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starlight-torment · 2 years

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Valiant Souls: A New Perspective - A World Without You

"Sorry Lily, I'm on a mission right now, we'll go hiking later. I won't be out for so long, so behave!"

That was the last thing she heard from Charles before he went to get the spaceship with a man she didn't recognize. She trusted him, but she also was worried for him, of course, she would be worried! The Toppats have now a station in orbit, making it easy for them to steal and the government can't do anything with the risk they destroy the earth.

When she heard the news that the Toppat Station has been destroyed, happiness couldn't describe what she felt, but that emotion quickly vanished when General Galeforce told her that Henry Stickmin – the man who she saw Charles with, and also the man who helped to take down the Toppat's Airship in the past, along with their leader and his Right Hand Man – brought the news that Charles has died when the station exploded due to him saving Henry from a random Toppat who pushed him outside the escape pod but at the cost of his safety and life.

She was devastated. She didn't know what to do. She wanted to cry at the sky, begging to have him back or take revenge on the remaining Toppats who have escaped the explosion, but that wouldn't bring Charles back, so she just had a breakdown right in front of the General.

He hugged her and stayed there, soothing her and calming her down, "Shh, I'm here, it's okay, he's in a better place." She was quite sure that she heard him cry a bit, but she wasn't mentally okay to notice anything around her.

General Galeforce told her to go rest once she finally calmed down, and she was halfway to her tent when something clicked in her mind. "That guy, Henry Stickmin, he's still here, right?", she thought. Right before she left General Galeforce's tent, she had asked him if the guy was staying there tonight, and he said yes.

She didn't know where his tent was, so she just ran past tents, in the hope she would recognize the man with Charles when they left. Right before the camp parking center, she bumped with an albino guy with red eyes, a jacket with a cool golden wing pin, brown pants, and shoes. She instantly recognized him as the person who was with Charles – "His name is Henry, dummy. Remember that!", she scolded herself.

"Ah, I'm sorry sir, I didn't see you." She apologized to him.

"It's fine, don't say sorry, I didn't see you coming too." She noticed that the man was quite in an urge to leave, but she had a couple of questions she wanted to ask before he left.

"Uh, are you, perhaps, Henry Stickmin? That guy who helped us take down the Toppat Leader and his Right Hand Man?" She asked him with caution, fearing that he may not like the question, given that the General kidnapped him to help them take down the Toppats.

The albino guy seemed quite shocked to hear that. Apparently, he didn't expect some soldiers still remember that, "…Yeah? And who are you?"

"My name is Lydia Leronheit. I was Charles' partner in many missions he was designed to. I heard about what happened and I…" she struggled to get the rest of the sentence out, but once she hold her light blue scarf, she found the strength to finish the sentence, "…I wanted to ask…how were his last moments?"

The silence between them both was so heavy that it could be cut with a knife. Lydia was about to say to Henry that he didn't need to talk about that if he didn't want to, but she was shocked when he started talking about Charles' last moments with great difficulty without crying.

She PATIENTly heard him tell her about his last moments, and the whole time she kept holding the light blue scarf dearly, so she wouldn't cry too.

"…and then, the station exploded." Henry ended the story while looking at the ground and tugging his jacket. Lydia didn't know how close Charles and Henry were, given that Charlie didn't tell anything about Henry except he helped the government arrest Reginald Copperbottom and his Right Hand Man, but she somewhat knew that he held Charles as dearly in his heart as she did.

Lydia stayed quiet for some time, processing everything she heard, and a sad laugh escaped her lips, "That's definitely what Charles would do, that little shit always cared about others' safety first and then his own."

She approached him and gave a pat on his left shoulder, "Hey, by the way you sound, I'm assuming you blame yourself for what happened. Don't blame yourself, okay? You couldn't predict what would happen, and even if you did, you know that he had a very strong will and it's almost impossible to make him change his mind when he has an idea." She gave him a warm smile and hoped her KINDNESS could get through him, "If you need anything, come to my tent. It's easier to move on when you share your pain with others, isn't it? If you can't find where it is, ask one of the soldiers, literally almost everyone here knows me, so they'll know where to find me."

After she said that, she finally left and walked her way to her tent, leaving Henry behind at the camp's exit. She was pretty sure she heard him leave and someone coming after him, but she didn't pay attention. When she arrived at her tent, something made her heart feel heavy while she was entering the tent. She looked around it, seeing her bed, some equipment she had, like some guns, a walkie-talkie, armor and a parachute in case of emergency, and an improvised nightstand with a portrait.

She approached the nightstand and picked up the portrait, it was a picture of her and Charles on their first mission together. That mission was quite fun, the mission was to arrest some Toppats in a place they had info where they would commit a heist, and Charles had the amazing plan of crashing the helicopter into them. It came on their salary, of course, and miraculously they got out alive with only light injuries but it was the best day she ever had in her life, she didn't remember laughing that much before when he crashed the helicopter with her and him inside it and the plan worked out.

After that, they went on more missions together, and she always supported his greatest plan when the chance of damaging the helicopter was low. Inspired by him, she created a catchphrase and a situation where she used it. Normally, she used it when she was about to shoot a group of criminals with perfect aim and, to top it off, she still did some pirouettes in the air before getting back on the helicopter.

"Man, I miss him", she thought. She never admitted it to Charles, but she always thought of him as her older brother. Her parents were already old when they had her, and she never had any siblings, so she always got jealous of the kids in her school because most of them had siblings and she didn't have any. So, when she met Charles, she grew so fond of him and his KINDNESS that she started to think of him as the brother she never had.

Lydia lay on her bed while hugging the portrait and thinking of all the missions she and Charles had gone together. Tears were streaming down her face while she cried as loudly as she can, not caring if anyone was hearing her.

"Charlie…Charlie, please, come back…come back, big bro…" She curled up in a ball and started shaking. Her vision was becoming blurred, it was becoming hard to breathe and her ears started to ring.

She didn't believed this. She didn't want to believe Charles has died. She couldn't live without him.

She couldn't live in a world without him.

And then she passed out.

______________________________________________________________

It was a bright sunny day, birds were singing, flowers were blooming, a perfect day to be out with friends. That was her wish, of course, but she still had to work, that was the only thing ruining her day.

Oh well, they could still go out on the weekends, so that didn't bother her. After all, everyone had their things to do, Rupert and Victoria were practicing their aim, the Bukowski twins were preparing to go out on a mission, Quentin was scolding Drake Camper and Josh Taylor again for not taking their jobs seriously and Norm was doing his tech things.

What she was doing? Just hanging around Charles' helicopter after another successful mission. They were going on missions more often than before due to the Toppat Clan being successful in launching their station in space, and it was giving everyone in the government a headache, not just the higher-ups.

They were being way harder to catch than before, because now they were in space, of course, and they had a machine that made them go down to the earth and up in their station in an blink of an eye.

She was biting her scarf while thinking of that. Apparently, arresting their leader AND Right Hand Man wasn't enough to stop the Toppats, they had someone else to take care of their plans in case something went wrong with their leader. "That little shits", she thought, she was barely getting enough sleep and stopping at home due to them. Next time she was going to shoot at their faces without hesitat-

"Lydia! I was calling you for a while, didn't you hear me?"

A sharp pain came in the back of her neck, she hissed while rubbing the place and turned to see who had hit her. A man with brown hair, green eyes, and chestnut color skin was standing behind her and staring at her. She sighed while motioning for him to sit beside her.

"Sorry Charles, I was thinking about the Toppat Clan and the trouble they have been causing us. Why were you calling me though?" She asked, looking at him with confusion.

"I was calling you because I was suggesting we go hiking the mountain tomorrow if we have free time." He said while sitting beside her. "You said you've been wanting to explore the mountain for a while, so I thought "Well if neither I nor she has any missions tomorrow, we can go explore the mountain if she wants."

"Of course! It would be nice to go hiking to take the Toppats off of our minds for a second."

They stared at the sky, looking at the clouds that came and go in many shapes and at the birds that sometimes would pass by. After the raid went wrong and the Toppats have been successful in their plan, Lydia has been constantly thinking that it would be nice to be a bird – she could fly so far away from them and live in peace in some nest in a forest or under the earth, like a bird she has studied in school that lived under the earth.

Lydia turned to Charles, she wanted to ask something to him that has been in her mind for a while, "Hey, Charles."

"Hm?" He said while readjusting his headset and shifting his gaze to her.

"You know that life in the government can be dangerous sometimes, correct?" She said, looking firmly at his eyes. "So, what would you do if today was your last day on earth?"

They stared at each other for a while, Lydia waiting for his answer and Charles deeply thinking about how he should answer her.

Finally, he came up with an answer, "Well, IF today was my last day on earth, I think I would want to spend time with my friends like I am doing with you right now!" He told her with a big smile on his face.

"Awn, stop it, you're making me blush." She said while giving him a fake punch on his arm and smiling through it.

"What? I am just stating facts, you're a great friend, Lily." Charles said while rubbing his arm and looking at her DETERMINED and with KINDNESS.

She paused for a bit, looking at him, and then giving him the best of her smiles, "Heh, thanks, Charlie, you're a great friend too."

Suddenly, the space around her seemed to shift. Lydia got startled by the sudden change of scenario and got up quickly while looking at her surroundings.

She seemed to be in front of many escape pods, and while she was looking around, she noticed that many parts of wherever she was were destroyed and had fallen on the ground or above someone, and there was an alarm sounding all over the place.

Before she could figure out what was happening, her body moved towards the escape pod 3 3 and she pressed the button beside it. When it didn't work, she looked to her right side and saw no one else other than Charles looking at her.

At this point, a whirlwind of questions was running through her head, the main ones were "What is going on?", "Where am I?" and "Why is Charles here?". Before she could ask him anything, her body moved again towards the button – Charles also did that – and she pressed the button again two times before punching it and successfully opening the escape pod.

Charles and Lydia exchanged happy looks – "Why am I smiling? I need to know first what the heck is going on before assuming if this is a good thing or not!" - and they entered the escape pod.

Charles sat in the chair on the opposite side of the chair Lydia sat while the escape pod door closed. "Ahh, well that was intense. Can't wait to go ho-"

Suddenly, the escape pod door opened and Lydia was pushed out of the escape pod by a random Toppat. Everything happened so quickly that she only noticed what happened when she was back in the escape pod: Charles had tackled the random Toppat and thrown her back to the escape pod, but that Toppat quickly recovered and tackled Charles.

She was going to help Charles to get rid of the Toppat when the escape pod door closed shut. Lydia quickly got up and tried to open the door at the same time Charles pushed the Toppat against the door, "Don't worry about me." He said that while looking to both sides, "Ow-I'll find another way!"

With that, the escape pod was launched into space, leaving Charles behind at the station. Lydia was paralyzed in shock, what just happened? Before she could answer that, she heard Charles' voice coming from an earpiece that fell to the ground.

She bent down, picked it up, and put it into her ear just in time to hear what Charles had to say, "H-Henry, you there?"

"What? Henry? My name isn't Henry, it's Lydia, you dummy, did your hit your head or something?." Lydia said, but her voice wasn't coming out of her mouth, instead, another voice answered for her.

"Yeah Charles, I'm here." A familiar voice answered in her place, and with that, Lydia started to slowly understand what was happening.

"Wait… this situation seems familiar, didn't Henry say- Oh. Oh no." Lydia finally understood what was happening – she was dreaming about what happened today, but in Henry's vision. Henry told her that Charles saved him from dying in that station, but Charles stayed behind because a Toppat tackled him. If what Henry said is true, she knew what was about to happen, and she was starting to panic.

"Man…that roughed me up. Got him though. Gotta be another escape pod around here somewhere." Even though Lydia wasn't controlling her body's actions, she still put an invisible hand in her mouth. She saw an escape pod behind the debris of the station, but there was no way Charles could make it to that escape pod before the station exploded.

"We did it though. We got 'em. Pretty good plan. You could say it was the greatest-"

The station exploded before Charles could finish his line. Lydia was shocked. She slammed the escape pod's glass window, but it was no use, and she screamed.

______________________________________________________________

"NO, CHARLES!" Lydia woke up screaming. She sat up and took deep breaths, looking carefully at her surroundings. She was at her tent, not at the space station nor in Charles' helicopter. She also noticed that she was sweating and that she slept in her uniform while hugging the portrait.

She slowly got up from her bed and got a peek outside of her tent. It was around a bit past midnight, 1:00 AM, she would risk saying. "Why did I dream Henry's memory?" she thought, as if she were hoping some kind of answer would come to that question, she looked at the portrait, illuminated under the moonlight.

She stared at the picture for a while and put the portrait on her nightstand, she changed her uniform to her pj's and lied in her bed again, and tried to sleep again. Lydia made a decision that she would tell General the next day, it wasn't that urgent, so it could wait. For now, it's better if she goes to sleep. It was a busy day for her, no, not just for her, but for everyone who knew Charles.

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Notes:

Hello everyone! My name is starlight-torment, but you can call me Arty, and this fanfic is an inspiration from the fanfic Valiant Souls, from @knightmareaceblue, go check them out!

A bit of this story is going to be interwined with her own chapters, with many lines being the same, but there are also going to be original lines, so don't miss out!

Also, I'm still practicing my art style, so be patient with me.

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