Night falls over Minoaoa Village. Marc has now been in this weird pseudo-sleep state for several hours.
Vernicia walks in with Rurin and Hal close behind. "Hey guys; we're back! What's on?"
"Shifting Sands just ended," Diantha says. "Dunno what's next."
"Man. I don't think I've ever seen that movie all the way through."
I glare at Marc as my comrades put on another movie.
"Hey. Marc's recovery, when do you think it'll happen?" Angelina asks.
"Beats me. A few more hours, maybe? I bet he's processing a lot," Rurin replies.
Morning arrives. Marc is still lying there.
"This is getting ridiculous," I grumble, filling a cup.
Splash!
"Gah!" Marc sputters, then sits up. "Hey, that was cold."
"Welcome back," I say, dropping the cup on his face.
"Ow. You interrupted a dream I was having," he tells me. "I was at my dad's wedding, and the bride was about to come out."
I place my hands on my hips. "Look, you'll meet her soon enough, so stop freaking out."
"Easy for you to say," he scoffs. "You know for certain you'll never see your parents again. My dad never told me anything about her, ever!"
"Yeah? You should at least relax long enough to eat something," I reply. "Breakfast is on in the lobby."
"You know what, I'm not really hungry," he mutters.
"Yes you are! Go! Breakfast! Now!" I drag him off the couch.
"Let's go back to Neon Moon after," Diantha proposes.
"Um… sure," Marc mutters.
As we enter the arcade again, my spirits feel lighter than ever. No trials, no tests. No reason to stay up for days at a time. Seriously, I'm starting to envy those who can live like this all the time.
Today's first game is Combat of Kings. Even after letting us practice, Hal comes out with an effortless clean-sweep victory against Rurin and Vernicia, 2v1.
"I just need practice," Verni yells. "I'll beat you soon enough; just give me a day or two!"
"I welcome a challenge," Hal nods. Rurin just looks uncomfortable.
Then afterwards Diantha and I get to lose against him, even though Dia is actually good at these types of games.
"Hey. How'd you get your guy to do that? I was just playing him last round," I say to Hal after my third loss.
He taps his chin. "Maybe I'll teach you later? I don't actually recall the specifics; it's mostly just muscle memory for me."
Next is this spaceship game called Gladius VS. Hal smokes us in both the racing and aerial dogfight modes.
Diantha looks dumbfounded. "How are you this good?!"
Hal thinks for a second. "If you can match my prowess in any one of these games, I'll tell you," he decides.
"Wow, you lot are bringing in all the prodigies," Shiny remarks.
"Heh, big mistake," I sneer. "Alright, Hal, deal! One more game! Marc, get over here!"
"W-what?" He looks alarmed as I drag him to my chosen challenge, Dansu Dansu Hyper.
"Win this for me," I tell him.
"Er… I'll do my best," he replies.
Despite his noncommittal tone, he really does try his best. In the end, Hal and Marc finish with the same high score.
"Haha! Hal, fess up," I yell. Marc leans on the wall, looking disappointed for some reason.
"I was gonna tell you regardless," Hal shrugs. "You see, Metacorp's Tasmil headquarters has a huge side room full of arcade cabinets, largely thanks to Benson Burns. It's his hobby." He looks away, wizened-hero style. "You want someone truly skilled? Burns could ace me, to put things into perspective. If you guys were level five, I'd be, I dunno, level twenty, and Burns would be maxed. He only lets us firemen play with him, though. And Mathis too, sometimes, but mostly just the firemen. The other guys at Metacorp couldn't enter, or he'd dock their pay. Now that I think about it, we firemen were never put on the payroll…"
"The arcade room… at Tasmil," I mutter.
"Right, the explosion," Hal recalls. "Would suck if it all got destroyed, let me tell ya. He's very proud of his hoard."
"He won't get sympathy from me," I reply. "No matter how fun it sounds."
"That explains that, I guess," Diantha sighs, walking to the front. "Anyway, time for foodies. There's a restaurant I wanna try across the—"
BOOM! The front door suddenly explodes, and the arcade quickly fills with dust and smoke.
I quickly dive down, defensively raising my wings. "Marc, under me! Dia, you okay?"
Marc slides under my outstretched wing, pistol in hand. "I saw her jump back – I don't know if she got hit," he tells me.
Then the pile of rubble shifts near the front. "Ugh! I'm alive," Diantha calls. "Some weirdos have a cannon pointed at the building. Any slower and I'd have been toast."
"There are regular people here! What are they thinking?!" Vernicia sounds angry.
"Looks like they finally found us," I growl. "That weapon of theirs might be a problem, but…"
"Don't worry about it! Looks like it overheated," Hal reports.
"Cool. Everyone, draw their aggro away from the people!"
"I thought they wanted us alive… that blast would have killed us in one hit," Rurin hisses.
I activate my vibroblades, ready for a fight. "I don't know what they want anymore, and at this point, I don't care! Let's flank them before they prep another shot!"
Shiny taps my shoulder. "They're surrounding the building, trying to trap you in here." She snaps her fingers, and a secret tunnel opens underground. "Take this route."
"Thanks, Shiny. Tell Selphia we owe her one," I tell her.
"We'll call it even if you can save my arcade," she winks.
"Deal. Guys, to me!"
The tunnel leads into a vacant lot behind the arcade, surrounded by stone walls and other buildings. Large, bulky men are standing around the back exit, massive fists clenched. Earthmovers.
In a swift motion, me and the aeronauts fly out of the tunnel towards them.
One earthmover notices us coming. "Hey! Over here," he shouts, but the rest of his words are cut off by my foot smashing his face in.
More earthmovers enter the lot – eight total back here, plus maybe one or two more at the cannon up front.
Vernicia slashes an earthmover with both of her swords, but only the laser sword damages him as sparks fly. "Gah! Figures." She jumps back and sheaths her black sword.
"Big fellas, aren't you?" Rurin mutters, energy pike aglow.
"I'm actually the tallest in my – argh!" Ru had quickly drawn his ice gun and fired. The earthmover stumbles backwards, clawing at his iced-over face.
"They all look like Fred from Sectary City," I mutter. "It was a trap after all!"
"We weren't bugged though," Marc says as he stuns an earthmover with his pistol. "How were they keeping tabs on us?"
"You're the one with the mind scan. Scan their minds!"
"You think I didn't try that already? It's like their brains are empty! They're either highly trained, or complete airheads," Marc retorts.
"I know for sure they're ruining my day!" I fire off a crosswave slash at a charging earthmover, and he crashes to the ground in front of me, injured. "Gah, still not strong enough at range," I mutter, finishing him off with a stab to the head.
Angelina braces on the ground, aiming her fully-powered chargebolt rifle at an approaching earthmover.
KABANG! The shot destroys his guarding arms in a burst of earthy gunk and blood, sending him flying backwards.
"Whoa! Careful where you point that," Diantha calls, then lands to finish him off with her iceblade.
"I think it was me," Hal says as I land next to him.
"You? What, you're a mole?" I give him an incredulous look. "I knew you were a blabbermouth, but…"
"Wait, no! It's not that he blabbed," Vernicia cuts in. "That autoguard knew you, but not us, is that what you're talking about?"
"Yep. I had a feeling, but this confirms it," Hal nods. "Once they figured out I was running with you guys, they started tracking my biotag."
"Ahh… a tracer. You have a tracer," I groan.
"All us firemen have biotags. The earthmovers too, I'm pretty sure," Hal explains. "They can only track our location, but… well, I guess you can see that's all you really need."
"Gah! Kit, help!"
My gaze suddenly snaps to Rurin – an earthmover has him in his giant grip, while another earthmover grabs Ru's wings. "That's the last time you freeze any of our faces," he growls.
I dash through the air towards them – "Don't you DAAARE!!"
The earthmover throws me a nasty grin, then pulls hard—
In that instant, time feels like it's slowed to a crawl.
Rurin's stunned face,
The earthmovers' iced-over, spiteful sneers,
the wings, making a strange metallic sound as they stretch and shoot out a rain of sparks…
KRAKA-SHEEEW!
As Ru's wings are torn off, the air crackles with a bizarre energy I've never felt before, and for a moment all I can see is fiery orange. A flare sigil? No? but it is fire. How odd—
WHUD! I smash into a wall and quickly lose consciousness.
~
Marc and the others look over at the explosion: a blazing dome of orange energy that had blown Shurikit and both earthmovers away, then quickly faded.
"What the–?!" Diantha looks alarmed. "What was that?"
"Rurin!" Vernicia flies over to him.
Hal blasts an earthmover with a rainburst, injuring him. "I'll hold them back. You go see what happened," he tells Marc. Thank goodness these guys aren't fireproof.
"You can't solo these guys with your agility," Diantha chides. "One hit from those fists will probably break all your bones." I've pegged the kind of guy Ru is into. Can't let you ruin that for him.
"I was just gonna zone 'em out," Hal mutters. Her eyes and words never seem to match up.
"Come off it! I'm helping you out," Dia declares, cutting another earthmover's neck with her iceblade. He falls backwards, the wound freezing before blood can spew out. "Angie, Marc, cover Verni!"
"Who made you second in command," Marc mutters. "Bah, forget it."
"Jealous?" Angelina looks at him. Marc and Dia, Dia and Kit.
"Huh?" Marc looks at her, surprised.
Angelina fires her chargebolt rifle again – KABANG! The approaching earthmover is instantly killed as the blast pulverizes his chest. Wrong, maybe I am? Marc and Kit, Marc and Ru, Hal and Ru…
"Huh??" Marc keeps his regrets to himself.
An earthmover rounds the corner. "New orders! Fall back, fall back!"
The four or five still-standing earthmovers begin to retreat while carrying off the other downed earthmovers, dead and alive.
Diantha tests Shurikit's vitals. "Still alive," she reports. Haha, I knew you'd pull through.
"What about Rurin?" Marc asks.
"He hasn't moved. But he also isn't dead. Um, yet," Hal says.
"Look at his back. I think his wings were destroyed in the explosion," Vernicia says. Or… maybe they caused it? He's right in the center.
Marc kneels next to Vernicia. "No blood, no bones… all that's left are these protrusions. Now that I think about it, what are aeronaut wings even made of?"
Diantha carefully touches the wing remains. No reaction, but he's still breathing. "If Rurin is still alive… uhm, should we get help?" We should, right? But wait, where can we even take him?
Voices echo from down the alley – "…yet, it won't do any good." It sounds like an earthmover. Angelina begins charging her rifle.
"Ah, this'll just be to scare 'em a bit. Break their morale, y'know?" Another earthmover says. "We still have time before the dropship comes."
Two earthmovers round the corner into the lot, pushing the cannon.
KABANG!
The shot strikes the cannon, and the resulting explosion blows back both earthmovers, who quickly recover and run away.
Angie rolls her eyes and shoulders her weapon. Idiots… kill them all, we should. But Ru… yes, in revenge, kill them all.
"W-what do we do?" Vernicia frets. I know he's a tough cookie, but…
"A hospital, obviously. I think," Marc replies. "There's one nearby, right? My Tetrider will provide a smooth enough ride so that he doesn't die of shock. But thinking on it, would a hospital even know what to do? Strictly speaking, aeronauts aren't technically human."
"What, are you suggesting we hit up a veterinarian?!" Verni tosses up her hands. "Or, I dunno, a mechanic?" Spin the 'what the hell even are we' wheel! Robots, golems, puppets, aliens, faeries, demons–
Hal resolutely straightens. "I have a better plan. Her name is Master Lee."
"Hal, what? She's, like, a hundred something kiloms away," Diantha replies. "I mean, true, she's a master healer, but you can't possibly think Rurin will make the trip."
"Heh… not under normal circumstances. Watch and learn!"
Hal fumbles for a second, and a small rhomboid crystal drops from his pocket. It bounces once, twice – then it lands perfectly upright, balancing on a single point.
Then a single, narrow eye opens on its center, looking around with rapid, flicking glances. Then it blinks once, instantly becoming the height of a normal person. Its gaze stops on Hal, silently waiting.
Vernicia steps closer to the thing. "What the…"
Marc simply stares, dumbfounded.
Hal clears his throat. "Diamond Eye, hear my cry. Return us to my master, so she can save Rurin." Did that have to rhyme? I sure hope not.
As if acknowledging Hal's request, the Diamond Eye blinks again—
*