[ Author's Note:
This is the first story I've written that feels perfect. I dunno, I guess everything clicked.
~ClockwerkOrange ]
"Master Cyclonis," the elderly gentleman on the platform began, directly in front of Cyclonis, but he wasn't facing her, he was facing the crowd. "Before a jury of your peers, you have been found guilty of mass murder, unprovoked international hostilities, numerous war crimes including unlawful imprisonment, enslavement, and execution of the citizens of Terra Gale and Terra Merb – among other terras – genocide, and attempted genocide. These are just your outstanding offenses – your crimes are too numerous to list."
Cyclonis stared indifferently at the crowd while the noose was wrapped around her head. She glanced down and saw that, through her narrow purple eyes, that the thick rope had settled around her shoulders and obscured the insignia of Cyclonia embedded in her collar.
"Therefore, you will be executed."
The short white-haired man nodded at the lanky executioner standing next to Cyclonis and then departed down the gallows' stairs. In the meantime, Cyclonis had reached her boiling point.
"I don't regret what I've done!" she shouted. Her words echoed over the dead silent crowd. "Do you hear me, Atmosia? I, Master Cyclonis, rightful ruler of all of the Atmos, proclaim that I regret nothing!"
The executioner yanked the lever that let the trapdoor under Cyclonis drop open on a single hinge. Cyclonis was falling, and for the first time in her left she felt true horror.
"All hail Cyclonia!" someone cried out from the crowd, and Cyclonis heard something above her snap abruptly.
Cyclonis hit the ground hard, and rolled onto her side. She'd had all the wind knocked out of her, but after struggling for a few seconds with bleary vision she was reasonably confident that she hadn't broken anything.
"Come on, Master Cyclonis, we're getting you out of here," a familiar wild, gruff voice said hurriedly, and she suddenly felt herself hefted into the air. Her vision was beginning to clear and she found herself bobbing with an upside-down view of the world. A furious crowd of Atmosians was in the background.
"Back, you Atmosian trash, back!" another familiar voice shouted.
From Cyclonis's backward-facing viewpoint, she saw her exiled former commander Ravess firing arrows three at a time at Atmosian forces from a precarious perch on the stockade wall.
"Is that you, Snipe?" she asked her carrier, curling up a bit to see the back of the bluish-haired strongman's head.
"Yeah, just keep still 'til we get to the ship. Sis said she'd hold them back," Snipe replied quickly, still sprinting to a location that Cyclonis couldn't see.
Cyclonis wanted to ask him why they would come to save her when she'd banished them both, but figured that then was probably not the best time. She was finding it increasingly difficult to focus due to what she assumed was the constant jarring from the run. She squinted, and could make out Ravess sprinting as fast as she could away from a crowd of furious Atmosian militiamen, taking potshots at them with her bow when she could.
"Hold on, we're jumping!" Snipe yelled right before Cyclonis felt gravity turn off for a moment.
They hit something metal after about a second in the air, but Snipe still had Cyclonis slung over his shoulder. After she saw Ravess hop off the side of the terra onto their little transport, hit the deck rolling, and then leap up with a few arrows readied to fire at the pursuing group, Snipe deposited her carefully onto a chair inside the pilot's cabin.
"You actually did it," said the Dark Ace from the pilot's seat with a backward grin. "Welcome aboard, master."
"Yeah, whatever, hit the gas," Snipe suggested.
The transport shuddered as the Dark Ace started the engines at max power right out of the gate, and after a few seconds they were already out of the Atmosians' sight.
"I… I thought you died," Cyclonis said after catching her breath. Her vision was still blurry and she was beginning to wonder why.
The Dark Ace just raised an eyebrow and gestured to his left arm, which was bound in a sling. "You of all people should know that it's hard to get rid of me," he said with a grim chuckle. He glanced back at the open sky in front of him occasionally, maintaining their course with his right hand. He looked back at Cyclonis briefly. "And if it weren't for this sling, I would've been out there saving you myself instead of flying the getaway ship."
"I didn't know you were such a hopeless romantic, Dark Ace," Ravess said with a dry chuckle.
"You know it isn't like that," the Dark Ace replied, voice deadpan – but that didn't stop Snipe from laughing hysterically.
Cyclonis felt a small smile creeping across her lips. "I'm impressed. Maybe even a little bewildered. You did well." But then her smile faded as quickly as it came.
Maybe that was all she would've needed in the end – people who would be willing to risk their lives for her, maybe to even die in the process. People she might have even been able to call friends. But those who were willing to risk their lives were long dead and everyone else had either been ordered away or fled of their own accord.
So when Cyclonis was nearing the end of her long drop, she realized that that was her sole regret. The rope pulled taut, and despite the mass of people attending the spectacle, she died alone.