Miraculous Ladybug - Starfighter/Sci-Fi/Star Wars-ish AU

Chapter 7

Mari woke in a start, her body was immobilized; encased in an emergency blanket, her vacuum sealed suit, helmet and the arms of another. Her sudden jolt had not woke the person who held her in their arms as they rested against the trunk of a tree.

Ahead of them was a dim campfire, the glowing coals and surrounding stone ring radiating heat onto Mari's body.. The last thing she could remember was being extremely hot and wanting to take off her suit and prior to that she had tripped and spent minutes on the frosty ground. She must have gone delusional from hypothermia, aided by the shock of the crash. Her legs still felt numb, like after a long day of training, but were warm now thanks to the fire.

She tilted her head to look up at the person holding her against their chest. She wasn't at all surprised when she saw who it was, and fell back asleep.

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Once Ren found a suitable place to land near Mari's crash site he had gathered his gear and set off on foot. Leaving his ship, under the control of the onboard A.I., to travel to the proposed rendezvous location to relay a message he had recorded to whoever else made it.

Not long after he had set off in search for the downed bomber, a rumble reverberated around the icy forest from far away, a noise that didn't bode well for Mari and her ship. Ren rushed through the snow as fast as his boots and restrictive armourdex suit would allow, following the direction of where the noise had originated and using the approximate location marker he had set on his helmet's display before he had landed.

It had taken him several minutes to return to the crash site, by that time, the red ship was in smoldering pieces at the foot of one of the giant trees. The cockpit was the first thing he looked for, empty, but the plasikglass canopy was missing. He gazed up at the tree, and there, impaled on one of the more slender branches was the canopy. It wasn't definite proof that Mari had escaped, but the boot prints in the soft snow leading away from the tree and this missing survival pack were. Knowing that there was a chance she was still in the vicinity and hadn't been dragged away by some animal, he tried to raise her on short range comms, but alas, no response. So he took off after her, following the prints in the snow and broken branches, periodically calling out her name.

As Ren carried on through the snowy forest, daylight faded quickly, quicker than he would have liked and with it the temperature plummeted. He watched on his HUD as the energy required to keep his suit heated increased little by little. He had turned on a conservative mode that reduced all functions to use as little energy as possible, leaving his legs feeling numb from the thick snow, but meant he could last another few hours before he would have to make camp. Ren feared for Mari, not only was she less experienced in survival scenarios than him, but his suit was cutting edge; filled with experimental capacitors and new tech for testing purposes, whereas her's was standard issue, lacking such features. Also a crash like that may have injured her, she could have broken a leg or ribs, or been punctured by one of the barbs that ripped through the hull of her bomber.

But he tried to remain focused on his current mission, finding her. That's what was important. He tried her on the short range COMM again, nothing. There was a slight clearing ahead of him, the last beams of sunlight shining through the trunks. And on the other side of the tree break was a faint red speck that Ren could make out through his slightly fogged up helmet, the undeniable red hue of Mari's suit.

Ren rushed across the gap as fast and he was able to without face-planting into the snowy undergrowth, keeping his eyes locked onto the red suit. As she got closer she could see the blue hair of the girl dancing in the wind and the pale skin of her upper half.

'What was she doing?' he thought to himself as he closed in behind her, only a hoverdisk throw away now. She had hooked her pink fingers into the waist of her rolled down suit and was about to pull down the rest down when she fell limply forward into the snow.

"MARI!!!" Ren called out as he arrived at her side, kneeling and flipping her up onto his lap to get her skin off the snow. He dropped his pack and pulled out one of the emergency blankets and swaddled her in it before scooping her up and trudging back through the snow to the clearing.

Once she was settled next to a tree, he retrieved the two packs and her helmet and delicately put her suit and helmet back on; removing one of his power cells and replacing hers. With a quick hiss, her suit vacuum sealed around her skin again and began to heat the chilled body beneath. Ren collected some wood, the least damp he could and gathered some stones in a ring to make a campfire. With the firestarters in his pack, he got it lighted in no time at all, then returned and manoeuvred himself under the girl and wrapped his arms around her and fell asleep.