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"No!"
Mp3 leapt from her zipboard, falling hard on her left shoulder. Her zipboard flipped from her jump and crashed nearby, but she didn't care. She climbed painfully to her feet, and began to pound flat-footed down the street. She could've found her way to her home with her eyes closed, but the streets were hardly recognizable. All but the basements of a few buildings were abandoned, and shivering bodies lie in all corners. She saw her parents' house around the corner, but not as she remembered. It was battled-scarred and gray, shingles were gone from the roof, and paint peeled off in great strips.
Mp3 sobbed and ran to the door, throwing herself upon it and pounding. It broke even under her slight weight, and she fell again on her injured shoulder. Lifting her head, she saw that her parents must be gone, they couldn't be living here. It was dark and damp, and smelled like mildew. Her mother hated mildew. She dropped her head into the wreckage of the door again, just as Proxy landed and hopped gracefully from her zipboard at the door. She knelt by her friend.
"Mp3," she said slowly, "They're...they're not here."
Mp3 gave a bitter half-laugh. "Really?" she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm, "I never would've guessed."
Proxy swallowed. "No," she began, slower still, "I mean, they're on the battle field,"
Mp3 froze. From the rumors she'd heard, not many lasted more than a day at the front. Tears came to her eyes at the mental image that sprang up at the thought of her parents lying somewhere in the mud. She blinked them away quickly, and stood.
"Well," she said in a set voice, "I'll just have to find them."
Proxy took a deep breath through her teeth. "I don't know if that's a good idea, M.P...."
Mp3 sighed exasperatedly. "Please don't call me that, you know I hate that..."
"Sorry." murmured Proxy. She looked at her boots, and decided not to argue with a determined and emotional girl. A determined and emotional girl who happened to have a sword...
As they zipped along towards the burned-out sector of the city (Mp3 had learned to always carry a spare board, she seemed to always wreck them somehow), Mp3 had her mouth set in a firm line. She knew that if she had it set in anything but a firm line, she would breath through it to block out the awful smell of burning. She also knew that if she breathed through it, she would hyper ventilate, faint, fall off her zipboard, probably break her neck and crash another board.
"At least if I went to the med tent I might see their nulls." she muttered to herself.
"What?" Proxy turned to her. Mp3 shook her head and sped up. Proxy looked fearfully after her, but zipped ahead as well.
The battle field/burned-up-sector was awful. Hoarse cries filled the air, gunshots echoed out across the brown and grey nothingness. The thought of her parents, her delicate mother especially, being out here made it very difficult for Mp3 to keep her firm line from turning to jelly. She searched the faces of the moving forms beneath her, and eventually started to search the nulls for familiarity as well. She dropped down to better see them.
Down low, it was even worse. Proxy sincerely hoped that her duties as a Companion wouldn't often include hopping to war-torn systems and flying low over broken binomes and nullified sprites. Just as she was thinking this, Mp3 gave a shriek and turned abruptly. Proxy's stomach turned at the idea of the condition Mr. and Mrs. Pixel might be in.
Mp3 took care not to let her zipboard crash and burn once again. She stopped it, hopped off, and let it hover in place. Feeling a smidgen proud that she had managed to stay cool at the site of her parents, she stumbled across the mishappen ground towards her family. Searing pain shot up her leg, she looked down and found she had stepped on a null, which was now draining her energy. Disgusted, she flung herself off with such a vengeance, she flipped on to her back. She rolled on to her elbows and crawled towards her parents, and something whizzed by her ear. She turned to find the source, and Proxy zipped up, her eyes wild and her chest heaving.
"They're shooting!" she screeched, and grabbed Mp3's hand. She half dragged, half carried Mp3 to the ditch her parents where taking refuge in. Mp3 rolled into it, and Proxy, graceful even in the face of danger, flipped her zipboard into her hand, minimized it, and put it on her belt. Poking her head over the edge, Mp3 saw dark-colored binomes pointing guns at them over their own ditch, about 200 feet away. Bullets whizzed across the ground, kicking up clouds of dirt wherever they hit (her zipboard was caught in the fire, it exploded after a couple of bullets pinged off it's surface).
Mp3 turned, gasping, into the ditch and looked around. Instantly, she wished she hadn't. It was swarming with nulls. She pried her eyes off the sickening site, and crawled, at last, toward her parents.
They were absolutely shocked to see her. Her mother, Daita Streme-Pixel, gasped.
"MiDi!" It was her father, Circuit Pixel. He stared at his daughter, not believing he was seeing her after 0.4 hours, in the middle of a war, above all. "MiDi, what are you doing here?"
Mp3 crawled over to him, and hugged him tightly. "Papa," she began, but stopped short as she drew back her hand.
Blood.
Mp3 looked at her father. "Papa?" she said, and looked at his chest, where a hole bore tale of a bullet taken. He smiled sadly, and shook his head.
"I'll be fine," he said, "Now, go see your mother."
Mp3 turned to her mother, lying a couple feet away. Daita smiled at her daughter as well, but looked no better than her husband. She held out her arms, and Mp3 fell into them.
She gasped. Her mother was cold and frail. She backed away, and whispered
"Mama, I'm so glad to see you! When I heard...I was so scared." She closed her eyes to hold back tears. Her mother brushed her forehead with her fingertips.
"Don't worry, High-note," she said quietly, using her pet name for Mp3, "Everything will be fine."
"FREEZE!" Mp3 whirled around to see three of the dark binomes standing over them and aiming guns. Proxy screamed. The binomes opened fire, tearing into her parents.
"NO!" Mp3 reached for them, but Proxy pulled her into a sitting position on one side of her opened zipboard. Proxy promptly flew straight up, attracting the attention of the binomes. They began to fire up at them, and Mp3, in a panic/grief stricken madness, leapt off the zipboard and fell 30 feet. As soon as she did so, she realized what a stupid idea it was, and shrieked. She hit the ground hard, knocking the wind out of herself. She wanted to lie still forever, but by now the binomes were shooting at her as well, making that impossible. She flew to her feet, and shot along the bumpy ground, hearing bullets buzz past her and stepping on countless nulls. White-hot pain flew up her leg, almost unbearable, and she thought perhaps one had stuck to her shoe. But looking down, she saw her leg bleeding, and realized she had been hit. The knowledge made the wound hurt worse, and she stumbled. But just before she fell, and thus sealed her doom, she was caught painfully under the arms and lifted away.
Her eyes were blurred with tears and fatigue, and she couldn't make out her savior. Shimmering hair, flying, an angel? Mp3 shook her head and tried again. No, not an angel, but fairly close: Proxy.
"No..." she mumbled, hanging limply by her armpits. Proxy grunted a reply, but it was too hard to understand, especially when Mp3's brain was numb with shock.
Part 2 soon! Took me long enough to write this one, jeez...