From the seat of a VTOL transport, Osea seemed quiet and peaceful… until of course, one caught a glimpse of the smoke and bright orange glow coming from one section of the city, where a temporary command post for the Destrillian search operation was located. Kijo simply gazed out the window, angered by the knowledge that the Destrillians had not only been able to sneak into an outpost that had an entire battalion of troops stationed there, but had also killed a number of her fellow officers. She turned her attention towards the other people in the aircraft.
“Marshall? Do we have confirmation on the target's current whereabouts?”
“According to reports they seemed to have commandeered a civilian vehicle and are now speeding around frantically with a suggested course being towards the R7 Highway.”
Kijo was able to connect the dots in all of this and figure out their quarry's goal. “It is quite clear what they are doing. Sneaking into an outpost in uniform, making off with a transport truck, they are trying to flee the city. And this knowledge gives us a sizable advantage.”
“In what way does it ma'am, if I might ask?” Marshall replied in a rather confused manner.
Kijo looked back out the window once again and said, “There are only so many routes leading out of the city, and most of them are via bridges and tunnels that we have been able to securely seal off…” She pointed out the window towards a section in the east of the city. “Except that one. The M3 expressway is a direct highway that takes you directly out of the city, and due to the size of the multi-lane road it is difficult to seal off as you can not simply raise it like a bridge.”
“Oh I getcha ma'am! This means if they plan to leave the city then they'll have to go through here and we can cut 'em off!” The lieutenant replied excitedly.
“That is exactly correct. And what works to a greater advantage is that a large stretch of the M3 passes through what is now abandoned industrial sectors which are all planned to be demolished within the next few months—which means we can utilize our forces effectively without the risk of endangering civilians in the process.”
“You sure do think fast, Major. So what exactly are we going to be rolling out this time?”
Kijo paused for a moment, contemplating how much firepower would be necessary to assure the targets were positively eliminated this time. Considering there would be no problem with civilians this time, it would be wiser to simply go all-out and make sure the goal was achieved.
“Alright, here is what we are going to do. Mobilize the 5th and 6th armored companies and have them set up on both sides of the M3 along the abandoned industrial sector. Then deploy twelve squadrons of VTOL gunships and have them standing by to engage at the command. Finally call IRIN and have them situate their vessels at the far eastern end of the highway. If the targets make it past our forces by some means, I find it very unlikely that they will get past two of those command ships also.”She actually wondered what would happen in the event they did escape all that, but then dismissed it as being simply impossible, and spoke up again.
“Well, that’s everything then. Issue the orders and we will then proceed to rendezvous at the industrial sector.”
“Yes ma'am!” Marhsall replied, then jumped onto the radio to relay his superiors orders as the VTOL veered off towards the eastern side of the city.
~~~
"Emma, don't mean to rush you in your moment, but we need to go. NOW. Hurry up!" Idris Savage called from the open door of the mobile home turned escape vehicle. Idris knew how important the two human beings outside were to the nature Destrillian, but her instinct to get out as fast as possible was beginning to override her tolerance for a long goodbye.
Tossing her reacquired black bangs out of her eyes, Idris stuck her pale arms out of the door and helped Emma in. The redhead quietly acknowledged everybody with a nod, and then went to sit beside Terra, the tears running silently down her cheeks. Terra herself squirmed around a little bit, looking here and there and everywhere, until finally she said to the Destrillians:
Evrybodii is here nao. Wii shud go wile wii can.
There were a few nods of agreement here and there; Nova and Jettison hadn’t heard Terra speak, of course, but they figured from the looks on everybody’s faces that the time had come to make their getaway.
Kerr hadn’t heard Terra either, which prompted Fiona into translating for him. “Floor that goddamned pedal and let’s GO already!” she snapped, slamming one hand on the back of his seat. Kerr gave her a withering glare before starting the mobile home wordlessly, and just like that they were off.
Stolz made a big fuss of getting to the back window, where they kept watch for… something. Only two of the other passengers knew of the menace that was, probably at that very moment, chasing them down—and neither were willing to dump it on their companions, agitated as they all already were. So Emma sat with her head nestled on top of Terra’s, and Idris perched delicately on the edge of the table because there was no more room for her to sit normally, and Stolz kept disturbingly silent vigil at the back, and not a one of them spoke.
It was silent. Tense. Nobody wanted to talk about anything – not about the catastrophe that had brought them all together, and not about the nightclub, and certainly not about all of their respectively failed missions. Each and every person in the Winnebago simply kept quiet and steeled themselves for what surely lay ahead. Idris met Thetis’ eyes once, accidentally, but the blue-haired girl looked away with a scowl. Jettison was speaking in hushed tones to Nova, probably about the rest of their group and what was to become of them; Lokka had sat himself down on the armrest of the couch that held the unconscious Kram, and was looking at him with some sort of reminiscence in his eyes.
And the quiet choked them all, because not a single one of them wanted to know what would happen when the silence did break.
It took about ten minutes of manoeuvring the big, heavy vehicle before the highway was in sight. By then the ride was growing smoother – Kerr was a fast learner, and he’d picked up skills much more difficult than driving a mobile home before.
Emma had wiped the tears from her cheeks with her sleeves. She was done with crying about it, for now at least – now, it was time to concentrate on the escape.
“We’re gonna make it through this Terra,” she whispered to the brunette-turning-greenhead beside her. Terra just bobbed her head up and down – of course they were. Because if they didn’t they would all die, and Terra didn’t want to think about all their bodies smeared over the road, so of course they would make it through.
Just then Stolz let out a heart-stopping gasp – in hindsight it was just Stolz being dramatic, but Idris’ sharp eyes caught a trace of real shock on the child’s face when they turned from the back window to face the rest of their company and announced, “Just figured you should all know, but that trio from the nightclub is chasing us and they’re probably gonna catch up real soon.”
“Oh, just great,” growled Fiona from where she was leaning on the back of the shotgun seat. “The last thing we need on our heels is those crazy fuckers.”
“Agreed,” came Lokka’s cool, composed voice from the couch. “It would be best if we made all due haste. Trust me – none of us wants to have to face those people down.”
“Then let’s hurry up and get on the highway already. Can’t this thing go any faster?” Thetis said, her voice tight with agitation.
Idris could just about feel the resentment coming off Kerr in waves. Clearly, being the driver only meant you were going to get criticized on your driving. A lot. Nevertheless, the Winnebago neared the highway seemingly without incident, and as the group felt the gentle pull of inertia which meant the vehicle was starting to accelerate, they began to relax just a tiny bit from their terseness.
That was a mistake.
~~~
“Well fuck my ass, why'd they have to get a damn car!?” Vollerei called out as the trio charged across rooftops that ran alongside the street the mobile home was currently speeding down. Inveja was taking the lead, as she was most intent on catching up with the fleeing vehicle. As the road came to a bend, she saw a shortcut along the roofs that would allow her to cut off the vehicle, and so leaped across onto the next rooftop, which placed her in perfect position.
“You two are pathetic, so why don't you just catch your breath while I pay them a personal visit, okay?!”Inveja called back to her comrades. As the vehicle passed by, she leapt from the building and landed square on the roof of her target.
The sudden impact startled the Winnebago’s occupants—in particular, Stolz, who could sense exactly what had just landed on the roof. “Oh crap! Oh crap! It's Inveja! Someone stop her quick or we're in really big trouble!” Stolz shouted at the others.
Idris scanned the inside of the vehicle – nobody was looking particularly eager to get back up on their feet to fight a Lyverius.
Nobody except for Fiona.
"Time for me to shut this bitch up once and for all," the woman said, easing off her place leaning against the shotgun seat. She cast everybody an almost amused glance before jumping through the open skylight and onto the roof, facing the woman, Inveja, who she had fought once before at the underground club. "Well if it isn't the crazy-eyed freak back for the rest of her ass-kicking."
“Fire slut," Inveja snarled. "We'll see who's getting wiped off the pavement when I'm done with you!" she shouted at Fiona, arms crossed, katana held backwards in her right hand.
"Try me with that dull knife you call a sword."
“Hmpth—I'll make you bleed, Destrillian,”the magenta-haired woman scoffed at Fiona. In a quick motion she unfolded her arms and flicked her sword out to the side. Fiona smirked and charged at her, dodging the first swing from her opponent's blade, and followed it up by throwing a punch which landed square on the flat side of Inveja's katana. The impact was enough to make the Pure stumble back for a moment before regaining her composure; she pulled off her left glove with her teeth and darted at the fire Destrillian. Her left arm, now covered in that shining black substance, reached forward in an attempt to end this fight quickly.
Fiona saw the woman's hand coming right at her, and knew exactly what her enemy was trying for.
Not this time.
She rolled forward under Inveja's arm and to the right, then as she rose up she spun around, extended her right arm, and connected with Inveja's upper chest, knocking her off her feet. The Lyverius fell backwards and tumbled off over the back of the vehicle's roof.
Fiona stood triumphant on the roof of the Winnebago, watching the Pure roll along on the road, getting further away every second as they pulled onto the highway. She knew better than to assume Inveja was dead. Nevertheless, the victory felt good, and she couldn't help but smirk. She rubbed her shoulder—it was really starting to bother her—and sauntered back over to peer through the skylight.
“Bitch wasn’t so tough. We’re all clear.”
“You don’t think they would attempt a second attack?” asked Lokka, his voice carefully devoid of any worry. Surprisingly, it was Emma who responded.
“I don’t think they can,” she started, squinting out the back window at the asphalt racing beneath them. “We’re traveling too quickly for them to catch up without a vehicle – they can’t run that fast.” She sounded sure enough to put everybody at ease… which brought to Idris’ mind the question of, why did Emma sound so sure of herself in the first place? The metal Destrillian looked at her freckled fellow closely. Intently. But she looked the same as she ever did, just the same Emma as always.
Hm.
~~~
A few minutes had passed without incident, but the Destrillians and their company weren’t going to let their guard down again. The city’s martial law had placed a strict curfew on all the citizens; this restriction rendered civilians unable to make their way to work until an hour or two later than usual. Kerr made good use of this – the Winnebago tore down the empty R7 at twice the legal speed, for all the world as if it were on some dusty, abandoned road in the wastelands to the east.
It was too easy. They were all thinking it. Nothing ever only had one problem – problems always came in waves, especially when there was more than one of their kind involved. The woman named Inveja could only have possibly been the beginning of their trouble.
“Maybe we’d better have someone on lookout,” Idris said, voicing everybody’s thoughts. “Just in case.”
“In case what?”Fiona sneered, sticking her head through the skylight again. She was still on top of the Winnebago, possibly enjoying the wind screaming through her fiery hair. “In case another glowy-eyed freak makes a miserable attempt to mess with us? In case the big bad city sends out its incompetent military? Well fine! If it means I get first crack at the bastards, I’ll stay up here—”
Bang.
It must have been the adrenaline that let her hear it so far off.
“Get down!” Idris said, uncoiling from her place on sheer instinct and leaping up through the skylight, pushing Fiona’s head out of the way as she went. A small shock ran through her suddenly outstretched arm. The metal Destrillian opened her eyes – she hadn’t even remembered closing them – and brought her hand to her face. Uncurling her palm, there lay inside a shiny bullet. A machine gun bullet.
She’d snatched it right out of the air.
“Watch where you put those fucking hands, Baldy!” she heard Fiona say as she cracked her jaw back in place. She must have used a lot more force to get the girl out of the way than she’d intended.
“I’m sorry,” Idris said, slinging the bullet right back where it came from and watching it hit home on the chest of one of the troops. “Next time I’ll just let the bullet do it, shall I?” Fiona glared—and then Idris smiled, and the fire Destrillian smirked right back at her.
“Whatever. Let’s thrash these idiots.”
“On your mark.”
Inside the Winnebago, Lokka moved from his place beside Kram’s unconscious body to one of the side windows. He didn’t like what he saw there. A good half-dozen armoured vehicles, each loaded with as many troops as they could fit, and each with a rather sizable gun mount to boot. And there were probably a few more right behind. And he was sure there had been VTOLs following them earlier.
He knew from their little team effort that Fiona was the fire Destrillian. Recalling information from files he'd read long ago, the viridian-eyed man remembered that the small one – Idris – was the Destrillian of metal.
That was going to be useful in this situation.
I’m sure I can provide an equally useful service,he thought, with a tiny, mirthless smile. We’ll fight better knowing we can’t be hit. “I’m going up with them,” he announced, over the sound of gunfire, and then he too sprang through the open skylight, landing casually beside the two female Destrillians.
As it happened, Fiona and Idris were a little too busy at the moment to acknowledge a third helper.
The Gunmetal Glint had spread her arms wide and conjured up a magnetic field to catch the bullets that were coming their way. Already, the three Destrillians were practically encased in a globe-like swirl of them.
“Any time now Fiona,” Idris called above all the noise, her voice strained with all the effort she was putting into their shield. Fiona herself just smirked and dragged her hand through the bullets, like running river pebbles through your fingers. Everywhere her hand touched, the metal began to heat up – it spread, and soon enough the entire sphere was glowing red-hot. Lokka shielded his eyes with one hand as the two worked on.
Idris waited patiently at the centre of the magnetic field as the air around them grew more and more unbearable. Finally, just as the bullets themselves began to melt, she took a deep breath and slammed them all together into one massive conglomerate. Taking careful aim, the small woman launched the twisted, burning projectile straight through the window of one of the VTOLs that had just caught up. The machine zigzagged away through the air before crashing and burning some space away.
Not a single one of them had spared the time to watch it do so, though – Lokka had quickly drawn on his power and thrown a shield around the group as Idris’ magnetic field went down, and the bullets were spanging off the almost-invisible wall by the dozens now. The white-haired Destrillian drew his gun and shot two men straight through the head, and another in the shoulder. But the chaos complicated things, and even though his hand was rock-steady, Lokka missed the next two shots entirely. The Winnebago was swerving around to keep from being hit too hard, and what with the targets already moving, it was hard to hit straight.
Wait,the man thought, with a sudden burst of clarity. Maybe I don’t have to.
“Idris!”
“Yes?” the metal wielder called back, risking a look over her shoulder at Lokka. “What do you want?” The man simply held up his gun in response, looking at her intently, and she knew what she needed to do. A little smile escaped her—this new Destrillian was creative. “Where do you want them to land?”
“Don’t waste my ammo,” was the answer. Idris acknowledged it with a nod of her head and shook her hands out a bit to prepare.
Lokka shot four bullets in quick succession—
“You’re aiming too far to the right! What the hell’s wrong with you?” shouted Fiona, who had finally aimed precisely enough to burn one of the vehicles’ drivers alive.
—and Idris was quick to guide them home, curving their paths just enough for their own propulsion to land each one in somebody’s head. The four men slumped, dead in an instant – the poor, hapless fifth barely had time to call the three Destrillians something quite rude, before the entire vehicle burst into flames.
Fiona dropped her outstretched hand and cocked a smug eyebrow at the looks Idris and Lokka gave her. “Thought you two dumbasses had missed.”
“Did it take you that long to aim?” retorted Idris.
Fiona took casual note that the woman’s voice was a little more snappy than usual. She just chuckled at the metal Destrillian and resumed the task of roasting as many people as possible. It felt good to be able to stretch her limbs after so long hiding in that dump of a city; if she didn’t know any better, then the fire prototype would have thought she was genuinely enjoying the fight. And she would have been. If only it weren’t for that stabbing pain in her shoulder.
~~~
Inside the Winnebago, the rest of the group sat tight and listened to the battle above and around them. Emma had developed an odd behaviour; every minute or two, the redhead would start, or exhale a little too sharply, or her leg would give the most almighty twitch you’d ever seen. Of course nobody noticed but Terra, partly because Terra knew enough about Emma to know she wasn’t naturally twitchy in a fight, and partly because Terra was the only one watching.
U ok?
“Fine, I’m fine,” the nature Destrillian said, as there was a scream and a boom and the freckled woman grit her teeth, hard.
“If you’re so fine, then why don’t you help?” spat Thetis from the other side of the Winnebago, her hands clamped white-knuckled on her bleeding knee. “Can’t you like, sprout some trees or something? They need help and you’re just sitting there!
“And him,” the blue-haired girl continued, throwing an icy look at Kram, who was blissfully unaware that any of this was happening at all, dead to the world as he was. “Great load of help he is, taking up space there. If he hadn’t been such an idiot then maybe he could be useful right now—like as a human shield.”
Emma bit her lip against retorting – the last thing they all needed was for a fight to break out inside the Winnebago as well as on the outside. Thetis did have a point, although the way she chose to phrase it was a bit unfair: Emma could help out.
She fumbled in her bag and produced a packet of seeds, and then got up and hurried to the window that Stolz had opened to look out of. Gently pushing the child aside, Emma emptied her packet of seeds into her palm and focused on them: on the tiny little life that was hiding in each seed, ready to bloom into something huge and magnificent.
She held her breath, concentrated, stuck her hand out the window—and let the seeds go.
Lokka, who had backed down to the defense for a short while to conserve energy while Fiona and Idris took the offense, was the one who caught sight of the seeds flying through the air—and then suddenly not being seeds anymore. For as Emma concentrated in the Winnebago, the tiny little seeds burst into bloom.
The men in the closest vehicle couldn’t believe their eyes. It looked like plants were just growing out of thin air; they landed smack on the windshield and there they swelled unbelievably, growing entire feet in mere seconds. It happened too fast for anybody to think of trying to get rid of them. Before anything could be done, the entire windshield was a green, leafy mess—and the plants didn’t stop there. No, they grew and grew, into the front of the vehicle, wrapping themselves around the soldiers and choking them to death. The vehicle swerved off to the left and crashed into another, which the plants quickly spread onto. The soldiers on that car met a similar fate.
Fiona, meanwhile, was setting fire to the gas tanks of the vehicles behind them. Every once in a while, when the occupants least expected it, their transportation would simply explode, raining fire and shrapnel down on the remaining opposition. It didn’t happen often though – it was a game of precision, which was never something Fiona had bothered too much with in the first place. Add to that a rain of bullets which she had to avoid, and the constant swerving motion of every goddamn vehicle on the highway, and the firestarter wound up with a hard time.
“Where the fuck’s that shield gone, Lokka?” she yelled at the green-eyed Destrillian. Their defence had flickered, faltered and died a moment ago, as the first stab of a headache invaded his mind. Setting his jaw, Lokka brought up a new shield, throwing a disparaging look to Fiona, who had given up on the whole precision thing for a while and was simply shooting fire from her hands at their pursuers like a human flamethrower.
"At least you had a sleep in that pod earlier – I've been saving your asses all day,"he called back to her. She didn’t bother to reply, but he caught the grin on her face at the reaction. Did the woman ever stop with the taunting?
Idris, meanwhile, had also heard what he’d said—and she’d noticed the strain that was being put on him, too. Quick to think, the small girl whipped up an idea that would hopefully buy them all a bit of a rest.
“Lokka, fit that shield around the outside of this,” she said, and with a tense and flick of her wrists, her magnetic field reappeared… only concentrated into one spot, right splat bang in between the Destrillians and their pursuers. Lokka was quick to do as she said, having caught on: the shield’s purpose was to ricochet the bullets away from them, but the field that Idris was generating was designed specifically to pull the bullets towards them. The overall effect was rather like a giant lethal slingshot – the pressure would build and build until Idris saw fit to let go and send the bullets flying back at their owners.
And she did. The soldiers in their vehicles shot for all they were worth; they’d figured out by now that one of the Destrillians’ number was pretty much bulletproof, but it was all they really had and they weren’t about to stop trying any time soon. Points for perseverance.
But for all their diligence, not a one was fast enough in the split second where the Gunmetal Glint let out the breath she’d been holding, opened her eyes, yanked a bit on the field to give it one last boost, and then let it go.
Lokka’s shield just about cracked from the intensity of the pressure change; bullets ripped through the vehicles behind the Winnebago, leaving absolutely nothing but slowing, broken wrecks and bloodied bodies.
“Step on that pedal, Kerr – give us some distance!” Idris called over her shoulder. The three instinctively adjusted their footing as they felt the subtle change of air resistance, and for just a little while, they lost their attackers behind them.
Without pause, Fiona jumped down through the skylight into the Winnebago – nobody noticed the way she had to catch her breath a bit. Lokka followed suit, and then Idris, the three of them taking a moment’s rest from the onslaught.
“Are you all okay?” asked Emma, with a concerned look in her eyes. Neither Fiona nor Lokka bothered to answer her, so Idris responded with a nod and walked past them to the front, rubbing the back of her head a little as she went.
“How’re we doing up here, then?” she asked, realizing that since she’d left the inside of the Winnebago, Kerr had been joined by none other than Stolz, who was happily riding shotgun.
“Fine,”Kerr snapped. His voice was tight, but Idris wasn’t sure what with. Anger, apprehension, stress – all were viable candidates. She found it weird enough that she could hear emotion in his voice at all. She took a quick glance at the speedometer—and then left him to do his job, that being to drive them out safely while going that speed.
“And the rest of you?” she asked the others, feeling more and more like she was forcing the idea of talking and liking it less and less. The response she received didn’t help to dissuade this idea; vague “mmhmm”s and “uh-huh”s, a nod or two, and Thetis’ bitter laugh.
“We aren’t going to last if we keep going at this rate,” she sneered, and for once Idris felt a little offended by the water Destrillian.
“How—”
“What the fuck do you mean, we aren’t going to last?” Fiona cut in, saving Idris the hassle. “Maybe you haven’t been able to see it because you’re just sitting in a corner there, but we’re kicking ass.”
“You can only fight for so long – once the headaches set in, what will you do? What will any of us do?”
“I dunno, Thetis,” Emma began with trepidation. “We’ve made pretty good progress, haven’t we?”
“What, you think this piece of junk”—she kicked the wooden panel on the side of the couch and scowled even deeper when it fell off—“is going to get us to Audoula? Are you kidding me?”
“At least it’s something,” countered the plant Destrillian. “We could be running for it on foot! And it might not be an armored car, but it’s been pretty sturdy so far.”
“Sturdy. Yeah.” Thetis blew her hair out of her eyes. “Well that put my mind at ease. I’ll remember that when we’re splattered on the asphalt.”
“Could you stop being so negative, Thetis?” Idris said, a pleading tone in her voice. She had no idea what the girl’s behaviour could be because of, but it wasn’t helping any of them. The last thing they all needed was to start bickering amongst themselves.
“Maybe if things had happened differently, we wouldn’t be in this mess,”Thetis snarled, throwing an acidic glare at the back of the front seat. There was no reply. They just drove on in silence.
The silence didn’t last longer than another few moments though. Once again, the sounds of approaching vehicles could be heard – and even more discouraging, the sounds of VTOL engines. It was time for round two.
“Fuck this shit, yo!”It startled them all, as they hadn’t heard Nova speak since they’d gotten into the Winnebago in the first place. “I’m getting antsy just standing in this thing. Y’all are way tense. Screw waiting around for you people – it’s my turn to get a piece of the action!”
“It didn’t feel right, just standing here,”agreed Jettison, rolling her shoulders in a preparatory manner. “Let’s go.” And before anybody could stop them, they both grabbed hold of the lip of the skylight and swung themselves up, shimmering into nothingness as they went. It was done less with grace than with perfect form; they’d obviously practiced things like that a lot.
To be absolutely, perfectly honest, Fiona could have done with another minute or two of break time before getting back to fighting, but HELL if she was going to let anybody know that. “Well I’m with them,” she shrugged, a smirk on her lips. Her gaze roved across everybody’s faces for a reaction—lingered on Thetis’—and then, apparently satisfied with whatever she saw in them all, she too leapt back into the fray above.
She arrived just in time to see Jettison and Nova ‘get their piece of the action.’
She couldn’t see them of course, but that was the point. Jettison and Nova, under cover of Jettison’s illusion, had waited patiently (enough) for one of the vehicles to catch up with the Winnebago. At last, one poor group managed to just about pull up behind them – there was a mere ten feet between them now. Without so much as a by-your-leave, the two leapt off the Winnebago, flew through the air—
CRASH.
“Arrrgh!”
—and kicked straight through the windshield, sending glass flying everywhere. Nova was quick to dispose of the troops by simply picking them up and tossing them out at other vehicles, while Jettison got behind the wheel with a grim little smile. They rematerialized, just to give the Destrillians some idea of what had just happened, and then proceeded to drive right up alongside another vehicle… which Nova, hanging out of the side of the hijacked car, stuck a hand under and tipped, ‘till it had fallen onto it’s side and smushed one or two of it’s riders.
Even Fiona had to admit, that was impressive. Maybe there was a reason why they’d allowed those two to tag along, after all.
And it got her thinking.
She knew that as powerful as she was, her strength did not lie in precision – all this aiming bullshit was hindering her of her natural ability to win this fight one-handed. So what she needed to do was to follow Jettison and Nova’s example. Fiona needed to take the fight to her prey.
~~~
Inside the Winnebago, Idris and Lokka were preparing to go back and join the fight. Idris had tried to assuage the little headache she had, but everything else going on around her made it impossible for some reason. She just couldn’t quite manipulate herself the way she had at the motel, and that irked her greatly.
Kram stirred for a moment, but before anybody could make a conclusion as to whether that was good or bad, he’d fallen back under. Thetis threw the unconscious figure a look that said she clearly blamed him for a lot of what was going on—if not all of it.
“Well,” Idris started, and she could hear how forced her voice was. “We’ll be going back up, then.”
“I wish I could help you, Idris,” Emma said from her seat. “I really do. But there aren’t any plants here…”
“Don’t worry about it.” She smiled a tight, forced little smile. “You’re just as useful staying down here and making sure that we don’t all tear each other to pieces.” She swept a look across the rest of the Winnebago, and its occupants. “We’re good at that.”
She jumped back up onto the roof, quickly joined by Lokka—and the two of them had just enough time to wonder where Fiona had disappeared to when a massive explosion bloomed red in front of them and the Destrillian in question rode the shockwave back to the Winnebago. She was smiling a hunter’s smile.
“Now that’s more like it,”she said, admiring her work for a beat before turning to the other two. “The two freaks we picked up at the nightclub are driving around somewhere in there, so watch where you’re hitting. I’ve found a better way to deal with these idiots than just sitting my ass on the roof and hoping.”
To make her point, she jumped from the edge of the Winnebago roof onto another vehicle. The poor soldiers hardly knew what to do – they panicked. So much the better. Fiona burned one of their faces off, delivered a punch so strong it snapped another’s neck, and then before the other ones could get their heads back on straight and maybe try to stop her, she clicked her fingers and ignited the gas tank, leaping back out of range as the car exploded.
“See?” she gloated as they watched the two wrecks burning. “I’m almost bored already – it’s gonna be too easy from here on out.”
“Don’t underestimate them Fiona,” replied Lokka, who had thrown up a small shield, just enough to keep them from getting hit if they stood close together. “They may be stupid as hell, but they’ve got numbers. And Thetis was right – we have limits.”
The firestarter ‘hmph’ed at the mention of the blue-haired girl. “She’s just sulking because her little rescue mission crashed and burned. She’ll get over it eventually.”
“I’ll hold you to that,” Idris chimed in, giving Fiona a good long look. “You do know her best.”
Fiona had nothing to say to that, so instead she just leapt to another vehicle and started her process all over again. That left Idris and Lokka to fend for their own on the Winnebago, and as helpful as Fiona was being (another car exploding proved this point) they still had the problem of only one person fit for offense.
“How many bullets do you have in that thing?” Idris asked, nodding at Lokka’s gun.
“Not enough.”
“Good answer.” She grit her teeth. “Alright, save your energy – I’ll cover us. Just don’t miss.” The man nodded and stepped forward while Idris retreated to just behind the skylight and rooted her feet in the metal of the roof. Then, placing an incredible amount of faith in them all, she forced herself to close her eyes and concentrate. The magnetic field sprang up once more, not just around her and Lokka but around the entire back half of the Winnebago. They’d neglected to cover their transportation this whole time, and although it seemed a good strong vehicle, to withstand so much and still be going, the pale woman didn’t want to risk their ride out dying beneath them.
Lokka took the best aim he could. Most of the time, he hit home; one bullet was all that any one vehicle needed, as long as he hit the driver. Fiona was still hopping back and forth, leaving a burning trail of destruction along the highway, and he needed to avoid hitting her instead seeing as she gave no warning as to which car she was about to pulverize. But he made do.
He emptied the revolver’s rounds, reloaded with his last reserves, and emptied them again in mere minutes. After that, there was nothing he could do except to maybe use his barriers as blunt force. It would cost him even more of a headache, but it was either a headache or death.
So Lokka took the headache option. It took him barely a thought to conjure the barrier, solidify it as much as he dared, and send it flying like an invisible brick wall towards the vehicle closest to them.
The effect would have almost been seen as comedic, had any one of them been in a mood to laugh. One moment the soldiers were speeding along, looking like they meant business; the next they were smushed up against nothing, it seemed. The barrier flickered and died as soon as its job was completed, and Lokka sent one more vehicle to a similar doom before a stab of pain reminded him that he wasn’t supposed to be using his power so much. That’s what Idris had been trying to prevent.
"I'm running out of energy here,"Lokka called out to the pale woman, forcing more energy out of his body at their pursuers. "Is there anyone down there able enough to take over?"
Idris didn't risk opening her eyes for fear of breaking her concentration. "There'd better be," she replied through gritted teeth. "Go and check - I'll be okay up here." She didn't think it worth mentioning the headache that was slowly but surely increasing in magnitude - he understood it's presence by the very fact that he had one, too.
"If any problem should arise where you need me, just shout,"were his last words to the girl, before he jumped back down to safety.
~~~
Before all this, though, Kerr had been doing his best to keep them all out of the line of fire; the VTOLs had caught up and as safe as the back of the Winnebago was from bullets, there was still the problem of the front half being entirely vulnerable to an aerial attack. He was grateful that the others at least had the presence of mind to shut up while they rocketed down the highway; one wrong move and they would be “splattered on the asphalt,” as Thetis had so eloquently put it. Beside him, Stolz watched the action in the rearview mirror like a vulture, screaming out “LEFT!” or “RIGHT!” as appropriate, and although Kerr was loathe to follow orders, the child proved helpful sometimes.
But sometimes Stolz’ left really meant right, or he wouldn’t go quite far enough to the right, and they would all feel the Winnebago shudder a bit as it was grazed by a spray of bullets.
It was tough to stay civil, to say the least. So Kerr settled for frigid silence as he pushed the Winnebago for all it was worth—the sign for the M3 expressway was in sight, and that meant they were half way there.
Another shriek from Stolz and Kerr swerved them all to the right, gripping the steering wheel ever-tighter, eyes locked on the exit to the expressway.
“What the hell are they doing up there?” Thetis grumbled. “It sounds like they’re just taking a breather or something. This isn’t the time to slack!”
“You’ve been sitting there this whole time complaining,” the black-eyed man finally snapped. “If you were any use at all, you might go up there and fight them yourself!”
Terra, meanwhile, had been sitting quietly beside Emma, trying her best to do what she could to help—which was basically sitting quietly itself, because she could barely walk, let alone fight. Something like anger, or maybe shame, bubbled up inside her. This was a time where she was needed. There was plenty of earth all around them; the concrete itself, she could manipulate. But she couldn’t. If she were any use at all, she would be standing tall (or as tall as her 5’2” would allow her) and impaling vehicles by the dozens. But she couldn’t.
“Terra?” Emma said, sensing her friend’s distress. Terra looked up at Emma, her red hair and her freckles and her bright blue eyes. So full of life.
Eye’m useless.
“Don’t say that!” was the reply. Emma took Terra’s hands – the right one was shaking, as it sometimes did – in her own, searching the girl’s face for a way to convince her that she wasn’t useless at all. But as much as she wanted to ease Terra’s mind, Emma couldn’t lie. The both of them had, for the most part, been sitting safe in the Winnebago as the others fought for all of their lives. What had they done to deserve an easier time of it?
“I’m helping,” Thetis said through a clenched jaw, trying to justify the words even as she said it.
“How? Moral support?” Kerr mocked her from the front. “Are your our cheerleader now Thetis? You’ve done nothing. You’d be a better help if you were unconscious like Kram.” The words served their purpose, as they shocked Thetis into enough of an indignant silence for Kerr to focus on swerving out of the way of another rain of bullets.
Terra squirmed around in her seat to look out the front window. She could see the exit to the expressway up ahead – if that got blocked off behind them, maybe they would be safe for a while. Terra really, really wanted them to be safe. It would be the most wonderful thing in the world if they were safe, even for a few minutes. It was that thought that spurred her to get up shakily, slipping her hands out of Emma’s and gripping the edge of the Winnebago’s table for support.
She could do this. Maybe. If she concentrated hard enough. She only needed to bring up one or two spikes anyway – that would be enough to slow them all down. But she needed time and timing, and they were going to be through that exit in less than a few seconds. Maybe she couldn’t do it.
But then she heard a little noise, so lost in all the other noises of battle that it couldn’t have been anything less than pure chance that she’d heard it at all. It was the sound of Idris giving the smallest cry of pain as bullets were caught in her field and slung back around – her headache was getting worse.
It didn’t matter if Terra couldn’t do it. She had to.
And she had to do it now or else the point would be lost. Lokka dropped back in, looking like he was going to say something, but she didn’t pay him any attention. The brown-going-green-haired girl took a big breath and concentrated on the concrete beneath them shooting out in big, magnificent spikes. Ten feet tall and terrifying to behold. Of course they wouldn’t turn out that way at all but she figured the overexaggeration would at least help her along.
She made a pained noise, but she felt something shifting, changing within the concrete. Her concentration was making her feel like her head was going to explode, but she focused the pain in her head to the cement behind them. It felt like her skull was cracking, but Terra realized it wasn't the only thing that had exploded: the road behind them must have been covered in spikes, the way she was focusing on it. For a moment, she poked her head out the window and saw the road wasn't covered the way she wanted, but there were at least two spikes vitally blocking the road.
Terra flopped onto the floor with a sigh, head feeling like a nail being hammered into a board. Emma was quick to kneel down at her side, asking if she were okay and what was she thinking, and she could have hurt herself doing that! But Terra didn’t mind – somewhere, buried under the spades and spades of pain in her head, was the sense of accomplishment she’d been wanting this whole time.
Up on the roof, Idris had been standing by her lonesome, eyes closed, focused on simply keeping them from getting torn to shreds. At once, she felt the heat rush that could only belong to Fiona appear at her side.
“How we holding up, Baldy?”the girl asked, and before she could say anything, “And where the fuck did Ghost boy go?”
“He’s tired – leave him be,” Idris replied, not opening her eyes. She felt rather than saw Fiona’s eyes sizing her up, and she knew that the fire prototype understood. Idris wasn’t really only talking about Lokka.
Fiona raised a hand to clap onto Idris’ shoulder, then thought better of it and just said “Think of how great it’ll be when we’re out of this goddamned city.” And then she was off again, dodging VTOL gunfire as she swung herself into the front of a vehicle, taking both soldiers out with a vicious two-footed kick and then blasting the last one. She jumped onto another car, aiming to use it as a springboard back to the Winnebago—
“FUCK!”
—but then the road convulsed beneath her and she was thrown back as three concrete spikes appeared, blocking the expressway that her comrades had just driven down. She’d been effectively left in the dust.
The vehicle she’d landed on had promptly crashed into these spikes, rendering it useless. She crushed the skulls of the two surviving passengers in her anger, and then whipped around, looking for another car to jump onto. The sight of how many were left did not lighten the situation.
How many of these assholes did they send after us?
As she watched, a half dozen whizzed right on past her, continuing along the R7. She frowned at their actions as she rubbed her arm to alleviate the pain that had spread from her shoulder.
And why are they just barreling right on down that way? They’re not stupid enough to miss the expressway sign – what are they doing?
And then she remembered that the R7 had two exits. It was such a popular road that they’d needed to add a second one to help the traffic flow. The next one was further along; all she had to do was find something to hitch a ride on until they reconnected.
Then she spotted it. A vehicle with a smashed windshield.
She grinned and leapt.
~~~
“Is there anybody who can go up there and help?” Lokka asked the Destrillians in the Winnebago, fearing the answer. Terra had just done her part, as far as he could see, and he wasn’t inclined to force more out of her; Emma, the plant Destrillian, would be no use in this situation, no matter how much she wanted to be. Kerr looked a bit too preoccupied keeping the Winnebago moving, and although Lokka could have taken the wheel, he decided against it. The aim of being down here was to rest.
Stolz, though, seemed in perfect condition to aid them all. The child started to scramble over the back of their seat—but they were stopped by Thetis. The yellow-eyed girl stood up, forcing herself not to wince at the sharp pain in her knee, and blocked Stolz’ path.
“No. I’ll go,” she said, holding her head high. She could feel Kerr staring her down through the rear view mirror, daring her to do it. So she walked under the skylight with all the dignity she had and then jumped up, albeit a bit clumsily. Lokka watched her go, and then promptly took her seat and closed his eyes, resting his head on the wall behind him.
Up on the roof, Idris hadn’t felt nearly as much gunfire in the past little while. She risked cracking one eye open and saw that there were in fact no pursuers behind them – not at the moment, at least. That tremor she’d felt must have been Terra’s contribution to the fight; they would only have the VTOLs to deal with, for a while at least. She would have smiled, but the strain of maintaining a magnetic field that big, for that long, had sapped all her liveliness. She was just quietly grateful for a quick break.
Just as she let the field dissipate, Thetis popped out of the Winnebago and landed awkwardly on one foot in front of her. The girl took a good look at the lack of opposition, and then turned on Idris.
“There’s nobody there,”she started, almost looking annoyed. Of course the moment she tried to help, there wouldn’t be anything to help with. “You said you needed help! Why—”
“Stop.” The sound of Idris’ voice froze the water Destrillian. “Just stop.”
Well what was that supposed to mean? Thetis frowned, but didn’t say anything; she just stood there, waiting for an adversary to appear. They passed into a tunnel for a few seconds, and the two were plunged into sudden darkness. The sounds of the outside highway were muffled or lost completely, and in the dark and silence, Thetis realized something.
“Where’s Fiona?”
Before Idris could open her mouth to tell her, they re-emerged from the tunnel just in time to catch a Winnebago-full of VTOL gunfire. Growling out her frustration, Idris deflected most of the bullets, but one nearly hit her, missing by inches and instead punching a hole in the roof beside her.
Thetis glared at the VTOL; willing water to materialize out of the air itself, she focused all her anger into power and shot the pressurized stream at the aircraft like an arrow from a bow. The water cut right through the heart of the VTOL and down it went, spiralling into another part of the highway above them and exploding. Satisfied for the moment, Thetis turned back to Idris.
“Well? Where is she?”
In reply, Idris merely pointed upwards. Thetis followed the girl’s pale, slender finger… and looked at the aforementioned highway above.
“WHAT?”
“We lost her when Terra blocked the expressway – she’s up there somewhere fighting.”
“Can’t we get to her somehow?” The barely suppressed panic in the girl’s voice reminded Idris again of just how much the two cared for each other. “There’s got to be some way!”
“There’s one more entrance onto this expressway from there,” Idris explained, looking up as well. “If we cross that at the right moment, she could jump back on.”
“Well GO FASTER then,” she shrieked over the sound of the wind at Kerr. The wind carried back his reply:
“I’m TRYING. Just shut it already!” He certainly sounded like he was trying, at any rate. Thetis clenched her fists until her knuckles were white – this was just all going so wrong. None of this should have happened in the first place. If Kerr had just minded his own damn business instead of trying to kill her, then none of them would be in danger. Fiona wouldn’t be in danger.
“Incoming!” called Idris above the unbearably loud sound of a VTOL swooping in to meet them close-up. With a cry of rage, Thetis lashed out with a razor-sharp whip of water – the entire left wing of the aircraft was sheared off and it went down hard, crushing into the road behind them and spraying bits of asphalt and shrapnel everywhere. Thetis caught a piece on her cheek and a hiss escaped her at the fresh new pain.
“Nice shot,” Idris remarked from behind Thetis. The blue-haired girl just nodded, not bothering to look back. The fighting felt good – it was giving her a way to let out all the tension that she’d built up in the Winnebago.
“I’ll do the same to anything that comes our way.”
“I sure hope so.” A pause. “We’ll get her back, don’t worry.”
“I’m not worried,” the water Destrillian spat to the air in front of her; her point was countered by the way she stomped her foot down on the roof of the Winnebago, a wordless encouragement for Kerr to drive faster, already.
“Want to sit down?”
“No.”
“Your knee looks pretty bad, though.” It was at this moment that Thetis realized that Idris was trying to quietly make up for snapping at her earlier. She turned full-on to face the small, pale woman sitting on the roof of their ride.
“That’s Kram’s fault,”she replied, though her voice was a bit less harsh this time. Idris nodded.
“All the same, you should be taking care of it. I don’t think you want it to give out now, mm?”
“I guess,”the water Destrillian replied, taking a step towards Idris. She spared a moment to look up at the highway above them, towering on supports made of concrete and steel—and then Kerr ran the Winnebago over a pothole and she lost her balance. Just as Idris had predicted, her knee crumpled beneath her, and she toppled through the skylight and landed entirely undignified on the floor of the mobile home.
“Thetis?” she heard Idris call from above. She sounded worried, but suddenly Thetis didn’t care. The fact that somebody was worried over her almost made her angry – in fact it did. People shouldn’t have HAD to worry about her! She should have been strong enough to not let something as stupid as a pothole in the road bring her down. This was pathetic. She was pathetic.
Idris stuck her head in through the skylight; as she did, her wig fell off onto the floor. “Are you alright?” she asked. Thetis glared straight into the woman’s tired grey eyes.
“Fine,”she quipped. “Absolutely fine. I don’t think I could ever feel any better than I do right now.” She picked up Idris’ wig and put it down rather forcefully on a countertop. “So why don’t you quit mothering me and protect us?”
Something about the way Idris looked at her, right before her now-blonde head disappeared back on top of the Winnebago, made Thetis want to take it back. But now that she’d said it, she couldn’t; the embarrassment would kill her, on top of everything else. Scowling deeper than ever, the Raging Charybdis slunk back to her corner – shoved Lokka aside, muttering a “move” – and curled back up in it, brooding.
She just couldn’t do anything right today, could she? There was this, and the trip she and Kram had made to save Venus; Fiona had left her to hurt in Emma’s bathroom; she hadn’t even been able to kill Kerr during the motel fight. She should have been able to. And with a sudden epiphany, Thetis realized that it wasn’t entirely Kerr’s fault; it was hers, too. If she’d just refused that one pizza order, called in sick to work that day, something, then she wouldn’t have come face to face with the gravity Destrillian in the first place and he wouldn’t have tried to kill her.
Good job, Alcesteos. She curled tighter into herself. You really can’t do anything right.
~~~
On the R7, Jettison, Nova and Fiona were having a right time with it all themselves. Jettison had the wheel of their hijacked vehicle in both her palms, wasting no effort in maneouvering it down the long, straight highway. Although they had unintentionally managed to keep the heat off of them by riding in an enemy vehicle, Nova's antics had caused a number of the pursuing vehicles to divert their attention away from the Winnebago. Even though he was just one man, he had managed to make an absolute mess of the highway behind them, simply by pushing and throwing other vehicles as they closed in, like some kind of child's video game.
"Yo girl, you sure you don’t wanna swap places? These fools keep coming," the colossal man grinned as he shouted to his partner; one of his hands was clutching the frame of the side door that he'd ripped off some time ago, the other was shoving the front end of one of pursuing transports,causing it to spin out and crash into the concrete divider at the side of the road. The explosion, while small, managed to wreck two additional vehicles, cutting the enemies' numbers down further.
"I'm okay,"Jettison replied, finally taking her eyes off the road to glance behind her at what Nova had been doing all this time. She had been concentrating too much on driving the vehicle; she hadn't noticed just how many cars her accomplice had turned to scrap metal. It was helpful—
BANG
—but again, so were Fiona and her exploding gas tanks.
Fiona, having been separated from the rest of the Destrillians and Winnebago, had been ricocheting down the same road that the two superhumans had taken. Jettison had recognised the importance of not leaving the flame Destrillian behind, despite not liking the girl very much. Fiona had resumed her system of destroying enemy vehicles, using the duo's commandeered transport as a home-point; having just ripped the driver out of an armed truck,Fiona launched herself back to safety, popping her head down to speak to the young ruffian.
"How much longer is it going to take for you to catch up to the others, already?" she said, peering in at Jettison. "Even Bones drives faster than you."
Jettison chose to ignore the second sentence. Instead, she peered down at the highway beneath them, looking back to check the distance between the Winnebago and its pursuers. "Your friends need to put their foot down," she said, glancing back at their own enemies.They were growing in numbers. "Otherwise they're going to collide with OUR problem."
"And that shit ain't gonna be pretty!" Nova half-chuckled as he threw a ripped-off tire into the crowd of vehicles behind them.
“Hmph,”was all Fiona bothered to reply with before bounding off again. It was just so easy for her to destroy all these idiots that she was practically getting bored – to entertain herself, she made little challenges. How many bones can you snap in one body before you have to move on; how long can you play around on one car before it blows up; how close can you get to the gun turret before they shoot. Things like that, just to keep her mind from straying to other things. Things like the Winnebago and how the others were doing, and things like how her entire upper body was hurting now—including her head. Even Fiona got migraines from overexertion.
But she pushed those thoughts back and focused on nothing but laying absolute waste to every soldier who came her way. Again and again she pounced on these vehicles and their passengers, and it was death and destruction every time. But what she didn’t see coming was an old black car, which entered the highway from one of the connecting roads at the last possible second—instead of landing on another hapless team of men, Fiona found herself face-to-face with somebody she recognized.
No way.
It couldn’t be.
But it was.
After righting herself, Fiona took a look into the front of the car. And then she threw back her head and laughed. “Nice wheels, hag,” she yelled through the windshield at a surprisingly unsurprised Ms. Petrowski. Rather, the grizzled old woman just looked angry that the fiery-haired girl was in fact standing on her car. Instead of panicking like the soldiers would have, the heavyset woman just shrieked something back – it was muffled by the gunfire and the windows, but Fiona was sure it had been rude, whatever it was. She gave the car a friendly goodbye pat – leaving a dent in the roof – and jumped on away, still laughing that wild, raucous laugh of hers.
The landlady had more balls than any one of these troops, she had to admit.
~~~
Idris had been left alone on top of the Winnebago to think – and to fight, but there was nothing to fight at the moment. To be honest, the pale woman wasn’t sure whether she wouldn’t rather still be fighting. It would take her mind off of what Thetis had said, at least.
“Quit mothering me and protect us!”
She sighed, rubbing her temples as another stab of pain reminded her that yes, her headache was still there, regardless of her efforts to slow it down. Maybe she shouldn’t have said anything; Thetis was full of pride, after all, and Idris understood that. She was also in a bad mood to begin with… which Idris could also understand. Maybe it was just bad timing. But Thetis had also changed since Viola, and the Gunmetal Glint could only guess as to whether the blue-haired girl was being snappy with her because of pressure, or because she had some sort of personal vendetta. She had been making disparaging comments the whole way, after all. Maybe Thetis just didn’t want to talk to Idris.
Or maybe it was just that Thetis wanted to talk to Fiona more.
Maybe.
She sighed and looked up—just in time to see a VTOL positioned and ready to spray bullets right into her face. She was actually caught off-guard enough to gasp quite loudly. For one lurching moment, she felt like her magnetic field wasn’t going to come up, but it snapped into being as it always did and all it cost her was another little piece of pain. The sound of the gunfire was hurting her ears by now.
“Somebody want to help me out a little?” she called into the Winnebago while she got to her feet – with the smallest of difficulties – and took a fighting stance. She realized suddenly that the model of the aircraft she was facing down was identical to that of the one she’d pulled out of the sky at the motel. That meant that she knew where it’s important bits were.
She took a deep, steadying breath, and felt around with her power for the intricate little pieces that allowed the VTOL to fly; it took longer than she would have liked, swerving as they were and moving as her enemy was, but she found them. Idris forced herself to look into the cockpit and smile at whoever was flying, and it must have scared them to death.
And then she broke them. You couldn’t even tell from the outside, but the aircraft went down instantly and crashed in some field beyond the highway.
A field? That means we’re nearing the edge of the city. She shook out her tingling hands and turned around to face into the wind, trying to see to the edge of Osea and maybe beyond, but she had no luck. There was still a ways to go.
Well we aren’t dead yet, which is nice, all things considered. Although a bit more help would have been nice; she called down a rather sarcastic “Thanks a ton!” to her comrades, but there was no answer.
The small woman made a noise of irritation in her throat and sat back down, only to leap back up again as she spotted the place where the R7 above her would come down and merge with the M3 expressway. That meant they would be rejoining with Fiona (it was funny how she didn’t even stop to consider any other possibility) and also…
“Well.” She exhaled sharply and pushed her blond hair out of her face. “I guess break time’s over. Does somebody please want to come give me a hand?” Again, no answer – either they couldn’t hear her, or they didn’t care to acknowledge her. She could only hope it was the first one.
Down below, the occupants of the mobile home really couldn’t hear Idris’ pleas for a teammate. Kram was still passed out, although he’d fallen off the couch some time ago and was presently squished up beside it on the floor; Terra was still recovering from the concrete spikes, with Emma by her side. Thetis was determined, it seemed, to be as sulky as possible for the rest of the trip out. Lokka seemed to have fallen into a light sleep. And Kerr was busy with timing their passing of the R7 entrance just so, to allow Fiona to get back to the group without getting lost in another wave of combatants.
Only Stolz, who had done nothing this whole time, was in a position to hear the metal Destrillian’s call for help. “I’m thinking someone wants you up there,” the child said to nobody in particular, pointing a hand up at the roof. Kerr threw a sidelong glance at them; when it was made clear that he hadn’t understood, Stolz added, “I mean I heard her calling for help but I guess she’s okay now or else she’s been shot through like swiss cheese.” They paused for a second, frowning a little at the idea of Idris not being perfectly alright and alive. “Checkup time.”
“I didn’t hear anything,” countered Kerr, and maybe it was childish of him but he figured that anything that Stolz could hear, he could too. “Leave her alone. She’s alright on her own.”
“Are you sure?” asked Stolz. “Because you people’s heads all hurt after using too much power and she’s been firing away this whole time.” The blond child rummaged around in their bag, making quite a bit of noise, until they produced an ominous-looking box. “Ooo! Also I’ve got this box full of flashbang goodness here in case we get in trouble and we need to blind everybody and—”
“By flashbangs, you mean flashbang grenades?”
“Yup!”
Well that was that decision made, then. Kerr returned to focus fully on the road. “No.”
“Awwww, why not?” Stolz pouted. “Unless you’re ignoring her on purpose because it’s all part of some big sinister plot to kill her off in the fight like you tried with popsicle girl.”
“I’m not ignoring anything!” the black-eyed Destrillian growled back, getting more and more irritated by the second; it was worth noting also that Stolz had figured out what Kerr had been attempting to do before the trip into the sewers, purely based on Thetis’ incessant whining and the comments of the others. That took skill, and it did nothing to lighten his suspicion towards the child who was experimentally shaking the box of flashbang grenades around, sticking the side of their head up close so they could make sure the grenades were all still in working order. Just knowing that those things were in Stolz’ possession put worry in Kerr’s mind. “And put those away already.”
“Fine, fine – geez, you people are all so hard to please.” Stolz put the box back and returned to keeping watch out for any sort of attack on the vehicle.
Meanwhile, Terra had been watching Thetis brood for a while now. All things considered, she felt bad for the girl; Thetis had just been having a bad day, and Terra knew how that felt. Seeing the angry way the water manipulator stared out a side window—and was that a tinge of worry in her eye?—made Terra want to go over and give the girl a hug. And so that’s what she did. She made a little squeak of pain as she dragged herself back onto her feet, but she forced her body to obey her and move over to beside the yellow-eyed girl.
Thetis barely knew how to react when Terra awkwardly wrapped her arms around her, so unexpected was the move. Even more unexpected was the warbly, staticy voice that waved into her head, saying exactly what she wanted somebody to tell her:
U hav bin very helpful Thetis.
Terra patted Thetis’ hair once or twice, which just about made the girl want to cry. Eye don’t see wai Kerr is saying ur useless. U did moar than me aftur all.
“You did plenty,”Thetis said back, reaching over and patting Terra’s green roots in return. Not another word was exchanged, but the two girls sat in slightly more companionable silence, bolstered by their common need to accomplish something good for once.
And then they passed the entrance to the expressway.
The only real way to describe it was ‘a descent into hell.’
Apparently Kerr’s driving, smooth as it was, hadn’t been quite fast enough to catch up with Jettison, Nova and Fiona – their vehicle shot along far ahead of them, which left the Winnebago once more in the midst of the enemy. The very angry enemy.
“PLEASE will someone get up here NOW!” Okay, whether or not Stolz had been right before, Kerr had definitely heard Idris that time.
“Give it a minute!” he shouted through the roof, hoping she could hear him over the screaming winds out on the highway. Taking into consideration what Idris said back, the gravity Destrillian figured he didn’t really have a minute.
But what help could he be? He didn’t want to risk using his powers for offense just yet, especially after he’d squandered any time he’d bought back in Emma’s apartment, during the mission to retrieve the van. He needed a weapon.
That man.Kerr narrowed his eyes, trying to think while at the same time swerving madly out of the way of two armored cars and their guns. He had a gun. Where would he have kept it?
Of course he knew that the particular gun in question had been snapped to pieces by none other than Fiona, but just maybe he’d get lucky. On sheer instinct, Kerr opened the glove compartment, and lo and behold, a set of dual pistols lay innocently within. Kerr snatched them both up in one hand, and before he could think too hard about what he was about to say, he turned to Stolz and said “You. Take the wheel.”
Stolz’ face of unbridled glee was lost to the gravity Destrillian, who promptly slammed the side door open and swung outside – with a precision born of practice, he adjusted his own personal gravity field to hold him against the outside of the mobile home. It wasn’t the most secure sniping spot, but it was all he could do.
Leaning precariously low and close to the ground, Kerr took aim and with two shots, took out one of the pursuing vehicles’ wheels. Shouts were just barely heard under the wind in his ears as the pursuers careened straight off the highway, plunging to a rather messy death.
He shot another two slugs through the windshield of the armored car just about to come up beside them, instantly killing whoever had been behind the glass. They too swerved around crazily until another vehicle got in their way. The resulting crash shook the entire highway.
That was about when the enemy noticed there was somebody shooting at them again. It was hard to scope out the creature who was picking them off, stuck fast to the side of their target as he was, but a few gun turrets went off, and their aim was a little too good for him to be comfortable. Kerr grimaced as a bullet clanged into the side of the Winnebago right near his ear.
“IDRIS!”
The girl heard him and, with a groan of effort, whipped all the metal off her magnetic field and into the VTOL above her before expanding the sphere of protection to include her companion.
“You couldn’t have just jumped up here like a normal person, could you?” Idris called over the cacophony of noise at Kerr. “No, you had to be special and pick a difficult place to cover from.”
“Jumping through a skylight is by no means NORMAL,” he shouted back, his voice going hoarse from all the shouting he’d done in the past little while. “This spot is just as difficult to hit as it is to protect.” Idris said nothing back, but the black-eyed Destrillian could feel her irritation. He returned to shooting, and she returned to shielding, and it was all very well until a blur of black and red shot through the distance between them and a flaming vehicle and crash-landed into Idris’ shoulder.
Idris cried out in surprise, losing her magnetic field as she caught Fiona to keep her from overshooting the Winnebago and landing on the highway. A piece of shrapnel, flung from the explosion the fire Destrillian rode in on, landed on her already-bandaged foot; the heat seared her flesh, causing her to let go of Fiona and drop to her knees, shaking the smoking bit of metal off of her.
“You fucking LEFT me over there!” yelled the red-haired woman, advancing on Idris. Idris, feeling a surge of anger herself, rose swiftly to her feet, twisting to face Fiona head-on—only to notice with a shock that the Destrillian was looking distinctively unhealthy. Her skin had this sickly green tone to it, one which Idris didn’t like one bit.
“…are you okay?” she ventured, fearing the answer.
“Me?” Fiona started, towering over the smaller girl. “Oh I’m FINE. Thanks a LOT for abandoning me with those two freaks—” She broke off as a pained look spasmed across her face. Fiona coughed twice. Then another two times. And then out of nowhere, the proud, invulnerable girl was hacking up a lung, her body shaking with the force of her rasping breaths.
Idris couldn’t even lift a hand to help her before she tumbled backwards into the Winnebago.Thetis, who had heard Fiona’s voice up above and had only just been about to let go of a tiny little bit of tension, got a bit of a nasty shock from the sight of it as well.
Fiona crashed into the ground, not even seeming to register that she had as she coughed up a storm. Quick as anything, the water Destrillian was out of Terra’s sisterly arm and at Fiona’s side, looking around frantically for anything she could do.
Stolz, meanwhile, was having a roaring good time with driving the Winnebago. It had been nearly impossible to hit the thing from an aerial point for the past five minutes, it was swerving so badly; the child kept shouting things like “Full power to the engines, I’m taking this thing into overdrive!”
Just as Fiona landed in the mobile home, Stolz decided that then, right then, was a really good time for some chase music. Taking their eyes off the road entirely (“If I just keep turning the wheel left and right I’ll never hit anything!”) they took a few seconds to turn on the radio and to fumble with the dials, switching from station to station, never liking what was playing until finally:
I looked out this morning and the sun was gone
Turned on some music to start my day
I lost myself in a familiar song
I closed my eyes and I slipped away
“That’s more like it!”Stolz yelled joyfully, revving the engine and jerking the Winnebago forward even faster. For a fearful second, the inertia threatened to dislodge Kerr from the side of the mobile home, but the gravity field stabilized itself and after a moment’s pause to make sure he wasn’t going to tumble to his death any time soon, he resumed shooting at the enemy with the dual pistols. He found he was quite good with them, despite the situation; at least half a dozen vehicles had met their doom thanks to his marksmanship so far.
It's more than a feeling (more than a feeling)
When I hear that old song they used to play (more than a feeling)
I begin dreaming (more than a feeling)
'till I see Marianne walk away
I see my Marianne walkin' away
Idris’ headache was stabbing by now, digging into her brain and tearing it to shreds. She didn’t even take the time to growl in pain; she clenched her jaw so tight her teeth could break, and soldiered on. She could see the last of their pursuers, finally. Somewhere a few dozen vehicles back. At least she knew there was an end in sight.
Whatever that end is, she thought, her heart pounding in her chest.
So many people have come and gone
Their faces fade as the years go by
Yet I still recall as I wander on
As clear as the sun in the summer sky
“Are you okay?”Thetis said, fluttering her hands over Fiona, trying to turn her around but not wanting to agitate the girl. Emma and Terra looked on, both wanting to help but neither daring to interfere. After much too long, Fiona finally stopped coughing; she spat a huge glob of blood and phlegm onto the Winnebago floor and then propped herself up, baring her teeth at the water Destrillian.
“Just peachy.”
“What happened? Why is this happening to you?” Thetis replied quickly, brushing Fiona’s hair out of her eyes only to have her hand slapped back. “You can’t have exerted yourself this much!” she said, worry no longer concealed on her features.
“My goddamned shoulder's been itching,” the fire Destrillian groaned, glaring at the aforementioned part of her body. The skin there had taken on a frighteningly papery texture, and it had gone all transparent, allowing for her now-greenish black veins to show through. It was like a toxic spider web beneath her flesh; they could practically see it spreading as they watched.
Thetis couldn’t stop looking at it. Somewhere in her, fear began to claw at her. Not fear of the chase or fear of getting shot at – that was nothing compared to the paralyzing feeling she was getting now. “Why didn’t you tell me?” was all she could manage, in a shattered whisper.
“Because I'm fine.” Fiona winced and coughed up more blood – a cold sweat had broken out on her brow.
“This is no time to be PROUD, Fiona!” Thetis shrieked, startling Lokka awake behind her.
“What’s going on?” the white-haired Destrillian asked, instantly concerned with the sight in front of him.
“Oh, nothing, Ghost Boy,”Fiona cackled through her bloodied lips. “I’m probably snuffing it is all.”
“Don’t say that!”
“Shut up.”Thetis blinked, hard. Fiona was glaring at her now, and her stare was surprisingly serious. “Now, stop whining and let's get back to kicking some ass.”
“…okay,” she replied, reluctantly holding back another rebuttal behind a strained expression. Her heart wrenching, she tore herself away and bounded up onto the Winnebago roof again.
Fiona smirked at the remaining three, forcing herself to stand up tall despite the spots in her vision. With concealed extra effort, she stood tall but couldn't help but wobble from an airy feeling that came over her. Before she could follow Thetis back up onto the roof, she passed out right there.
It's more than a feeling (more than a feeling)
When I hear that old song they used to play (more than a feeling)
I begin dreaming (more than a feeling)
'till I see Marianne walk away
I see my Marianne walkin' away
Idris almost could have cried with relief, seeing Thetis come up for another shot at the opposition. Kerr had stopped firing on the vehicles as he tried to reload the pistols without falling from the side of the Winnebago, and so the metal Destrillian had had to take the brunt of an entire legion on her own. Now somebody was here to take a bit of the load again.
As she had done so many times before, the pale woman shifted her weight and sent all the swirling metal projectiles outwards, some landing helpfully and others not. She had stopped trying to aim a long time ago – now she was just trying to keep their view clear.
Thetis didn’t even notice the strain Idris was under, she was so distressed. In fact, the only thing Thetis had seemed to notice was the sudden absence of Fiona's consciousness. She had just disappeared. Dropped out of Thetis' head. Just like that. It was unfamiliar, it was frustrating, and most of all, it was frightening. After four years, the silence frightened her.
Goosepimples skiterred across the water Destrillian's skin as she thought of her partner's shoulder. Not even Fiona could beat something from the inside.Thetis had never seen anything like it. Those veins that stretched over her skin, a network that pumped black blood, pulsing and shuddering as if they were about to burst. And what if it got worse? What if it spread? What then? What if...? The thought trailed off, and Thetis barely registered the bite of nails in her palms.
What if they couldn't fix it?
The yellow-eyed girl snapped a bit. In a moment of beautiful, cold clarity, her panic sieved into raw power and she proceeded to flood three cabins at once: the water rushed out of absolutely nowhere and filled the vehicles to the top in ten seconds flat, sloshing around as the cars screeched wildly and their drivers all drowned. Thetis didn’t even bother to kill them properly – she dragged the water out of the vehicles, pulled it from cracks in the windows that its pressure had created, having only rendered her enemy unconscious. And then she watched them die, watched the unmanned cars lurch off the edge of the highway with a vicious satisfaction, and then whipped around with a cry of pure hatred and did the same to another two.
When I'm tired and thinking cold
I hide in my music, forget the day
And dream of a girl I used to know
I closed my eyes and she slipped away
She slipped away
“TURN THAT OFF ALREADY.”The water Destrillian was unstoppable. She simply left the water inside the vehicles, pulling more out of the air and freezing it all into razor-sharp arcs. Those were slung at the tops of armored cars like giant sickles, slicing the tops clean off.
And still she was not satisfied. Idris watched from behind, a scowl of worry on her face. It was unlike Thetis to enjoy fighting so much…
But maybe it wasn’t enjoyment. The pale woman winced as her headache advanced towards a full-blown migraine; maybe Thetis was using the fighting as a distraction from everything else.
Oh no, not this again. I’m through with Thetis and her maybes. I’ll just ASK her later—
The vehicle behind them exploded outwards as Thetis forced super-condensed water into it, crushing and crushing it together, and then finally releasing it with a scream of effort. The spray of water doused Idris—and more importantly, her newly injured foot. The pain shot up her leg, causing her field to go down again; it was unfortunate in that this time, it didn’t come back up immediately, resulting in a bullet grazing Kerr’s forearm, tearing the skin off and causing yet another wave of pain.
“Where’s that shield?” he shouted upwards as, entirely ignoring the blood that his arm had spattered everywhere, he finished reloading, aimed upwards, and shot a VTOL out of the sky.
“I’m WORKING on it!” Idris yelled back, dodging a bullet or two of her own. She sat down hard on the roof of the Winnebago and forced herself to concentrate. It was difficult. The magnetic field slowly came back, weak at first but eventually solidifying into its previous impenetrable state.
“Don’t you dare let that thing down again!”Thetis screeched over the sound of gunfire. Her voice wasn’t angry so much as panicked, but Idris felt another stab of irritation towards her comrades. She didn’t waste energy getting angry, though, instead fuelling her power with the emotion.
You’re metal, aren’t you Idris? Be mechanical, then.
There were barely half a dozen cars left now. Through the whirl of bullets and water and explosions, Kerr could make out the distinct shape of one of them getting tipped over. Nova and Jettison were back in the fray, it seemed.
It's more than a feeling (more than a feeling)
When I hear that old song they used to play (more than a feeling)
I begin dreaming (more than a feeling)
'till I see Marianne walk away
“MAXIMUM WARP!”cried Stolz in delight, veering from one side of the highway to the other. With a noise of protest, the Winnebago sped up yet again; nobody dared look at the speedometer to see just how fast they were going, by now. Emma, Terra and Lokka sat tight inside, each wishing they could help the battle outside, each being incapable of doing just that. Fiona's unconcious body simply slid back and forth in the Winnebago from the velocity of the vehicle.
And just when it couldn’t get any worse?
It got worse.
~~~
“Ma'am! Target has been spotted and is closing in!” Jelanda called over to Kijo. The Major ran over to her subordinate and replied.
“Good. How far is it until we can open fire?”
“Roughly two minutes. The VTOL scouts say the target vehicle is definitely coming in this direction as planned.”
“Alright. Have all the vehicle crews at their stations and prepared to fire on my signal; also, pass the information on to IRIN. This time we have to eliminate them at any cost,”Kijo said with a strong sense of determination. She would not let these Destrillians run rampant any longer in the city she was assigned to protect.
“Yes ma'am!”Jelanda responded with a salute, then jumped back onto the radio to relay the message.
~~~
“Oh my, they certainly are putting up a good fight, wouldn't you say Circe?” Vargas asked as he gazed intently out of the bridge's main observation window.
“From a certain perspective I suppose you could say that sir,” she replied bluntly.
“Sir! The Artolian field command is reporting that the targets will be in range within two minutes. Their forces are now getting ready to attack,” a bridge operator said to the pair. Vargas' expression lit up with joy at the news.
“Ah, excellent! I was hoping we'd get to see a nice big fireworks display.”He pressed a button on the console in front of him, which caused a screen to pop up showing Sophalla on board the second ship.
“Sophalla, we'll have the Viola rejects inbound momentarily. Personally, I'd love to roll out the particle cannons again, however I doubt the Artolians would like that so we're gonna opt with keel-mounted plasma cannons and standard 50 cal guns.”
Sophalla smiled cheerfully back at him and saluted. “Okay Vargas sweetie, sounds like a plan!” And with that the screen disappeared. Vargas then turned back to Circe.
“Well Circe, if they can get out of this one then I'll admit their skills are impressive.” He pushed his sunglasses up his nose before adding, “Just barely of course.”
~~~
With a triumphant shout, Kerr shot the wheels out from the final pursuing vehicle. The car was reduced to scrap in seconds as it nosedived right into the asphalt. Now, the only problem was to deal with the last of the VTOLs—
“You’re kidding me!”
Everybody froze. Stolz’ voice never sounded frustrated.
Emma, Terra and Lokka looked out the front window just as Thetis turned around on the roof.
The water Destrillian felt a swell of hope as her eyes landed on what she wanted to see: the end of the expressway. The world beyond Osea. They were almost there. And then she looked up, and her hope was crushed.
What they’d been fighting was child’s play compared to the intensity of what they were about to drive into.
Emma, with a sudden inspiration, sent out her powers to feel for how many men there were waiting for the Winnebago. She didn’t like what she felt. There was a huge amount of life out there, waiting to kill or be killed. They were in the hundreds.
She yelled this information outside, in hopes that it would help. Emma didn’t even care if somebody asked her how she knew the information later – it would all be worth it if that little bit more preparedness kept them all alive.
Kerr, from his place on the side of the mobile home, was able to see beyond the confines of the expressway. This last stretch ran through an abandoned industrial sector; all around them, the hollowed-out skeletons of buildings shot up into the sky, patiently waiting for their turn to be broken to pieces in the name of redevelopment. The horizon itself was jagged and cruel with the peaks of all these ruined sectors… and in every single carpark, lot, over and underpass, there were enemies.
Kerr’s sharp black eyes scanned over everything: tanks, artillery, rocket launchers, the works. The VTOL gunships were like flocks of birds in the sky. They’d really pulled out all the stops for this last shot.
The first shell exploded a foot behind them, and suddenly Kerr decided that being stuck to the side of the Winnebago wasn’t the best place to be with their current situation.
“Thetis, Kerr, get in the Winnebago and get me Lokka now!” Idris called over the roaring boom of a hundred different artillery shells being fired. There was no way that either of them could do anything against an enemy that far off, and Idris herself wasn’t about to try. The only thing they could do was to shield the mobile home as best they could, and to hope.
“But—”
“Right now!” Idris repeated. She couldn’t see Kerr from where she was, but she could definitely see Thetis and the way her face clouded over with anger.
“FINE,”the water Destrillian yelled back, throwing her hands up in exasperation and jumping through the skylight, landing rather loudly on the floor within. She turned to face Lokka. “Go on, go up there already!”
Lokka took one look at Thetis’ face and then hurried up to the roof.
Thetis turned, about to yell at somebody else for something that she hadn’t quite figured out yet, and then she saw Fiona’s body on the floor of the mobile home. The girl dropped like a stone, instantly at the fire prototype’s side. Fiona was alive… but her breathing was catching. The poison in her shoulder had spread quickly since Thetis had last seen it.
Hardly knowing what to do anymore, Thetis picked up Fiona and, shooing Emma and Terra off their couch, gently placed her down. Fiona almost fell off again a few seconds later when an explosion rocked the entire Winnebago – they swerved madly to and fro, avoiding shells and VTOL bullets, until the blue-haired girl couldn’t take it anymore.
“CAN’T YOU JUST DRIVE STRAIGHT?” she yelled at the front.
Kerr, having climbed back through the side door moments ago, had literally only just gotten the wheel back.
“IF YOU CAN DO A BETTER JOB,” Kerr replied, his voice at absolute top volume, “THEN BE MY GUEST.
“Out,” he growled through grit teeth, throwing Stolz out of the front seat and into the back with the rest of the entirely shocked Destrillians. Even if there hadn’t been a telepathic link between the lot of them, each individual would still have come to the conclusion of leaving the gravity manipulator alone for a while. With an abrupt noise, whatever disproportionately perky song that had been playing from the radio stopped, and they were once again surrounded by nothing but the sound of battle.
But there was another noise.
Nobody really registered it, at first – Terra cocked her head when she first heard it but dismissed it as bits of debris hitting the side of the Winnebago. Stolz heard it, but was too busy running around looking out windows to mention it.
Finally, Thetis, who was again looking for something to distract herself, realized that there was in fact a sound other than the gunfire outside. It was the sound of something knocking against the inside of a cupboard.
Something alive.
She got up and opened one. Nothing. The girl tried to listen through all the outside noise to hear where it was coming from, but she found that once she tried concentrating it only grew fainter. So she resorted to opening all the cupboards until—
“Agh!”
Until she found Early.
Only just barely conscious again.
And then she slammed the cupboard doors shut on him again.
“And who is HE?!” she said, turning on her comrades with a menacing eye. Nobody answered – nobody knew. Lokka was up on the Winnebago roof, holding out against the enemy’s legions; Jettison and Nova were still behind them, managing by some miracle to tail them exactly so as not to get blown up; Kerr was busy driving and Thetis didn’t want him to answer anyway. Nobody who’d secured the Winnebago was available to ask.
“Ha!” came a shaky but contempt voice from the couch. Fiona cracked her eyes open, noticing with some agitation that the light was hurting them. “The guy in the cupboard’s just some stupid human we brought along.”
“Why?”Thetis asked, and then her brain registered that Fiona was talking. “Never mind that, are you okay?”
“Fine.”The firestarter propped herself up on her elbow, albeit with a wince of pain. “And we dragged him along because we thought he’d be useful – and because I’m really gonna need something to thrash after all this is over.”
Before Thetis could say anything to that statement, a shell landed right in front of the Winnebago, exploding in front of them; most of the blast was deflected by Lokka’s shield, but the heat still reached the inside of the mobile home, and the light blinded them all for a second.
Outside was a little less domestic.
It had already been tough, what with the hailstorm of bullets that the VTOLS were sending down, and the blooming explosions and dust kicked up by the tanks and artillery and their shells. But as they crested one last rise in the expressway and began their drive down the last straight, flat stretch before the city limits, Idris and Lokka saw their final challenge.
It was a blockade. Two stories tall at the very least, it was a gargantuan metal wall blocking their path; from the looks of it, far off though it was, there were a good two or three dozen army snipers positioned on top, ready to take out the Winnebago and Jettison and Nova’s car behind it.
And then they looked up a bit more and it got even worse. Because above the blockade – as if it weren’t bad enough already – were two massive command ships. Each one was a leviathan in the sky, armed to the teeth against the Destrillians. One of them, Idris recognized from the motel parking lot—and she remembered what they could do.
And we aren’t even there yet, Idris thought, the slightest bit of panic creeping into her mind. We still need to make it to the blockade through all this!
‘All this’ turned out, in part, to be a rocket launcher shell exploding against the side of their magnetic field/ shield combination. The force knocked both Idris and Lokka back half a foot, but it was a testament to their willpower that their defenses held.
“How on earth are we going to get past that?”Lokka called to the smaller Destrillian. Idris shook her head – she didn’t know. She was too busy taking care of the now to think about the future, as immediate and imminent as it may have been. And that scared her. Idris prided herself on always being three steps ahead of the game – being in a situation where she was forced to think up every step on the spot? That meant they were in real trouble.
“Someone get up here to help!” she called down. Maybe, if they had another person up here to figure out a plan while they held their ground…
“Oh sure,”Thetis spat, not loudly enough for Idris or Lokka to hear. “First you want us all down in the Winnebago, and then you want us helping, and then you want us hiding again and now you want us helping. Make up your mind!”
“Thetis?”Stolz called cheerfully.
“What.”
“Shut your trap.”For just a moment, Stolz’ voice had gone all cold and serious again—but then they stuck one hand into their bag, pulling out a black box. Before anybody could say anything, the child had jumped up to join the fight themselves.
Ignoring the raging battle around them, Stolz opened the box and dug out an armful of flashbangs. During the one silent moment in between all the firing, they managed to yell one word. A word that instilled fear into every person who heard it.
“SURPRISE!”
From the vehicle behind the Winnebago, Jettison saw the blond child yank the pins out of a good half-dozen flash grenades. Not even bothering to try and hold any of their levers down, they simply tossed them up in the air – and the child was quite strong, for the grenades flew high.
The result was like being struck by lightning. An overwhelming crackBOOM sounded out along the road, and the white light was intense. For about ten seconds, barely anything came at them as the soldiers nearest to the expressway desperately tried to clear their vision and hearing. But temporary solace was all it brought them, as the enemy was far enough away to not be very affected by light and sound.
Unless…
Stolz drew out another armful. They yanked the pins and tossed the grenades high.
And this time Jettison concentrated.
If the last batch had been like being hit by lightning, then this one was like a supernova. Jettison augmented the light as much as she possibly could, going so far as to need to scrunch her own eyes closed as well. Nova swore himself blue beside her.
But it worked. A few VTOLS crashed into one another in the sky – the disadvantage of packing so many into such a small space. Combined with all the thick smoke in the sky from the MLRS shells, the opposition wasn’t able to see their target any longer.
The Winnebago sped out of the light and onward to freedom.
“Stolz!” Idris said, her immense relief at the child’s appearance taking the form of a strained smile. “What do you think we can do about that up there?”
Stolz’ eyes widened almost comically as they followed Idris’ finger.
“Well that’s obvious!” Both Idris and Lokka looked back at Stolz when they heard the zealous determination in their voice. “We’re gonna smash right on through!”
Idris looked at Lokka. Lokka looked back at Idris. Neither one of them had wanted that to be the answer.
But what choice do we have?
There’s no other way.
“Go and tell the others to brace themselves!”Lokka called to Stolz, who was already scrambling down through the skylight. “They’re going to need it.”
He’d only just barely said it when a migraine stabbed through his head as his shield was assaulted by a dense, glowing light. The command ships overhead were firing pulse shots at them now, which were a lot harder to ward off, being not conventionally solid.
Idris had figured out the warning signals of Lokka’s shield by now – when you could see it physically, that meant it was under too much strain. She didn’t like the fact that she could see the entire thing one bit.
“Move already!” she yelled, stomping on one side of the Winnebago and unintentionally forcing it to bank right, veering them a little out of the line of fire. A few moments later the pulse shots slowed and stopped. If they went fast enough, then they’d be out of the city before the cannons could send another volley at them.
Inside the Winnebago, Kerr’s mood blackened even further as Stolz shouted the plan to everybody. Was there even any guarantee that this was going to work? Or would they all get crushed up against the metal wall?
He took a breath and floored the accelerator—they’d need to be going at top speed to make it through the blockade.
Terra looked behind them and saw the miles and miles of concrete that they’d traversed in their escape. All of it looked like some planetary monster had let its infant teethe on the scenery. It was broken up, unstable… and that was a good thing, the earth Destrillian realized. Broken highway was good.
She wobbled to her feet again, determined to not look over her shoulder, to not look at the insurmountable wall of death that they were hurtling towards at what felt like the speed of light. She set herself steady against the wall, and then grabbed Emma’s warm, live hand in her own, just in case.
“What are you doing?”Emma asked, fear in her voice. Terra’s deep green eyes scanned the long road behind them, searched out the breaches, the cracks in the mortar, anything that would break to pieces if she told it to.
Helping out, Emma.
With a scream of effort, she willed the expressway to break apart into pebbles and dust. To blast it all into nothing but grit and sand and a sad, grey reminder of why nobody messed with a Destrillian. And just once, just for one time, when they needed it most, Terra’s potential shone through.
The expressway shuddered behind them. And then it cracked. And then it gave way and crumbled behind them, falling far, far down to the ground beneath.
Idris forced the bullets and shells and bits of shrapnel off her magnetic field and up at the command ships, but she knew they would barely reach, let alone injure them in any way. “Lokka,” she said, pushing her damp blonde hair out of her eyes. It was time.
The green-eyed man nodded at her and rematerialized his shield.
This is it,he thought. Everything came down to this – if he wasn’t able to power the Destrillians through this blockade, then every ounce of fighting would be for nothing. And that didn’t just mean today: it meant every day he had spent poring over files, finding contacts, painstakingly collecting information and tracking down allies. It would all go to waste. All their struggles would be for nothing. Deyn and Hannah’s deaths would be for nothing.
And that just couldn’t happen.
He poured every last bit of energy into one, massive barrier, refining it and refining it and solidifying it, until it was so incredibly, unbelievably strong it was almost opaque from density. And he dug his heels in and held it there.
Idris herself knew she had her part to play as well. The blockade was made of metal. She could feel it. And that meant that, if only she could summon up the strength, she would be able to help their final desperate move.
Can I do it, though?
There was no questioning it, really. It was do or die. And so Idris took up a solid fighting stance, closed her eyes, and felt deep, deep down. Down through her fatigue, and through her pain, and through all of the frustration that she’d accumulated this past while; down through all her loneliness and her sadness and her fear, down through emotion itself, back to the core of power that she knew was there, somewhere.
And she found it.
The Gunmetal Glint’s storm-grey eyes snapped open and she thrust her hands forward, twisting, tearing, practically rending the air itself in two. There was a screeching noise, like tearing paper magnified to a thousand.
Knock knock.
Boom.
~~~
“THEY GOT AWAY?!”Kijo yelled as she lowered the binoculars from her eye level. She couldn't believe that a mobile home was capable of fending off and ultimately evading half of the entire Artolian defense force and two IRIN command ships. It seemed that she had greatly underestimated her opposition and as a result allowed them to escape.
The question now arisen in her mind was, what exactly were these Destrillians and what exactly were they capable of? While it seemed they were now out of Osea and no longer a direct threat, there was still an elimination order on them and they still were within Artolian borders (at least for now.) Kijo knew she'd have to find out more about them if she was to combat them effectively.
~~~
Vargas simply stood quietly on the bridge, looking outward onto the expanse of forests that bordered the outskirts of Osea; his expression was not a very impressed one.
“Right...what the hell just happened?” he asked in an equally unimpressed tone.
“I believe you're supposed to admit that the Destrillian's skills are impressive, are you not sir?” Circe responded, in which wasn't a mocking tone but clearly the underlying intention was there. Vargas simply let out a short laugh.
“Alright, so they can hold their own in a fight. But there was something interesting I noticed during the shitstorm that just happened,” he said, and brought up a screen showing an image of the Winnebago during the firefight. He then focused on a section which appeared to show a large stream of fire coming out from one of the people on top.
“Circe my dear, where there's smoke there's fire. And where there's fire, there's that person,” Vargas stated with a sly grin. "Fiona Myrwind, I've found you at last."
~~~
Emma opened her eyes.
It took her an alarming few seconds to blink the spots out of her eyes – the impact had been so strong she couldn’t even remember it clearly. Taking a quick glance out the back window, she could see the form of Jettison and Nova’s stolen vehicle trundling on behind them. She smiled tiredly. They’d made it out, too.
But behind them, Emma could only make out the blockade in the distance. The smile turned into a frown – the crash had to have been at least a few minutes ago, from the looks of it. She shook her hair out of her face, feeling how bruised her skull was, looking around to see if everybody in the Winnebago was alright.
Fiona had passed out again a while ago; running the blockade hadn’t seemed to wake her. Emma wasn’t sure whether that was good or bad. She could still feel Fiona’s life pulsing away, strong and warm, but it was tainted with a sickly, clammy feeling which she felt the need to physically shake off. She couldn’t even imagine how it felt for real.
Terra had fallen to the ground moments before impact, after she’d taken out the M3 behind them. After gently asking if she was hurt, the brown-haired girl told Emma that no, she hadn’t been physically injured by anything, but she was about to explode from her headache.
It was oddly funny, the way she said it, and Emma let an ever-so-slightly unhinged laugh escape her chapped lips before helping Terra up onto a chair so she could close her eyes and sleep. Then, forcing her legs to stop shaking, she stood up to survey the rest of them all: Stolz had been thrown against one of the Winnebago’s sides, which had opened the cupboard with the human man inside. Both lay dazed and silent, but they felt uninjured enough.
She turned her blue eyes towards the front of the Winnebago. Kram was the same as ever – still and silent but not any worse off than he had been before. Thetis was sprawled across the table, hands gripping white-knuckled at the edges. Her breathing was shaky and her face was drained of all colour, but she, too, seemed alright. Emma looked past them all at the front: logically, Kerr had to be okay, or else they wouldn’t still be moving, but she felt it her duty to check anyway. She took a few steps up to the front to see him properly.
A cool wind blew in from the shattered windshield, which she’d only just noticed had broken. And no wonder, she thought. I don’t even know how fast we were going. Kerr had a nasty cut on his face, presumably from one of the glass shards, but if he’d noticed yet, he was ignoring it quite well. He spared her a look before turning his glare back to the road ahead.
She breathed a sigh of relief before remembering that not every member of their party was inside the Winnebago to begin with.
Panic seized her once more. Emma rushed to the skylight and swung her way up, looking around frantically before her eyes settled on the forms of the two Destrillians.
Idris and Lokka had been thrown unconscious as well for a while after impact; the amount of strength they had exerted, combined with the sheer force of the Winnebago smashing into the blockade, had knocked them out almost instantly. As Emma made her way over to the two of them, Lokka’s unnatural green eyes flickered open – he was only just able to sit up before Emma threw her arms around him.
“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you so, so much. I don’t know what we would have done without you.” She checked him over—there were tens of shallow cuts all over him from all the shrapnel, but none of them were serious—and then turned to Idris.
She wasn’t up yet. For a cold, sickening moment, Emma thought she might be dead, but her power reached out and felt the pale woman’s cool, rhythmic lifeforce ebbing and flowing as it always did. The redhead hurried to her side and took her up in her freckled arms; Idris had cuts all over her body just like Lokka, and Emma also noticed how her entire palm was bruised black.
“Idris?”she called softly, her eyes searching for signs of consciousness. “Idris, wake up!”
It took a moment. A very long, slow moment. But Idris took a sharp breath and scrunched her face up in intense pain, and then she, too, opened her eyes.
“Ngh…” She coughed once, and then looked up at Emma. “Hi, Emma.” She let Emma hug her until her ribs felt about to crack, and then forced herself to stagger to her knees, and then to her feet, swaying on top of the Winnebago. She could barely see.
“Do you need any help?” Emma asked, all concern and helpful disposition. Idris shook her head, and then quickly stopped as it felt like her brain was rattling around in her skull.
“Just give me time to breathe,” she replied, trying to smile but just not being able to. She was just too tired, and too upset.
Emma slowly nodded, giving her a look full of even more concern than before. “Go and get Lokka down in the car, though—he did a lot too.”
“Alright,”came the reply, and Idris watched with slowly focusing eyes as the plant Destrillian led Lokka into the Winnebago.
She sat down again quietly to prevent herself from swaying any more, and then tilted her head back and breathed in the clear air. It was fresh, not nearly as polluted as the city, and it brushed away the slightest bit of her fatigue and her pain.
Oh right. Pain.
She winced as her migraine reminded her brutally that yes, it was still there, and feeling particularly merciless at that.
I’ll just sit up here and wait for it to go away a little… and then I’ll go and rest inside.
Inside, Thetis had finally unclenched her hands from the tableside. Slowly, she climbed off of it and slumped down onto the ground; seeing that Fiona had been thrown from her couch, the water Destrillian made her way over and painstakingly replaced her.
Fiona wasn’t as warm as usual. That, coupled with the disturbing silence that was coming from her, made Thetis want to be sick. Before she could stop it, she felt the prick of tears behind her eyes—the stress of everything finally all rushed into her and refueled her previous hatred for the one who’d started all this.
She rose and turned around to face Kerr.
“If you hadn’t gone and tried to kill me, none of this would have happened,” she began, clenching her hands to stop them from shaking with rage. “We wouldn’t be broken and exhausted and on the run from a whole country. We could have gone on living life. We were alright, you know?” the girl continued, her voice raising now. “Not happy, no, but better off than that basement. We had a place to sleep at night and some of us had friends. Some of us had more than friends.
“We were living, Kerr,” she said, slamming her hand on the side of the Winnebago. “We were content with what we had and you went and spoiled it all! You’ve ruined the life of every single person in this car.” She was yelling now. “And you know it. So tell me. Are you happy now?”
“What you were all doing,”the gravity Destrillian replied, with acid in his voice, “was not living.”
“Maybe you’d be a better judge if you’d ever tried it,” Thetis snarled back. “But you never did, did you? You just kept on following your stupid orders. I’m sure Abaddon’s real proud.”
The Winnebago stopped.
"And I'm sure Perkins is proud of a blubbering halfwit running around like a rat in the Orange Zone."Kerr got up from his seat and turned to stare Thetis down, daring her to retort.
"DON'T YOU DARE,"the girl shouted, feeling water wrap itself around her fists in preparation for a fight.
"Dare what?" he snapped. "Call you out on the truth? To top it off, you're about as useful as a sack of potatoes."
That isnt fare, Kerr,Terra said sternly from her place on the chair. Stop calling her useless.
Of course Kerr couldn't hear her, which Thetis took to with a savage kind of glee. "Oh yeah? I'm still a Destrillian. You can't even hear your own kind - that's how much is WRONG with you."
"Wrong with me?" Kerr's eyes glinted dangerously. "If there wasn't something wrong with HER," he continued, stabbing an accusing finger at Terra, "then she'd be able to talk like a NORMAL person, instead of gibbering on in your heads like a freak."
There was a stunned pause. The Destrillians had seen Kerr annoyed before, of course, and he was harsh most of the time—but Terra had never done anything worth picking on. "You… leave Terra out of this!" Emma finally shouted, glaring harshly. "Thetis is right, you know, it IS your fault - don't you dare try and pin it on her!"
"Now hold the line," Lokka said, but before he could get anywhere, four angry pairs of eyes glared him down.
Eye'm like this becuz I saved all of YOU, Terra snapped, which Emma translated in just as angry a tone.
“I NEVER ASKED YOU TO SAVE ME!” Kerr bellowed back, which stopped everybody in their tracks. The sheer amounts of seething anger he was giving off was, admittedly, really quite frightening. Nobody had ever seen him like this before; the simple fact that he was showing emotion at all was a shock. Actually losing it…? Emma had actually taken a step back.
The only person able to break the silence was Thetis, who was just as angry as he was. “Well she did. And REAL GOOD JOB repaying her.”
Up above, Idris could hear voices starting to rise. She squinched her eyes shut, as if that would make them quiet down, but they just kept going.
Not again.
Not after all that they had JUST gone through together. She clenched her hands on the roof of the Winnebago, gritting her teeth in pain and in anger, not even noticing as the metal got squeezed in between her fingers. Why couldn't everybody just leave each other alone, for one little moment? Why did they have to bicker on at the most inconvenient times? Even now, they weren't safe yet, and instead of furthering their distance they were having a shouting match below.
They just couldn’t help hating each other. Idris curled tight in on herself as they continued their fight below; hating each other was what had sunk them so deep into the misery they were all sharing. That’s how it had always been. But instead of, oh, maybe allowing everybody else to understand—because they did, more than anybody else—they figured, “let’s just hate each other more, that’ll fix it all!” Was it ever going to stop?
She opened her bleary, tired, furious eyes as she heard Kerr finally crack.
Enough.
"One more word and I'll crush you flat."
"Try it!"
"Stop fighting, everyone!"
"STAY OUT OF THIS."
"See? After all that, you're still threatening to kill us!"
"DEVIL MAN! DEVIL MAN!"
Enough.
"You can't say anything Stolz - you just showed up out of nowhere. For all we know you're worse than he is!"
"Thetis, that isn't fair!"
"Whaddaya MEAN I could be worse?!"
"You're just looking to blame everyone but yourself, aren't you Alcesteos?"
"Don't. Say. That. Name."
"Enough."
You're going 2 far!
"YOU'RE going too far!"
"Don't you start on her now!"
"I'll start on WHOEVER I PLEASE."
"You should all calm down!"
"Like YOU can say anything!"
And then Idris finally lost her temper.
"ENOUGH."
Her voice was like a car crash. It screeched high, loud and grating as the gunfire they’d left far behind.
Everything that had happened to her finally got let loose; all the injustice, all the frustrations, all her rage and all her jealousy and all her everything was finally, just this once, allowed to see the light of day.
And it was a sight.
“STOP IT,” Idris screamed down at them from her place, standing furious at the edge of the skylight. The very aura she gave off crackled. “Don’t you EVEN START. I’m sick and tired of hearing you FIGHT. You’re ALWAYS FIGHTING. Fighting is what got us here in the first place,” she continued, drawing in a breath only to force it out in another, louder tone, “and FIGHTING SOME MORE isn’t going to get us out.
“We’re all hurt,” said the Gunmetal Glint, practically shaking, curling her toes into the metal of the roof. “And we’ve all BEEN HURT. Don’t a SINGLE ONE OF YOU think you’re the only one on the planet who feels the way you do, because that’s a LIE.”
“Id—”
“NO,” she shrieked, her voice rising again until it was almost unbearable. And slowly, the walls of the Winnebago began to crunch inward. “No, I have HAD IT. I’ve had it with YOUR whining, and YOUR self-righteousness, and YOUR smug pride,” she said, glaring viciously at Thetis, then Emma, then Kerr—who seemed less shocked that Idris was yelling, and more so that he’d been yelling just like her a few moments ago. “And it’s GOT TO STOP—none of us have the luxury of HATING each other any more. In case you hadn’t noticed,” she choked out through her closing throat, “we’re back to being on the run. And it’s going to be A LOT WORSE than last time. Last time was CHILD’S PLAY. So don’t you dare.” The walls gave one final shuddering cringe, and then stopped. It was silent for a moment.
“Don’t. You. Dare,” Idris began, one last time, drawing herself up through all her pain and fury to her full, tiny, terrifying height, “Try to start petty arguments with each other just to pass the time. Just because they don’t understand. Because there is NOBODY ELSE IN THE WORLD who understands you as much as THESE PEOPLE YOU’RE YELLING AT.
“We used to be family. And we were still family, even though we broke apart and never saw each other,” she cried, her voice breaking on the last word. “And WE’RE STILL FAMILY NOW, as much as you want SO DESPERATELY TO DENY IT. ALL OF US.”
Her migraine was going to make her pass out again if she went any further. Her entire body was yelling just as loud as she was to rest. But there was no way on the face of the planet that she was going to rest with any one of her family beside her. Even though she wished they could be. Oh, how she wished.
“THESE ARE THE ONLY PEOPLE YOU HAVE LEFT IN THE WORLD NOW.”
She slammed the skylight shut. It shook the entire mobile home.
She welded it closed, just to be sure.
And then she curled up, staring through teary eyes at the morning sun, and slowly fell asleep.
; and one…very confusing scent.
