Chapter 7: Airborne

[Adam II - Numero Cinco]

WE RUSH UP THE STAIRS, FEET BANGING AGAINST THE METAL GRATES. Well, my feet. One is silent as she leads, somehow knowing exactly where to go. I don't question it, I just follow her shimmering blonde hair in the light of the lamps…

Is this really a time to be checking me out, bro? Her voice appears in my head, without her even turning around. "Hey, sorry. I just noticed it, that's all."

Sure. As we reach the top of the stairs, she turns around to me and grins. "Remember, telekinesis is simple. It's just grab the Mog bitches and, you know, give them a shake up."

Yeah. Something like that.

"You've got this. You've made it out of harder shit before, amirite?" I'm not sure if her teeth could be whiter, but that doesn't matter. I shake it off and place my good hand on the door handle, wincing slightly. My left finger still bleeds, but it's mostly numb now; I suppose that's a good thing.

Oh, don't be a weeny.

Thanks a lot, One. Great help.

No problem.

Yeah. Enough of that. I hesitate for a split second while I gather my thoughts. And then the door is flung open.

There's more Mogs than I expected. Maybe they heard me throw Phiri, maybe they just knew that I'd escape, like they always do. Either way.

My telekinesis is shaky as I grab ahold of the first clump of them by the door and slam them into a wall. The crunch they all make doesn't bother me as much as it should. All around, the soldiers turn to me, some pulling weapons; blasters, cannons, one even has a gleaming Soul Sword - my sword, the one I got from my father back in Ashwood. I'm expecting a real fight.

I reach out with my mind and take hold of the nearest blaster. Yanking it skywards, it impacts the soldier's skull and knocks him out clean. One whoops beside me.

The blaster comes pulling towards us when I lower my hand to my chest, its flight path across the room unblocked. As it lands in my hands, I spin it immediately and squeeze off a shot at the ceiling, collapsing some of the metal onto a group of them.

One of them manages to stay upright, however, and fires back. He hits me right in the leg and I trip and crash to the floor, but I use my momentum and mind to pull him down with me from across the room. One sneers and cheers as she witnesses it, though I can see a grimace through it. I don't have the time to wonder why. In the corner of my tunnel vision I see that my pant leg caught fire with the impact of his projectile, and it starts to smoke and pick up steam as I continue to will onwards.

The soldiers and technicians I crashed the roof on start to climb up, to try to fire back even. But I can't let them. I grab ahold of one of them and throw him so hard he crashes straight through the wall; another group tries to get up and charge me, but I yank their blasters away. Chucking two, I use the third to smack them all across the top of the head. Hopefully cracking at least a few skulls.

They deserve this. They've tried to kill you so many times. They'll see your new people dead, all eight of them buried in the ground and forgotten! They'll kill you! Without another thought I toss the rest of the Mogs, still in a pile, aside, like a broom with dust. "You can't touch me!" I scream at them as they try to turn around at me.

I level the gun and try to get the remaining Mogs, firing three glowing red shots at them before they retreat down a hallway and into the belly of the ship somewhere. No doubt for reinforcements. Shit.

I collapse from my halfway-upright position on the floor, glowering at my calf. My pant leg is pretty much out now, by some Loric miracle, but that doesn't mean it still hurts like a mother…

I groan accidentally, reaching down to clutch at it, somehow keep it from hurting. Down in the distance, shadows dance against the walls and I hear boots on metal. Now. Now. Do something now.

I throw my head back, gritting my teeth. "One… this might be it."

"Please," She mumbles through gritted teeth, but her look is of concern for once in the fight. She jogs over to peer down the hallway and jumps back. "Oh, fuck this. They're here! Get up!"

I cry louder this time, "I don't think I can! Ahh!"

Without saying a word she turns around and runs to me, disappearing in the instant she comes within a foot. I see a white light form over by where she was standing, and then…

Then I get up. I'm not moving my body on my own, that much I know. I'm just a witness, from outside somewhere as I hear One's thoughts inside my head. Alright, bucko. If you won't do it- I will.

How is that even possible? I know, after all that's happened I really shouldn't question this, just…

Oh, just shut up and watch, One mutters from somewhere inside my head.

Can't wait to see the show, I snark at her.

Funny guy, eh. She – I – jump up, completely ignoring the gnawing in my calf, and sprint at the end of the room like a jet. Right around the corner, the soldiers are readying an assault plan on my position, and don't even see me coming as I high jump kick into them from off the side of the metal wall. My foot imbeds itself into one of their skulls, ripping around in midair and crashing into another one.

I jump up and look around. Two more of them try and escape down the hallway, but One is on them in an instant, taking one flying leap across the length of the floor and tackling the first to the ground, throwing the other out a plate glass window weighted above a row of monitors displaying maps and the sort.

The one I've pinned down struggles to reach up but my hand stops him, clutching his throat and pressing into the ground until it pops.

Oh Ra, why the hell did you do that!

Just go with it. Even her thoughts are ragged and out of breath, but I don't question her. Not at all. She picks my body up and jogs over to where I was being held, a large steel door in the side of the chamber, still ajar.

One looks around, frantic. There's a corridor that leads somewhere to the far left of our field of vision and she takes it, briskly rushing through it and out the other side.

More Mogadorians wait for us there, obviously an ambush. They fire off a whole round from the five of them, but One jumps up high and grabs ahold of something on the ceiling, using our motion to pivot around and fly at the group with another jump-kick. She pulls the same motion before, embedding her foot and beating another with the one near-disembodied skull before they both collapse into a heap of dust.

Blaster still in hand, she turns on a heel and shoots with perfect accuracy, using our telekinesis to speed the three projectiles to altogether insane speeds before they ram into the Mogs. They themselves fly into and through the bulkhead.

Bad move! Fuck! One screams inside my brain, just as it becomes evident that the particular wall she used was the outer layer of the ship. She runs over to it and looks down, into the jungle below…

Wait. Except there isn't a jungle below. It's some kind of mountain range, the white-capped peaks staring back at us as the pressure difference tries to pull us out through our creepily man-shaped hole.

I can see her thoughts, her processes… as she stares down, she's calculating if we could survive the jump, if she could float us down with my TK, if she could cushion the fall with some kind of earth-ripple from our earthquake legacy, all of the above.

Wait! The vacuum!

She speaks through my mouth this time, instead of our awkwardly one sided telepathy. "Oh shit, you're right!" She contemplates it, however. "But, there have to be more Mogs on she ship somewhere. They'll be coming any second, and you know it as well as I do," Her words come out in my voice, such a strange occurrence that I hardly even notice while we try to puzzle it out.

Yeah, butWe can hold them off, see where they're going, try to… I dunno, blow up the ship?

How do you propose we do that, Adam hon? Her biting, sarcastic tone surprises me more than it should. I know she can tell, too, because the next time she speaks she's softer. I don't think I can. Your calf is killing me and worse… I just don't know.

How could we even? This isn't like a base on the ground, where I could easily destroy it with my legacy. Or- my earthquake legacy, I should say.

She's still breathing hard, rasping though her thoughts. She looks longingly at the ground before turning on a heel and rushing back to one of the monitors, trying to turn it on. Here, let me. I don't know how I do it, but I somehow push her conscientiousness to the side and take control.

The pain is like fire as I look through the files, looking for anything that will tell me what it is they're doing here. Well, use the vacuum, but what else? Wait. Why would they want to use it? If it is indeed Ra's plan to… to take over the planet, to rule over it, why would he want to suck it of its resources?

Then it hits me. He doesn't. He just doesn't. I was wondering why the vacuum looked so antique when we first saw it, down in the ground, but I simply didn't judge it all too much. Now.. He just used it as a decoy. They knew I would be on the ground there and recognize it, because of Phiri's Intel, and I would see it and panic and try to warn them.

And we would do what… attack the ship? That would be our obvious play. So why would they want to force us into attacking them? The combination of Six's storm and Seven's freeze could level it in minutes, so… why would they?

Wait…

It was mysterious, when it happened before…

When I was on the ground, when I saw those cloaked figures coming for me, firing all around me but never directly at me.

It was me they wanted.

I was their target. They wanted to provoke an attack, so that we would hopefully split up and they could find and capture me. So that I could be tortured into telling them the Garde's plans.

Well, that worked extremely well.

One intervened.

I step away from the computer, politely shutting it down in the process. Tossing a lazy glance over my shoulder to make sure that there's still no one trying to get into the room, I see the gleam of a sword laying where the Mogs awaited me. It shines in the light of the room, as if trying to grab my attention. My sword! The soldier who had it must've retreated here before getting destroyed.

I hobble to it and pick it up, dropping the blaster as I bend. Feeling its weight in my hands, seeing its light resonate over my arm- just where it should be. What was that I promised again? It will never again be used against the Loric?

Four never has to know, One thinks to me.

Please, he knows everything. I'm oddly cool after the battle, calm, almost. The soldiers come no more; their morale shattered by One's display of martial superiority that bashed half of their skulls. I bet the rest are hiding somewhere in the bowels of the ship.

Still trying to give my leg leeway, I trip my way over to the hole in the wall. It tries to pull me out through its pressure imbalance, but I grab a handhold in the form of some kind of shelf and grip it as strongly as I can; which turns out to be more than a little, because my grip almost rips the shelf off of the wall. What's happening to me? Telekinesis? The strength of an unmatched warrior?

I'll explain it later.

Oh, come on.

It's not time yet, bro. Besides, we've got bigger fish to fry. I know she means the jump I fully intend to take.

Can you get us down? I ask One.

Yep. I can float us, I can make a cushion… You know. You heard.

Well, there you go. I feel the warmth and see light shining from a random point in the room where I guess she was watching, hidden. And just like that, I'm a passenger again.

Skydiving is something I've never personally done. It's not something One's done either, and yet she is perfectly happy to do it, taking a flying leap outwards before she can think twice about it. She makes a funny shape to fit through the jigsaw puzzle-like shape in the wall, and then we're off.

The air rushes up past me, sticking all my loose clothes tight to my body, my long hair rippling backwards like it does in movies when the protagonist rides into battle on his high horse. We weren't that high to begin with, so the drop is short and before I can count to ten One has started to catch herself- myself- and begins lowering me down to the ground as easily as possible.

As we impact with an umph, I sudden shift in my core leaves me feeling cold and dry and…. I feel that I can control my limbs again… somehow. I push myself up, grunting slightly under my breath as I feel the sharp pang in my lower leg. But I ignore it, for the most part.

We're in the mountains somewhere; that much is certain. There's a town I can see in a valley a few miles to the… some direction, I'm not sure which.

"That's west, excuse you," One saunters up from behind me somewhere, looking beat after our fight. She still smiles, though.

"Fine. The town to the west, are you happy?"

"Always and never, dude. Always and never."

"Gee, thanks."

She shakes her head. "It's not you! It's just… the situation," I can see her thoughts like I know she can see mine, and I can see how carefully she chooses her words here.

I thrust my hands into my pockets, ignoring the constant pain in my index finger for just a moment to take in the scenery. It couldn't be more beautiful here; The rolling hills turning into mountains behind us somewhere, capping their snowy caps far away in the distance. The town to the west and the small stream that runs between here and there, all picturesque.

And of course, there's the warship. From my vantage point, it's not as big as it was when I first saw it It hovers on some kind of levitation/jet engine combination, little streams of heated air making the space below it heat up and vibrate slightly. It's maybe as big as a medium-sized house, the fake Vacuum retracted to the side of the structure.

It's small enough, now that I think about it, that I might have killed its entire crew. I always expected more soldiers to come swarming from somewhere, always framed my thoughts around it being manned by hundreds. Just… I suppose it's not quite so.

I pull my left hand out of my pocket and gaze at it questioningly; my finger is indeed gone. I should have kept it, maybe Seven or John could have healed it back on or something.

But then again, it is a battle scar of sorts. That and the welt on my leg… I'm just ripe for scars today.

One walks up and in front of me and starts down the mountain, headed towards the stream and eventually, the town. "Yeah, yeah, scars. Scars are sexy, but you know what's sexier? Being a-live for a little longer. Right?"

I sigh and nod, mostly just glad she's back after so long. "Yup. A-live."

I follow her downwards, watching the rocks below my feet, watching the sunset, watching her, watching the town. I'm not sure if it could be more perfect here.

Too bad I know it will never stay that way.