Sorry this took so long! I went away for a wedding last week, so I haven't had much time to write at all. I'll be trying to keep updates to be around once a week in the future.
Gladio grunted as he strained on another one of the damned chains, not even able to budge it in the slightest. He let go of the metal and fell back, defeated. "You right there, Iggy?" he asked, looking over to where Ignis was kneeling down to run his hands over the joins at the edge of the platform.
"I will keep up. Worry about the crystal, not me."
He snorted. Right, as if that was ever going to happen. "Hey, I gotta have someone to babysit until Noct gets back," he said, trying to keep his tone a light as possible.
"Empty nest syndrome, Gladio? You should have said," Ignis replied.
"And give you ammo to mock me?"
"Mock you?" Ignis asked, putting one hand on his chest in mock outrage. "I would never."
"Iggy, you can't say 'I would never' while doing the thing you said you'd never do." Gladio huffed and turned to Ignis, hands on his hips and a wry smile on his lips. That was, until he remembered that his partner could not see that smile. Despite their foolish optimism, might not ever again. The smile faded quickly.
"I think you'll find I'm very talented," Ignis said, oblivious to the drop in mood.
Oh, now isn't this just sweet.
They both jumped as the taunting voice echoed through the chamber.
"What do you want, arsehole?" Gladio growled.
Please boys, I am doing you a favour. You want the crystal returned to Lucis, do you not? Generous as I am, I will take it for you.
"I am not inclined to believe any of your actions come from generosity," Ignis said. Gladio agreed, though with a rather different selection of words.
Ah, such a pity. Perhaps best that I have left you no choice in the matter.
The platform shifted, knocking Gladio away from the crystal and leaving him sprawling on the steel grating. With a mechanical clinking of chains the crystal rose from the platform, the links holding it in place snapping under the strain.
"Gladio! What is happening?"
The chains still dangling from the bottom of the crystal looked solid enough… if he jumped and grabbed one, he could probably hold on long enough to get to wherever the bastard was taking it. But that would mean leaving Ignis behind.
His king or his partner. There was only one answer.
Noctis would never forgive him for leaving Ignis.
"The crystal is being pulled up on there chains," he explained, rushing to Ignis' side. "Come on, not much we can do."
He tugged on Ignis's arm. His pull was resisted and he let out a weary sigh. "If I weren't here…" Ignis started.
"If you weren't here I wouldn't have made it," he said, tugging more insistently at the other's sleeve. "And we're gonna need you to get outta here, so quit your moping and move."
Ignis bowed his head. "My apologies," he said, falling in step behind Gladio as they made their way down the walkway. "What will we do about the crystal?"
"If the evil hobo wants to take it to Lucis, we might as well pick it up there," he said more than believed. With an immortal daemon spawn — or whatever the hell Ardyn actually was — as an enemy, their chances weren't looking that good. "Let's see how the kid is getting on."
A damn sight more successful than they were, apparently. The elevators took them down in no time to the hangar, where Gladio was delighted to be the sole witness to an Iron Giant taking several tons of out of control Imperial drop ship to the face.
The rest of the room was a mess, most of the storage and shelving units knocked haphazardly down, a few rows of energy tanks blazing merrily away with blue fire. The ship didn't look much better, there one side that hadn't been caved in was covered in scorch marks and thick black daemon blood.
"Do I even want to ask?"
Gladio belted out a short laugh and clapped Ignis on the back. "Kid's gonna have a good story to tell."
With the Iron Giant well taken care of, the ship managed some sort of stability, only knocking into the walls a few times before it settled into a light hover in the centre of the room.
"Hey, Prompto!" Gladio yelled over the clatter of metal and roar of engines. "Change of plan!"
After a few moments of nothing but the whine of the engines he turned to Ignis. "You think he heard me?"
"I think the dead heard you."
That may not have been as much of an exaggeration as Ignis thought. Screams and growls echoed around the room, coming from every direction and no direction all at once. There were plenty of daemons still to go around.
"Prompto!" Gladio yelled, louder and more shaky than ever. Grabbing Ignis's arm, he dragged the other man to the edge of the platform, the only place they had any chance of reaching the ship.
The rear hatch on the ship shuddered slowly open as there giant steel monstrosity inched closer to the edge. "Come on, kid," Gladio whispered, trying to ignore the baying and scratching of daemons getting closer and closer. He didn't want to turn around, didn't want to learn if their death was approaching faster than the ship.
"Tell me when to jump," Ignis whispered beside him, barely loud enough to hear over the din.
Gladio gave a single determined nod, patting Ignis on the shoulder so he could understand. They could do this. "When I say go," he said, calling on his king's magic to draw his greatsword from the air.
"Huh, this is new," Gladio said, hefting the unfamiliar weight of the greatsword to his shoulder. Hyperion, his mind helpfully supplied him.
"What is new?"
"New sword," he said, slashing down a wide arc into the horde of imps that were leaping to their position. They fell in a gibbering pile, black blood oozing and bubbling from where the blade had sliced clean through. "Damn good sword," he added with a wide and toothy grin. "Get ready, Iggy!"
It wasn't as hard as he thought, fending off the tide of daemons while keeping an eye out for the right distance to jump. He liked to keep himself moving while he fought anyway, moving his body with his sword and spinning gracefully on his feet in a way that could have only been honed by years of ballet (that was one titbit about his childhood that he would not share with the others). Every spin brought another swathe of daemons to the ground and another glimpse at the distance to the ship, until-
"Go, Iggy! Jump!"
It should have been a sure thing. Sure, it was a long jump to make, but Ignis was ridiculously acrobatic and could have made that jump with a backflip thrown in.
But the second his feet left the walkway, far too early, Gladio knew he wasn't going to make it.
Of course. There was no way for him to judge how far he was from the edge.
Gladio could only watch as Ignis hit the edge of the ramp hard, his hands grasping desperately for purchase on the cold steel.
"Iggy!" he yelled, pushing back the horde of daemons with one last sweep of Hyperion before it vanished into a shower of crystal shards. He sprinted down the walkway, blood pounding in his ears, and leaped the second his foot touched the edge.
It was a mistake. He was too distracted, looking at Ignis instead of where he was jumping.
He hit the ramp with a crash, his shoulder taking the brunt of the impact as he rolled up the steel slope. His fingers wrapped around the nearest handhold he could find, the cool steel nearly wrenched from his grasp when the ship shuddered around him.
"Iggy," he gasped, shifting even with his precarious grip to try and find…
"I've got you Iggy, don't worry!"
Prompto was there, both hands clutching on to Ignis's forearm with his feet wedged into door's hydraulics. Ignis's free arm flailed desperately against the side of the ship. "I appreciate that, Prompto," he said. "But I am finding it rather difficult not to worry."
"C'mon," Gladio said, crawling down the ramp with more confidence than his balance would lend him. He glanced at the walkway — they were still slowly approaching and the daemons looked ready to leap aboard even before the collision could slice Ignis in half. He spread his legs as wide as he dared, grabbing Prompto with one arm for support and hauling Ignis over the edge with another. "Get inside! Quickly!"
Prompto was up before Ignis had even staggered to his feet, rushing down to the front of the ship and leaning over the controls. Gladio pulled his sword from the air as the ramp shifted underneath them.
"Back in," he said, letting the sword fade back into the crystal's magic. He grabbed Ignis by the arm and hauled him inside as the door closed behind them, muffled screeches and thumps echoing off the hard steel until the ship was sealed.
"I've pushed us forward a bit," Prompto said, standing up from the controls. "Kinda hard to get right, but should give us a minute."
"You did good, kid," Gladio said, wrapping his arms around Prompto and pulling him off his feet. He failed to keep the shake out of his voice. "You did so fuckin' good."
"N-no worries, big guy," Prompto said, fingers wrapping around Gladio's biceps until he let the smaller boy go. "How about the crystal?"
"Ardyn has taken it," Ignis said, his stony tone betraying nothing. With only a few false steps he found one of the rear seats and carefully lowered himself in.
"He's taking it to Lucis," Gladio added, his eyes not deviating from Ignis's stiff movements. "We'll take it back from him there."
"R-right," Prompto said, sitting down into the pilot's seat and strapping himself in. "We should get outta this place, then."
"Yeah," Gladio said, drawing his eyes away and taking the seat next to Prompto. He glanced over at the kid, settling into the controls like he'd been flying one of the things all his life, but decided better of asking. Prompto was still Prompto, and he could be pretty delicate at times. Throwing him off balance with questions about the whole Magitech thing was a bad idea already, even without him flying a ship.
"This is your captain speaking," Prompto said, turning to face them both, one hand on the throttle. "Hold on to each other's butts."
Prompto leaned back in the chair and let the tension ease out of his shoulders as he manoeuvred the ship out of the hangar. The Six must have been watching over them back there, because he couldn't think of any other way he could've managed to pull that off. Maybe it was payment for taking Noct from— no. He wouldn't think of that, not now. He couldn't break down again, not when his friends were counting on him to get them out of this shithole.
The final doors parted for them automatically and they were free, days — weeks for Prompto — of confinement coming to an end in a rush of air and pitch black sky. The lights of Gralea stretched below them, the pale and sickly light drowning out the stars in the sky above, leaving only a milky blue haze where the clouds lazily stretched across the sky. It was tense, empty, no movement to be seen despite the city stretching to the horizon in every direction.
"It's dead," Gladio whispered, his usually husky voice cracking mid-sentence. "Is anyone alive down there?"
"Doesn't look like it," Prompto said, bringing them down a bit lower. Nothing but empty streets, the occasional vehicle surrounded with flames the only sign of life. "I guess I should be sad, huh?"
"The loss of innocent life is always upsetting," Ignis said softly from the back. "Despite the actions of their emperor, I have no doubt Niflheim held many good and many bad, as all countries do."
"Huh," Prompto said, closing his eyes briefly. "Thanks, Ignis."
"If the surroundings are clear, perhaps we should stop to collect the Regalia."
The area was still clear of daemon by the time they arrived, though the upturned trains and strewn debris pushed Prompto's nerves to the limit as he set the ship down in the only clear spot they could find. As the ramp lowered and they walked ghastly mix of snow and ash, Prompto's heart sank. Charred and twisted, the… well, body, of the Regalia was lying underneath the wreckage of a train carriage. Just one more casualty.
"Oh, man," Prompto whined. "What do we do?"
"The best we can," Gladio replied. "C'mon, let's get the old girl out and head home."
