It was another day in the snow for Seraph. Another day wandering, another day fighting.

Just another snowy day in the life of a Spiral Knight.

The small robotic knight rested against the wall of a ruined building, shielding himself from the chill winds that blew past.

With the snow no longer pelting him, and he brushed the excess off of his pale animal hide armor, scattering it back into the breeze. The fur lining the inside of the armor kept his parts from freezing over.

Feeling sufficiently shielded, Seraph took the opportunity to run a diagnostic again. He tapped a few hidden buttons built into his left arm, and a display buzzed to life in front of his eyes:

SUPPLY LEVELS
MIST ENERGY: 24/100
CRYSTAL ENERGY: 7/9999
HEAT: 98/300

SYSTEMS:
SHIELD: Severely damaged, 22% functionality.
GENERATOR: Offline, charge function disabled.
M.E. COLLECTOR: Functioning at 85% efficiency.
COMM: Offline, communications limited to radio range.
MAP: Damaged, unable to connect to Spiral Uplink.
RADAR: Missing radar unit.

COMBAT:
HEAD: Wolver Cap, minor damage. 85/100 HP.
CHEST: Wolver Coat, heavy damage. 65/250 HP.
WEAPON 1: Flourish/Rapier, LV 6/10
WEAPON 2: Spur/Sword, LV 10/10
WEAPON 3: Empty
WEAPON 4: Empty
SHIELD: Defender, LV 4/10

A voice followed shortly after: "Recommendation: return to Haven for repairs."

Considering the sheer number of times he'd heard that message, Seraph was quite sure that Haven was a place. Where it was, and when he'd been there before, he didn't know. Heck, maybe this IS Haven, and it's just long gone now. "System, end diagnostic." The message faded from his view, and he reached to his side and tugged a piece of scrap out of a small pouch.

This particular piece of scrap fit well within his hands, and it was shaped into a shallow C with the two ends slightly warped and torn. For all intents and purposes, this odd little piece of scrap was useless, but he couldn't bring himself to throw it away. There was something about this thing.. Something special that tied it to him...

He stared at the odd piece of metal a few moments before he was interrupted. "Rrr... Ruf!!" Seraph shoved the scrap back into his pouch and stood, searching for the Wolver he'd heard. He drew his rapier, Flourish, and peeked around the edge of the wall he was hiding behind, trying to see some hint of a creature through the now-raging blizzard.

A glimpse of a small yellowish fox was visible in-between gusts of snow. "What's such a small Wolver doing out here alone?" The Wolver appeared to be backing away slowly, it's tail raised somewhat and it's teeth bared aggressively. Yet, Seraph couldn't find what it was backing away from in the blizzard.

Suddenly, the local temperature dropped, and a pair of glowing blue eyes were visible through even the strongest gusts of snow. The Wolver was backing away from a Frostifur, the much larger, ice-inclined subspecies of Wolver.

Seraph pulled out his shield, and debated his options: he could let the Frostifur murder the young Wolver, and just continue on his way, OR he could take his chance at killing the Frostifur himself, and eliminate a potential threat with the advantage of a surprise attack.

But, more importantly, why were Frostifurs attacking Wolvers? They normally had no problems working together to hunt down knights like himself, considering how similarly the all behaved. It's not like there was much food in the snow, but were they really turning to cannibalism, or had this young one done something to anger the larger one? It was puzzling, at the least.

"rrr.. rrRAF!!" Seraph watched in shock as the tiny Wolver pounced at the Frostifur, landing on it's back and biting into the neck of the larger fox.

Seraph bolted from his hiding place towards the fight, using the wolver's attack to further improve his advantage over the Frostifur. With an inaudible growl of his own, he thrust his Flourish forward, running the thin blade through the thick fur of the large wolf, staining the white fur a vibrant red.

"Grrr.. Rrruf!" The Frostifur shook itself angrily, snapping the Flourish in two and throwing off both the Wolver and Seraph easily.

"Crap!" He scrambled backward as the Frostifur turned towards him, slipping constantly and searching for his shield.

It's eyes blazing blue, the Frostifur lunged forward onto Seraph, pushing him deeper into the snow and further backward, opening it's maw to bite down on his neck. He responded out of reflex, grabbing it's jaw and pushing against it with as much strength as he could muster.

Seraph and the Frostifur struggled against each other, neither gaining much ground against each other. The Frostifur growled louder as it put more effort into each push, leaning it's entire body forward.

Realizing it was wasting its effort, the Frostifur opened its jaw further, loosening itself from Seraph's grip before quickly lunging forward and digging its fangs into the thick helmet that Seraph wore, tearing through the leather and leaving deep scratches on the inner metallic surface of his skull.

"rRAF!" The sharp bark of the Wolver cut through the blizzard, and it once again pounced on the Frostifur, biting into and tearing through its ear.

The Wolver continued through the air, landing a short distance away and drawing the large Frostifur's attention with more angry barks.

Taking the sudden opportunity, Seraph punched the side of the Frostifur's skull, catching it off-guard and knocking it off balance for a few seconds. He then grabbed the Frostifur by its shoulder, and threw it off of him, away from the Wolver.

He took hold of a rock behind him and pulled himself up, quickly drawing his curved sword, Spur, from the sheathe on his back. He put both hands on it in a combat stance, unsure as to where his shield disappeared to.

Nearby, the Frostifur rolled back onto its feet and stood still for a few moments while it recovered. The glow in its eyes quickly returned as the Frostifur regained its focus on the situation at hand. With a loud growl, it ran towards the now-ready Seraph, fangs bared and tail swishing in the wind currents that followed its charge.

Seraph heard the mechanical components hidden within his sword whir to life, creating a hazy yellow glow around the blade as he swung it forward at the Frostifur, wedging the blade firmly in the beast's jaw.

The Frostifur coughed and spat out some blood from its dripping mouth, pulling itself free and swinging an angry paw at Seraph.

He countered almost instantaneously, the blade accelerating itself to blinding speeds as the mechanical components whirred themselves into a high-pitched screech, sending the blade flying into the Frostifur's padded paw.

As the dull yellow afterimage faded from view, Seraph grinned; he rarely had a good excuse to pull out Spur. The dull but deadly blade gave such a feeling of speed and control.

Acting before the Frostifur's reaction, Seraph sliced his blade through the air once again, into the base of the beast's neck, leaving a large gash, but unable to pierce the thick neck bones.

The Frostifur recoiled backward as blood gushed freely from the open wound, shaking its head in a frantic effort to regain focus. The nearby snow storm slowly fizzled to a halt as Seraph readied himself to attack again.

Spur's mechanisms whirred happily, coated in a new, slick layer of blood. Seraph bashed the dull blade into both of the Frostifur's front legs, breaking bones and crippling the creature.

As it inevitably fell, he gave it a swift kick to the side, knocking it over onto its back. He stood over the wounded creature, and flipped his blade so that the point was downward.

The resulting stab was very messy, as piercing thick skin with the tip of a dull blade is somewhat difficult, even for a robotic knight.

The Frostifur gave a few whimpering yelps before it stopped moving.

Seraph pulled the remnant of his Flourish out of the Frositfur, and then began burying the large predator under several layers of snow. He never really understood why it seemed so necessary, but something told him it was important to at least try and pay some respect to the creatures he borrowed fur from.

Afterwards, he wiped the blood off of Spur, and began melting some ice into the internal parts to flush the blood out.

As he finished the rather rudimentary chore of cleaning out his weapon, a thought came to mind. "Where'd that Wolver go?"

Upon looking around, he didn't see any of the buildings he was near earlier, and concluded that the fight must've taking him a bit further than he realized. However, there was some sort of black, circular thing visible in the distance..

After sheathing his sword and giving up all hope of ever seeing his shield again, Seraph began walking towards the aforementioned circular object.

As he approached, the few sensors he still had picked up on some vague heat signature coming from the object. Was it a creature?

As details became more apparent, Seraph concluded that the object itself wasn't alive, but it looked very metallic and had various designs painted on it. Once he reached it, he touched the smooth metal, punctuated by rivets and bolts.

He circled around this.. Thing.. And continued inspecting it. He quickly found a tiny hole torn into the bottom, and what looked to be a door, but no way to go through either.

It looked to be some sort of pod, but heavily scratched, dented, and blackened, as if though it had experienced some sort of massive fire.

Seraph continued inspecting the door, searching for some sort of lock, or handle, but there didn't appear to be any. All he found were two small holes with warped metal inside.

Deciding he didn't have anything else left to try, Seraph pulled out the odd little piece of junk he always carried around, and held it up to the two holes.

Surprisingly, the piece of scrap matched the spacing between the holes perfectly. He decided to try his luck and push it into the holes.

It took a bit of force to bend the warped metal back into shape, but the junk stayed in place, forming a handle on the door.

Seraph tugged lightly at this handle, and the door swung open easily on its hinges.

Inside, curled up on a chair, was a small Wolver, asleep. The same one from earlier, judging by the small chunk of Frostifur ear laying in the corner.

Plastered all over the walls of this pod were various pictures of an even younger-looking Wolver, with the word "Snowball" scribbled in several places. But one picture in particular caught his attention. In a small wooden frame was a tiny black-and-white photo, with a robot smiling happily at the camera.

Seraph tugged off his helmet and looked at a shard of glass, then back at the photo.

Give or take a few scratches, that was HIM in the photo! This was HIS pod! And.. This Wolver.. It was fighting the Frostifur to help protect HIM.

Quickly, Seraph began collecting every single photo he could and stuffing them into his pouch. Various happy memories flooded his mind, all of them more real than the last. As he gathered the photos, the Wolver stirred.

It awoke slowly, lazily rolling to the side as it woke. Then it noticed Seraph and immediately perked up, in a defensive pose.

Seraph looked at it for a few moments. "...Snowball?"

The Wolver yipped happily and swished its tail excitedly, relaxing its stance. It jumped up and onto Seraph, stepping away from the various buttons it had been sitting on.

He held this little-no, his little Wolver, and squeezed it like a tiny pillow. "Snowball.. You're so small.."

Within the pod, a screen buzzed to life hazily, previously covered by a photo. Alongside it, Seraph's systems buzzed with an alert:

"ALERT: New map downloaded from Spiral Uplink, loading data..".

A small, poorly-rendered image appeared in Seraph's display as he affectionately held Snowball. It was a map of some sort, with very little detail in it, but there were two things of interest: "Haven", and the big line directing a path towards it.

"Well, guess we can start heading to Haven, eh?" Snowball nuzzled him a few times before hopping out onto the snow and yapping an agreement.

Without another word, Seraph and Snowball began walking, the snowy wasteland slowly giving way to paved ground..

(*)
End fic. Comment, talk about it, please? Might make more if enough people bother about it.