his step, in was not but a few minutes before he was in a shadow of a giant hunk of metal, which was once a vessel able to travel through the stars. He sighed, "I have a lot of work to do. I am sure the others can find there way back to the ship, I should go ahead and get started." he said, talking to himself in a low voice.

"I keep telling you; this isn't my fault. There was an engine problem, and I was nowhere near the engine. You were with me, you should know that."

"Doesn't matter; you said it."

"Wow, you're really convinced that you can tempt fate, aren't you?"

"You're a scientist-"

"Alchemist."

"-so you should be able to understand that when one event occurs after a different event enough times, then it becomes safe to assume that the later causes the former."

"That still doesn't account for the 'how'. That's pretty important too. Besides, how many times could you-"

"Eleven."

"Sorry?"

"I've seen people say something like 'what could possible go wrong', only for things to go horrible wrong eleven times. Not counting just now."

"You...kept count?"

"It'd be hard not to. The things I saw tend to stick with a person for life."

"Wow. You sound like a grizzled old war vet, you know."

"Huh, I think that came out wrong then. What I meant is that during those times, insanity and utter frustration that I haven't been able to forget."

"Well that's less dark. Still, you really need to tell me some of your stories; the giant spider one you mentioned a few hours ago sounds exciting."

"Trust me; it wasn't. It just left me with an instinct to burn any spiders on sight."

"Still sounds fun."

Two boys made their way through through a dense forest. One of them had black hair, and the other's was red. "You're positive that thing can lead us to Tsukiko right?" the black haired one asked, as he looked at a small petri dish in the other boy's hands. It was filled with water and had a single strand of hair pushed against the side. Coincidentally, in the same direction they were walking.

"Nathan, just chill man. Cobbling together a compass to find someone is easy if you have a lock of their hair." The one with red hair replied

"Yeah...about that; why do you have a lock of her hair?"

"Why else; for this very scenario."

"Okay, but how did you get it?"

"It was stuck to her clothes, I picked it off, and decided it could be useful."

"I'm suddenly a lot less comfortable being alone in a forest with you Danny."

"Of course you could, no one's questioning that," Erica replied a matter-of-factly. "It was an emergency, it's not like we got the time to pick the pods we're going to use."

Both knew that it was a blatant lie and it was obvious that Erica intended to stick to her words regardless. Erica kept her gaze against Tsukiko in an amused challenge and waited for her sister's retort. When none came, she let off a disappointed huff before tapping Tsukiko on the shoulder.

"Ok, so, we have a couple options we can do now," she said with confidence as she raised her fingers. "What do you want to do? Regroup or Recon?"

---

In front of yet another ruined metal sphere, a lone dwarf was busy banging his arm against the pod's console.

"Work, you piece of shoddy machinery!" he exclaimed as he swung down his fist once more. It was to no avail as the device remain stubbornl quiet. Aart grumbled in frustration and kicked at the machine. Sitting down, the dwarf considered what to do next. He had to find the ship's crash site, even if it was only to make sure he could ascertain his beloved guns are still intact. Still, he can't find out where it was without the comm and looking around blind would be bad. Especially as he only had the tools in his toolbelt as something approaching a weapon.

Aart idly munched on a shrapnel as he surveyed the woods surrounding him. Well, at least he won't have to worry about firewood or food if he had to stay put and wait.

"Ok, so, we have a couple options we can do now," she said with confidence as she raised her fingers. "What do you want to do? Regroup or Recon?" Tsukiko looked at Erica with a dirty look on her face still irritated by her situation. She was frustrated and didn't really mean to vent like she did toward her sister, but she didn't feel she needed to apologize. She believed her sister was used to her constant whining though she would have bit anyone's head off if anyone said she was actually whining. She sighed deeply as she took a deep breath breathing in the freshness of the air and letting it touch her lungs about to speak to Erica when she heard a sound in the forest. She immediately turned her attention away from Erica jumped down off the cliffside and headed straight into the forest tracking the sound she heard in the forest. She didn't say a single word while she was sprinting through the forest trying to find out what that sound she heard was.

"Any idea what caused the engines to fail like that?" Nathan asked Danny out of the blue

"I'm an alchemist Nathan, not an engineer" He reminded his companion

"You still most likely know more about that stuff then I do"

"Eh, there is a little bit of overlap. Although without seeing the damage for myself, my best guess would have to be sabotage."

"You think someone broke the engines intentionally?"

"No, that's just my best guess. I can't think of anything else that could have caused them to fail that someone wouldn't have caught. Now granted, I'm sure there is an explanation that makes sense that isn't 'someone did it on purpose' but I don't know what it is."

"Really? I thought you said that engineering and alchemy had a little overlap?"

"That's mostly around fuel. Turns out that alchemy is good at making the stuff that powers ships like that."

"I see."

With their conversation at an end, the two fell back into silence.

Tsukiko continued to venture into the deep vast green forest as she surveyed her surroundings. Her pace broke from a full out sprint to a regular walk as she carefully looked around her surroundings to see if anyone was present. From a distance she thought she saw two individuals who were talking to each other. She could barely understand what they were saying since they were so far away. When she tried to walk further a hand clamped over her mouth for a split second as the individual pulled her toward him. He released his hand whee she started to bark in anger about being hand-gagged and pulled into a clearing where the individual could talk to her. The individual who had grabbed her wore mostly black and he had long silverish hair that trickled down his backside toward his legs. Tsukiko backed away from the individual looking at him in anger before she snapped, "What is the big idea grabbing me out of nowhere then making it so I couldn't breathe? What were you trying to do, kill me!" She said in anger as she tried to kick the man in the shin only to have him dodge her attack.

"This forest is dangerous. You should leave at once." The man said as he clanged onto his sword which was implanted into the ground. His sword was covered in a purplish black like substance which trickled down the entire blade and dripped toward the ground like fallen raindrops. Tsukiko started yelling at the man telling him to stop telling her what to do when a loud roar could be heard in the vicinity. The man pulled Tsukiko into his duster and embraced her hiding her from a appearance a blackish like creature howled in the forest as it made its way through the clearing they were standing in. The man immediately moved into the brush pulling the feisty creamy yellow haired maiden in with him.

Erica shook her head as she saw Tsukiko moved away without a word at the sound of...something. Something that could be their crewmate, a local, or a demon. Two out of the three means problem and of course her sister rushed at it.

"And they say I'm the reckless one," she muttered before chasing after Tsukiko.

It wasn't long until she ran into a pair of figure. However, neither of the two was Tsukiko. Instead, she ran into two men that she knew from the ship.

"Huh, it's you two," Erica said to Danny and Nathan. She frowned at the two boys and the somehow missing Tsukiko. How did she miss her? She was running straight! She tapped her feet on the ground a few times before staring straight at the two boys. "Say, did you two run into Tsukiko just now? She should've been in front of me."

Regardless of either of their reply, they would soon be interrupted by a not-quite-distant roar of a creature. Somehow, the three would know that Tsukiko was involved with whatever it was that roared.

Before either of them could respond to Erica, the roar cut them off. "Please tell me your compass isn't pointing in the direction" Nathan almost pleaded to Danny.

"My compass is pointing in that direction."

"Dammit! Well, at least we have an idea how far away she is" Nathan took off like a bullet in the direction of the roar after he had finished talking.

"Hey, wait! Geez, how can he move that fast?" Dumping the water out of his dish (while making sure to save the hair), he put it away while turning to face Erica "he is right though; we need to move now"

Axel was looking through the wreckage of the ship. "This is bad. Really bad." He had keep close to the outside of the ship, due to the fear that whatever caused the ship to crash might still be a threat, however, it did not take a long and detailed look to tell that it is totaled.

"It is going to take a week just to get the toaster working if we can't get this to a spaceport and have a full team to work on this. I am not sure I have a week. Who knows what is one this planet. If only they listened to me, and carried around emergency ship-tracking devices or at least some type of com device."

He reached with his magical sense for technology. It was like he was like he was standing at the edge of a bright light looking out into darkness. There was small echoes of lights, but nothing he could pin down to one place, and they might just be pieces of debris that flew outwards from the crash as well as the escape pods.

Most of the ship's systems were down and could take weeks to repair, if not was irreparable in the current situation. However, at some of the things within the ship was spared by the vessel taking most of the fall. He called out to one of his gadgets, and it flew towards. A very small drone with a camera and a speaker, built to be durable. He sent out of the ship towards the direction of what he believed to be an escape pod.

The drone was quite quick and agile. It was designed to look into cracks and crevices in the ship he couldn't reach. He added the speaker later as a convenience if he was busy working on the ship, he could use his magic to speak through it. He had rarely, if ever, needed to use the function, but he always liked to be prepared. Axel always thought the ship was going to fall off the sky due to the actions of his crew, and as an engineer he had made some preparations, but he did not prepare for this amount of damage. It is odd that the ship malfunctioned as it was entering the gravitational field of a planet. He would think such problems would occur either in open space, where there would be no fall, or as the ship was leaving orbit, meaning the ship would be closer to the planet and such not fall as far down.

While he was lost in thought, he saw something through the camera of the drone, a dwarf, Aart. Though the speaker, a mechanical voice emerged, "Hey. Over here. Umm. Good to see your alright I guess." He didn't spend that much on the speaker. He didn't think he would use it that much.

"Who are you?" Tsukiko questioned as Tsukiko questioned as she finally started relax relieving herself of her tension. She felt a vibrancy within the man that he was not someone who wanted to harm her. She pulled herself away from his grasp as he released her when he finally understood that she wanted him to let her go. He was only trying to keep her away from harm. He had no intention of doing anything else to her so he immediately released her when she gave the impression that she wanted to be released. Even though she asked who he was he still did not answer her which annoyed her.

Tsukiko frowned at him as he surveyed his surroundings as the creature was still in the area sniffing about. His sword was plunged into the ground. Judging by the way his sword was crafted she knew this man was someone of exceptional skill. That didn't excuse him for ignoring her earlier where she tried to kick , but he moved off to the side dodging her kick. She looked at him irritated as she tried to kick him again, but he got annoyed where he grabbed her by the leg then lifted upward where she was immediately swept off her feet and fell to the ground with her buttocks landing first. "Why'd you do..." Before she could finish her sentenced he clamped his hand over her mouth once again since she was being too noisy. He noticed the creature had her voice and reacted but the way it was moving gave him the idea even though the creature knew someone was there, it still didn't know where to look.

Tsukiko tried to bite his hand as he took it away, but missed where she fell to the ground. The girl was angry by how the man was treating her. She felt like he was treating her like an animal and teasing her thinking in the back of his mind he thought it was funny and amusing even though he still showed that serious cold expression that he did not care which she despised. "What is the big idea covering my mouth again!?" She barked as she lifted herself back onto her feet and brushed herself off thoroughly using both hands. The man still did not answer her.

"Get behind me." He said to her as he heard some talking in the background, but wasn't sure who it was. He grabbed his sword pulling it out of the ground and took it into his hand letting it rest at his side for the moment. He could tell it was a group of people, but since he could barely hear what they were saying he knew they were quite a ways away. Tsukiko sighed deeply and did immediately like the man asked and stood behind him where she was completely out of sight. She saw the man was looking in the direction opposite from the beast, but didn't understand why he was looking in that direction. The beast was in the middle as the man was staring in the direction of the beast except not directly at it since it was upward of the direction he heard the voices. The beast was diagonal from him so why is he looking in an opposite direction she tried to ask herself calmly as she remained quiet as not to cause anymore ruckus.

"Compass? What compass?" Erica questioned as assumption started to assert itself in her head. Her eyes bored into the young alchemist with increasing suspicion.

"He is right though; we need to move now," Danny said with some sense of urgency to her.

"Fine, we'll talk about this later," Erica huffed. She then turned and chased after Nathan.

They soon arrived at a clearing and were greeted to the sight of a pitch black beast prowling menacingly at them. There was, however, no sign of Tsukiko.

---

Aart was in the middle of converting his pod into a powerfist when he heard a voice calling him. He did not recognize the speaker but it sounded familiar enough and being the only other sapient voice he heard after the crash led the Dwarf into looking around for the source.He soon find an all too familiar drone flying nearby.

"Och, it's you lad, guess you're fine as well, eh?" Aart grunted. "Do you know where the ship crashed? I want to check my babies but I can't make head or tails where I have to go."

"Yes. I could sense the ship a mile awhile. It isn't like there is any other tech at its scale anywhere near here. I am at the ship right now. It is bad. Really bad. I can lead you back to the ship. Follow the droid." his voice came out, distorted by the speaker.

It moved slightly backwards towards the ship and then stopped waiting for Aart.

Axel was working on repairing a computer terminal. He had set up a protocol to have any major accidents at the ship be recorded and sent to all the terminals across the ship, but the damage to the ship made reading the data through simple magic not possible. He would have to get the device itself working, and then try to salvage any data that he could. He muttered to himself, "I hope this works." which then echo'ed through the droid's speakers as he had set it to pick up anything he said, and forgot to mute himself. If not, he would have to get the black-box.

Ever cautious, he had set up two. One was near the pilot's seat, and if that one was not functional. Axel shuddered.

"So that's our noisemaker" Nathan raised an eyebrow

"I don't see any sign of Tsukiko, guess she didn't cross this thing." Danny noted. "So what's the plan? Do we take this thing, or just run?"

"I'm not sure we could lose it if we ran. At best, we could try to scare it off."

"How?"

"Like this" Nathan gathered power in his left hand and held it there for a few seconds, letting it build. Once he felt that it was sufficient, he punched the ground in front of him, creating a small crater as well as shaking the surroundings.

"Jeez! You did all that with just a punch! That's scary!" Danny jumped at the sight of the aftermath.

"It was either that or fire, and I don't want to burn this whole place down."

"Fair enough."

"Hmmm... there's others in the area." He said to himself as he kept his hand at the handle of his sword while using his other hand to shield Tsukiko away from harm. He continued to survey the area as he kept his other eye on the beast which was rampaging around in the forest. The beast suddenly went berserk and started to rip trees from their roots and rip to shreds any closing in the forested like area.

Just as he was about to move he noticed that one of the people who he works with was in the area due to the discoloration of the vegetation in the area which felt like a very strong distortion. The distortion was obviously drawing on energy from the life in the area as some of the plants suddenly became brown. "Someone is using the power. I wonder where it is coming from." He said to himself as Tsukiko also glanced upward to see there was green areas that suddenly turned brown where what look like a watery distortion like if there were a mirror of water right in front of her. She wondered who could be causing such a disturbance in the air. It was obvious that someone was drawing energy from the vegetation with some kind of mysterious power and she could feel the force of the energy as it was being drawn toward the person. It felt like a gentle breeze from the wind which whispered onto her skin tickling her flesh.

From a distance a lock of red hair could be seen and the figurine shown within the shadow that implanted itself from the sun embedding it into the ground looked like a female figure. A transparent darkish purple wall appears over the figure who could be seen from the distance as the roaring beast rams into the barrier she has just created after she shouted the words Odin Sphere. The wall looked to be vacuum tight sealed and repelled the force of the beast as you could feel the ground shaking slightly as the beast rammed the barrier trying to break through it.

The man looked onward as he just watched what was going on happen. It was obvious that someone else in the area had just run into the beast and now has engaged it. He could see a sparkly golden like sword in this person's hand. He also could barely hear their voice which appeared to sound like a girl. He wondered if who he thought followed him into the forest actually went against their word earlier not to follow him. He didn't look to be too happy about the presence of this female encounter.

"Huh?" He said as he noticed another negative presence in the area which bolted at him where he blocked it with just one finger held out. It was just like he thought when he came in the area. One of the enemies they detected since there were two others in the in the area had shielded their presence from detection. The first one they encountered seem to have its eyes away from the two at the moment and heard what sounded like a group of people coming into the area. The other one behind him was so far away you could hardly recognize the individual who was encountering it. The third beast which had just showed its ugly face bolted at the man where he retaliated immediately. The first one they encountered suddenly noticed the violence in the area and followed suit as it bolted at Danny and Nathan.

"Amazing." Tsukiko said to herself as she couldn't believe that this man was holding the monster at bay which looked like an ugly looking warthog with just one finger held in the air. She thought to herself as she watched him hold off the beast who was this person that had just come to her aid. She could forgive his rudeness earlier since it was apparent that he intended to keep her out of harm's way, but she was curious why he cared so much. Now wasn't the time to be asking that question as she noticed he pushed her away into the brush while she barely managed to hold her balance as he grabbed his sword out of the ground and held it in front of him as he let off a burst of energy which sent that beast flying into a tree trunk in front of him. Just who is this guy? Tsukiko thought to herself as she couldn't believe how strong this person in front of her was. The energy he released was so strong it felt like a wind storm had just swept into the area as she had to use her hand to prevent her dress from accidentally floating upward.

The sight of a beast charging them left only one thought in Nathan's mind, one that he made vocal "...well that didn't work."

"Eh, it was an okay idea. Let me take care of this" Danny stepped forward and held out his hand, seconds later the beast was trapped in ball of water

"...The hell?"

"Lucky for us there was a lot of water vapor for me to work with, otherwise that might have been harder" Danny commented

"That seems...extremely useful. Like it's incapable without the right magic"

"Not really; anyone with even a hint of magical energy and enough brains to use it could destabilize this pretty easily. But a creature like this; I wouldn't count on it. Now then...what do we do with this thing?"

"It tried to attack us unprovoked, so I suggest something that will incapacitate it long enough for us to get away."

Erica shook her head at Danny and Nathan's exchange. She glanced around for signs of Tsukiko. If she was nearby, then she would have met the beast and fought it. It was not like her to just leave and if there were multiple of them, then there would have been signs of her fighting. Her disappearance was almost suspicious. Erica clicked her tongue as words of warning surfaced in her mind.

"OYYYY, TSUKIKO! ANSWER IF YOU CAN HEAR ME!" Erica shouted, heedless of any danger that might attract. "OR MAKE A BIG NOISE!"

---

"A mile, eh?" Aart said. He waved the makeshift gauntlet at the drone before continuing. "Shouldn't take long. Gimme a moment to get this one active then."

With the ship being closer than he ever thought, the dwarf could afford to have the emergency weapon only minimally functional. He would only need it to scare off anything that he ran into while he...well, ran towards his babies. Fixing the cobbled gauntlet to his hand, Aart turned to face the drone.

"OK, lead the way, boy," he said.

The trip back to the ship was going silently, until the drone spoke up.

"What? What worked?" Aart asked, surprised and alarmed by the suddenness of the sentence.

Axel paused, and part of him was talking to himself and the other was talking to Aart, "This is bad. This is really bad." He managed to get the terminal working, and surprisingly accessed the crash data without much problem. If it was sabotage, whoever did it seem to not interfere with the ships analytical protocols.

Axel paused again, making an audible breath that echo'ed through the speaker, "I had set up a system to record any data about any incident where one or more of the ship's systems was compromised. I managed to salvage the results, however, it is gibberish. It is just, random junk code that ends up meaning nothing. I can't find any immediate evidence of sabotage in the system, either someone really knew what they was doing to bring the ship down without me noticing, or.."

Axel took another deep breath before going on, "I.. I.. I just don't know. According to the analytics, all systems was at normal functioning rate, and then something happened that the ship tried to record but end up just producing junk. The data stops before the crash, so I will have to manually check the status of the ship's system, however, I am not optimistic about it."

The beast when it was trapped in he ball concentrated its energy and devoured the ball with its own energy. When it managed to escape form the ball that was created by Nathan it was evident that regular magic wasn't going to work on this enemy. One could only think what could work on this beast as it only stared at Danny and Nathan pressing its foot at the ground like it was about to charge at them once again.

The girl who was fighting her beast earlier managed to defeat her enemy then looked over and saw that there were two people in the air. Both of them who were male which she saw they were trying to use magic to subdue their demon. She could only shake her head since she knew these beasts could not be defeated by conventional magic alone. She didn't know whether to get involved or to just watch from a distance as she let her sword kiss her ankles as it glowed brilliantly like when the moon shone downs on the shimmering waters of the lake that its reflection embraces.

Tsukiko had been watching what was going and saw that Danny and Nathan were in the area. She took a look behind her and the man who had saved her earlier was gone. Also the beast he fought wasn't around either. She didn't quite understand what was going on. The man was there a moment ago, but when she became fixated on the girl and her two colleagues he slipped away without her getting a chance to thank him or ask for his name. It was okay for her to move her hand away from where her skirt was being lifted up in the air by the energy of that individual since he was nowhere to be found and all she could see was a giant black spot on the ground which looked like the imprint of the beast. She heard a familiar female voice yell out and ask where she was. She softly spoke just loud enough for her to hear her, "I'm over here."

"Huh...wasn't expecting that" Danny said as he saw the beast break out of his spell. "I don't suppose you have any ideas?"

"I've got a few." Nathan walked forward a little. Not enough to provoke the creature to attack right away, but enough to make him it's target. When the beast finally did charge at him, he was ready, with spiritual magic charging his entire body. When the beast reached the end of it's charge and jumped at him, Nathan acted; with his body enhanced by magic, he was able to reach out and grab both of it's front limbs. Without wasting even a moment, Nathan began to spin around in place, picking up speed as he held onto the creature. Once he had reached sufficient speed, he raised his arms to a 45 degree angle and let go. The creature went soaring, climbing high into the air before it hit the ground somewhere far away from them. "With any luck, that should have taken care of it."

"Jeez, that looked brutal" Danny cringed

Nathan shrugged "I'd rather not get into a fight if I don't have to. Assuming it survives the landing, I doubt it'll be in any condition to follow us."

"Fair enough. Finding Tsukiko is more important."