As Null awoke, he found himself in a camping tent filled with blankets, pillows, and other survival equipment.
'Must've been out for a while I guess,' he surmised while crawling out of the tent.
"You're awake!" The noise from the tent's zippers alerted the nearby Sophina. She sat next to a dancing flame lighting up the barren land around the surrounding area.
"Sorry to make you worry about me even during all of whatever this is." he spread his arms wide and spun around before slumping down next to her.
"No don't be. When you were trapped underground, I thought you were dead for sure.
But I stayed here just in case you came back. The others are still out there looking for something to eat, but they haven't been back in a while. I felt another tremor just before you woke, so seeing you is... kind of nice," her sentence trailed off near the end.
"What happened before won't be happening anytime soon," he reassured her.
"As long as you're okay, I don't mind," she said matter-of-factly, stunning Null.
He took in the view before him: Sophina with her legs hugged tightly against her chest, the flickering flame reflecting off of her big doe eyes, and the great starry expanse above as far as his eyes could see.
Out of all the stars he could see, only one thing shone brightly as she lay before him.
'How could I have overlooked this girl. Such a pretty face huddled next to me.
Underneath the starry sky, nothing but the fire in her eyes could compare.'
"Beautiful," he couldn't help but relay the honest truth as his gaze was trained on Sophina's figure. This moment was one he could never forget even if he wanted to.
"What's so beautiful," she asked, her flushed face rested upon her knees.
'Huh?' Like the snap of a thread, Null was snapped back into reality.
But this was no time for panic, no.
This was a time for action!
"Can you not tell what I'm looking at," he played it off smoothly as his face inched closer to hers.
She squirmed slightly at the forwardness of Null's advance; she looked as if she wanted to say something but held back and closed her eyes.
BOOM!
An explosion went off in Null's head as he prepared himself for the consequences of his next actions.
He gently turned her delicate chin upwards as he whispered, "Look."
Confused and slightly embarrassed at the request, Sophina obliged and slowly her round eyes were met with the view of the night sky.
There were no longer any artificial lights to brighten the surface of the planet, no tall obstructions to block the sight of the starry expanse right above them.
With the enlargement came a new view of space and the surge of spiritual energy cleansed virtually every impurity residing upon every nook and cranny of the planet, allowing for the mesmerizing view above.
But that was only the beginning, for the moment she went to look back at the face of her Romeo, her lips met with his in a burst of raw passion!
A feeling that could only be described with the romanticism of a children's fairy tale was shared by the two of them.
But the end was yet to be.
From that burst came an explosion!
Not one of passion, but something more. Something magical.
A feeling of ecstasy coursed through Null as his body became engulfed in a milky white substance. Indeed, his atomical structure was transforming and his spirit was emblazed.
The unique body of his predecessor lay dormant within his own!
New vigor was infused into every aspect of his being!
HIs senses grew to a terrifying level where he could hear the movement of blood cells moving with the pulse of his beating heart.
He felt like he could destroy a planet if he willed it.
But there was something wrong with the current situation.
Where was the previous feeling?
The tender first kiss of a young couple interrupted at such a time— truly what a waste!
As he calmed himself the cosmic aura around him melded with the universe seamlessly, and with that he opened his eyes.
He saw the bare ground— where an imprint should have been left by Sophina— in front of him as clear as day with his new vision.
Weird.
But where was Sofina? His head slowly turned to right and there, the burnt out remains of the campfire solidified the end of the previous warmth.
He fell limp onto his back, mind wandering as he stared at the sky above.
His eyes glimmered with the reflection of the stars and planets and asteroids.
But one look at his pupils and one could tell they were unfocused, capturing none of the celestial bodies' sight.
His left eye began to spill a trail of crimson tears as his mighty self took on the form of something like a fragile shell of its former self.
"Null is he who defies the Creator," the soul-shattering whimper of a lone soul on a barren rock befell his ears alone.
Now it all made sense to him.
He picked himself up and walked, feet dragging, towards a direction he could see the smoke from a separate fire a distance away.
He felt nothing but burning rage but figured the message of a certain hobo point him the direction of something to put it to use.
So, there he went for hours on end with no sign of fatigue whatsoever— like a hobbling zombie on its way searching for a decent meal— until the sign of a crash site came into view.
By now, it should have been around midnight but who was to say now with the current changes to the planet.
Before Null could reach the center of the crash, a figure could be seen approaching from the distance.
A spherical orb of golden-white light hovered over their left shoulder, illuminating the space around it.
A bald-headed alien with great big eyes stood three meters in front of the dirtied Null.
They both stared in silence, examining each other.
"Can you speak?" Null finally broke the silence, not expecting much of an answer.
The pink alien opened its mouth to let out a series of hoarse gargles before digging in one of its pockets.
It wore a ragged suit of some sort that covered its entire body aside from its abnormally large dome.
"Graghr ruokh eee," it spoke its own language while pulling out a device from the pocket.
After fiddling with it for a short moment, it tossed the device to Null while it gestured to its mouth while opening and closing it.
"You want me to speak into this thing," Null asked while analyzing the foreign object.
It began flashing for a few moments before chiming and replaying the message in the foreign tongue.
The alien proceeded towards him while speaking to which the device translated, "Not much on this big piece of rock, huh?"
The message was a lot more light-hearted than expected, prompting Null to chuckle a little.
"You've got it all wrong. I'm everything you could ever want and you're exactly what I need, so about we help each other out?" Null chided in an attempt at humor.
In the depths of his eyes a dim light shone in milky waves and residing at the furthest depths, a hint of blood red sat maliciously waiting for its time to come.