A/N: Salvete! (Because Latin is the only language besides English that I could be considered competent in, and I am running out of original greetings. :P) Chapter 9 hath arrived—and I know y'all have been fretting incessantly about Arty's fate. ;) (She thanks you for your consideration. And have you read the chapter title? :D)
I think I had an inordinate amount of fun writing this, although it did make me rather sad. Also falling into the category of inordinateness (which is, I must say, an exceedingly awkward-sounding word, but that's the English language for you) is the amount of (completely unjustified) pride I have in some of this while I was writing it, especially that little short bit bracketed between line breaks down there. :D And then I went back and was like, "This is pretentiously ostentatious, unnecessarily metaphysical claptrap. *headdesk*"
...Although this is no doubt of stunningly little interest to you, so let's move on, shall we? This chapter is long, you'll no doubt be happy to hear, if rather lacking in plot developments... :P
Aaaaaand of course the guest reviews! :D Two of them, in fact, but I shall ignore you and your laziness, Stronger-Than-Fear. ;) I'll get around to PMing you... eventually. I'm so lazy... urgh.
China aru: THERE YOU ARE! HAH! YOU ARE READING! Y'all, meet my friend China, who shall be joining us later on in a Certain Capacity and who has an ACTUAL account but is APPARENTLY too lazy/paranoid to REVIEW from it and keep my A/Ns SHORT. :P (Let me also assure you that the usage of "aru" EIGHT TIMES in three paragraphs was also intentional, for reasons best known to Hetalia fans.) *bows* I appreciate your appreciation of the awesomeness of this story, my dear, dear reviewers, this fandom, and... general awesomeness? XD Thanks anyway, though. And for the definitely-superbly-awesome-and-effective promotion, too, of course. XP It's the thought that counts. And, well, it's a bit redundant now, but... yeah. VERY soon. XD
DISCLAIMER: I am not Scott Westerfeld and therefore do not own any of this. Well, except Arty, and she's inferior to the canon characters anyway. Plus, that's only if I didn't kill her off! :D
The Leviathan reached Wormwood Scrubs an hour late, and, thanks to the pounding rain, the landing took twice as long as normal, the drenched ground men taking special care with the airship's lashings.
Deryn had, of course, reported the Huxley accident via message lizard to the bridge as soon as possible, although she hadn't got anything back besides a simple acknowledgement.
She dropped off Newkirk at sick bay, since he wouldn't stop shivering and crying and didn't respond to even his name. After she briefly explained what had happened, Dr. Busk sighed and mumbled something about shock and "time's the only thing for it." Last Deryn saw of Newkirk—Eugene, now, she reckoned, though that seemed barking odd—he was sitting on the edge of a cot, staring into a cup of tea, while Dr. Busk attempted to keep alive a decidedly one-sided conversation.
Heading into the corridor, Deryn leaned against one of the walls, staring off into the glowworm-lit distance, and sighed. Thank God she'd never had to stay in there herself. Just being in the room, seeing the equipment and the beds often filled with a half-stripped man or two, made her pure dead terrified.
And now she never would.
Pushing herself off the wall, she headed purposefully down the corridor, her eyes taking everything in as they had when she had first come aboard this ship—this marvel. The gently squirming glowworms in the walls, the carpet, even the outlines of the fabricated balsa doors—they were all as familiar to her as her own rough hands or Alek's green eyes.
Except she wasn't about to leave either of those things behind her in a few short hours.
Deryn had revisited a lot of the ship over the past few nights—the rookery where she'd very nearly told Alek her secret. The engine pods where he'd made good the ship's escape and—almost—dodged a bullet. The fléchette bat coves where Deryn had almost fallen to her death. The empty storerooms belowdecks where she'd uncovered a film canister in a barrel of sugar. The posh corridors of the gondola where she'd walked Tazza countless times. The lizard room where she'd caught Alek snooping. The navigator's bubble where she'd told him the story of her da's death. The aft wheelhouse where they'd paused in the storm. The machine room where they'd spent blistering hot hours stewing over the loris eggs. The ratlines where she'd struggled and shone. She'd even taken Alek topside and stolen one last kiss under the star-strewn sky.
That left one place—the place Deryn had always felt, if not freed by the sky, then awed by the power of the massive beast that lifted her there.
The gut.
Right now, Deryn didn't know where Alek and Bovril were, and she didn't care. She wanted to be alone for this.
She sat cross-legged on the aluminum walkway near the bee hives, where Dr. Barlow had missed her secret by a squick, and cried silently for the first and last time in the warm darkness at the living heart of the beastie. Once her wellspring of tears had dried, she blew a single shivery note on her command whistle.
The glowworms began along the ridges and bumps of the beastie's spine, slowly, ever so slowly, creeping their living green light along the lofting arches of the ribs and the soft curves of the hydrogen sacs, gleaming along the cross-ties leading up to the starboard engine pod hatch, pooling gentle light down into the digestive tract itself.
Deryn sat in silence, her face tilting up, her heart filling with the sort of awe she reckoned most people only ever felt in the kirk. She flattened her palms against the walkway and took a deep breath, seeing Leviathan, feeling Leviathan, smelling Leviathan, breathing Leviathan—she even swore she could hear the steady, powerful th-thump, th-thump of its great heart.
Silently, reverentially, she rose to her feet and whispered a last, tiny goodbye into the echoing depths of where she felt sure the beastie would hear her best.
When Deryn returned to her cabin for the last time, face carefully arranged like stone and all signs of tears impatiently scrubbed away, she found a message lizard waiting for her.
"Mr. Sharp?" it squawked in the captain's voice. Deryn nodded and saluted automatically, although of course gesturing to message lizards was pure dead useless.
"Please pack your kit and come to the bridge in full-dress as soon as possible," continued the lizard. "Your, ah, send-off will be in fifteen minutes. Leave your bag on your bed—someone will take it down for you."
The lizard stopped, cocking its head. Deryn cleared her throat and said, soft and low and careful, "Thank you, sir. I'll be up directly. End message."
The lizard scurried off into its brass pipe, and Deryn turned to her tiny closet with a sigh. First thing was to get out of these sodden clothes—she wanted everyone's last impression of Middy Sharp to be of a fresh-faced young boy, neat and eager to do his duty by his country.
She stripped completely, peeling off even her dripping skivvies, and redressed herself in her dress uniform, giving her shiny boots a halfhearted scrub with a handkerchief and adjusting her silk bow tie. The cotton of the Japanese shirt was just as soft as she remembered, and she stood for a moment with her arms wrapped around herself, lost in memories of an autumn day spent on the busy streets of Tokyo with a serious and uncomfortable boy, before giving herself a wee shake and pinning her Air Gallantry Cross over her heart.
Deryn, after a moment's consideration, hung her wet flight suit in the closet, first pulling out her goggles, gloves, and scarf from its pockets. The flight suit was Air Service issue, after all, whereas she had bought her spare uniforms herself in Paris. She wrapped her skivvies—they'd been carefully shoved in the back of a drawer—in her wet uniform and stuffed it to the bottom of her kit bag, along with her two pairs of boots. On top of this went her only civilian clothes, the shirt and pants she'd been wearing when she'd inadvertently boarded the Leviathan and the bright silk Ottoman clothes she'd worn the night of the revolution, and finally her spare uniforms—a jacket, three shirts, three pairs of trousers, a spare tie, and a pair of suspenders.
The bag closed with room to spare, and Deryn filled its side pockets with a few small middy items—her boot polish, rigging knife, watch, command whistle, worn copy of the Manual of Aeronautics, and, after weighing it in her hand for a squick, her unused razor and brown lump of Air Service soap. Last went her scanty yet precious personal items—her two sketchpads, one purchased in Paris and one in Istanbul, her handful of pencils, her career-saving sewing kit, and the slightly worn twin to the medal gleaming on her chest.
Peering into the tiny, tarnished, and water-spotted mirror hanging above her desk for the final time, Deryn gelled and combed back her hair as neatly as she could. Giving the mirror a final, unceremonial swipe with the edge of her posh sleeve, she tossed her comb and gel into the bag and stood hefting it for a squick.
It was awful light for something that held the physical necessities of her laugher, trials, and tears for the past six barking months.
Quickly and efficiently she stripped her sheets and folded them neatly on the floor. She made the blankets how she'd been taught—tight enough to bounce a shilling off of and with right-angle corners—and stood for a beat looking at the bed that had held her countless times as she'd shivered and tried not to cry, scairt and shaken after another barking nightmare.
Then she turned, dropping her bag dead center on the bed and closing the door firmly behind her without a second glance.
She'd never been one for sentimentality, after all.
Turning forward again, Deryn nearly ran headlong into Alek, who'd been lurking in the hallway, instead managing to trip over one or the other of their feet and nearly knock him over. He caught her by the shoulders and steadied her.
"Barking spiders, Alek, you shouldn't sodding skulk like that! I didn't see you there!" she yelped, wincing as she heard her voice squeak. What was it about Alek that always made her lose control?
"Barking spiders!" echoed Bovril's wee voice from inside Alek's shirt. The beastie poked its head out of his collar, blinking its large eyes.
Alek's hands lingered a wee bit too long on her shoulders. "You're heavier than you look," he said unnecessarily, releasing her reluctantly, no doubt mindful of the publicity of the hallway.
Deryn blinked. "Thank... you?" she said uncertainly, smiling against her will.
Alek cleared his throat. "Anyway."
"Anyway?" she prompted.
"I came to, ah, see you off," he said, shrugging and straightening the fabric of his tunic, much to Bovril's chagrin—he was wearing Volger's repurposed blue and red Hapsburg Cavalry uniform, the one he'd had modified in Tokyo.
Deryn raised an eyebrow at it. "In full poshness, I see."
Alek cleared his throat. "Well, it is a formal ceremony, of sorts. And it would be odd if I showed up in my mechanic's clothes or one of my dinner jackets." Smiling, he clapped her on the shoulder, then dropped his hand, unobtrusively brushing her fingertips against his own. "You look better than I, anyway."
She gave him a warning look—just because the hallway was empty now didn't mean it would stay that way, as she'd learned from experience—but couldn't suppress a crooked smile. "Aye, I know," she said cheerfully, drawing on her boy's swagger even now.
"Dead gorgeous," Bovril opined, crawling to Alek's shoulder and waving a wee arm.
"We should really get to the bridge," offered Alek. "We're nearly late already."
Deryn grinned. "We've a few minutes—" she began, her earlier caution thrown to the winds.
"No," he said firmly, coloring a bit.
Her smile widened—she was finding that she quite enjoyed being a bad influence, if only because Alek's reactions were so barking hilarious. "After you, then," she said courteously, dropping into an extravagant bow and sweeping her braid-adorned arm in front of her.
Alek snorted but started walking. "Aren't we past all that? I am a simple commoner now."
She followed, not even having to lengthen her stride to overtake him. "No, your ex-princeliness. Not on your barking life. How am I supposed to pass up that much brilliant stuff to tease you about?"
He gave her a playful sideways look. "I don't suppose you could exercise any restraint at any time?"
"No," Bovril said definitively, snickering, and that was that.
Deryn smiled, redoubling her pace. Alek kept up doggedly—he'd never been quite as fast as she was, but you had to give him credit for trying, Deryn reckoned.
Deryn had, originally, wondered why the captain was holding her ceremony on the bridge instead of in the navigation room, or maybe in the cargo bay where they'd given Alek his medal, if he wanted to be barking formal about it.
Now, however, she had more of a notion. What she reckoned to be the entire company of the ship's officers, plus the bosun, the master rigger, and the master coxswain, who weren't commissioned, and all the boffins lined the curving walls of the bridge, the massive, usually sun-filled windows behind them spattered and streaked with teardrops of rain.
As Deryn stood, gaping just a wee bit at the turnout, the lady boffin caught her by the arm and whispered quickly, "I thought you'd like to know—they've picked up Miss Black. She's waiting for us down at the hotel—hypothermia, poor dear—"
The captain cleared his throat, turning from the wheel, a document clutched in his gloved hand. "Midshipman Sharp," he said formally.
Deryn crossed to stand in front of him, giving the lady boffin a tiny nod, then braced to attention and gave her best salute. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Alek take his place at the end of the line of men, Bovril sitting tall on his shoulder. "Captain Hobbes, sir," she said, but her mind was on what Dr. Barlow had just told her.
Hypothermia could be bad, if the case was serious enough. Very bad. People died from exposure, in fact. But Arty hadn't been in the air all that long, from the sound of it. And it wasn't cold enough for her to have been frostbitten, hopefully. Besides, if she weren't all right, they would've taken her to the hospital instead of to the hotel Dr. Barlow had mentioned. She was a tough lassie. She'd be fine.
With difficulty—she couldn't help but blame herself for the accident, even if it was just that, accidental—Deryn put Arty out of her mind and focused on the situation at hand.
"Mr. Sharp," the captain was saying stiffly, "you recently submitted a letter containing your resignation, correct?"
Deryn nodded, although she hadn't, technically—Dr. Barlow had handled that end of things. Apparently, officers—including midshipmen—were allowed to submit a resignation and receive an honorable discharge, so long as the Admiralty approved it. And since Dr. Barlow evidently had the Admiralty in the palm of her hand—Deryn half reckoned they were just dead frightened of her—Deryn's resignation had been entirely handled by her. Without any issues, apparently.
The captain held out the paper he was clutching with a flourish. "I am proud to inform you that the Admiralty has accepted your resignation. They also wish for me to confer that they are sorry to lose such a 'distinguished young midshipman'—in the words of Admiral Churchill himself—and wish you success in your, ah, new employment."
Deryn took the paper from him, glancing at it once—she could do without the barking extra reminder of her leaving the Air Service, thank you very much. It did indeed have 'Honourable Discharge' emblazoned across the top. "Thank you, sir," she said, keeping a straight face despite the compliment. Someone up there was reinforcing the earlier statement they had made with the medal—that she was barking good at her job.
Deryn braced to attention yet again as the captain reached out and slowly, ceremoniously, unpinned the middy's pips on the lapels of her jacket. His light eyes were guileless as he did so, completely free of any doubt about Deryn even at this close range, and she marvelled again at how she'd tricked the entire Service—her officers, the Admiralty, even Mr. Rigby and barking Newkirk. They weren't doing their job very well, and she wondered briefly if some other patriotic lassies had crept in as well.
It hardly mattered, now—she was permanently out of reach of military authority—but she was suddenly fervently glad that her secret had remained one and silently wished luck to any other girls who might want to pull this particular trick.
"Mr. Sharp," Captain Hobbes said loudly, dropping her pins into her upheld, gloved palm, "you are now officially no longer a midshipman in His Majesty's Air Service and are henceforth under civilian authority and subject to civilian law." The assembled officers made a noise that was not quite a cheer or a groan but managed to express congratulations and sadness at the same time. The captain lowered his voice and put a fatherly hand on Deryn's shoulder. She very nearly stiffened in surprise, instead convulsively curling her hand around the pins. "And, Mr. Sharp, I'd like you to know that I endorse Admiral Churchill's statement wholeheartedly. From my own observations and the reports of the crew, I can honestly say that you have a genuine skill and self-possession rarely found in boys your age. You would have made an excellent officer. I am sorry to see you go."
Deryn snapped her crispest salute but couldn't stop an enormous grin from creeping onto her face. Again, the amount of responsibility the captain had given her had indicated his opinion of her, but it was barking nice to be complimented directly like this. And if only he knew exactly who he was complimenting! "Thank you, sir," she said again, then impulsively added, "I'm sorry to go too. I'll miss the Leviathan."
The captain smiled again, giving her one last clap on the shoulder. "I'm sure you will, lad. And it was a pleasure having you aboard. If you'll excuse me, I must say good-bye to Dr. Barlow and Prin—Mr. Hohenberg. I'm sure you'd like to give your regards to the crew as well."
"Aye, sir," she said, but he was already gone.
Deryn barely had a chance to look around and wonder who, exactly, she was supposed to be presenting with her "regards" before the head boffin came up from behind her and shook her hand.
"Hello, Mr. Sharp," Dr. Busk said, smiling. "I hear that you're going to work with Dr. Barlow at the London Zoological Society?"
"Aye, sir," she said, giving him a speculative look. She hadn't gotten the impression that Dr. Barlow talked with him much—more than she talked to the captain, since she was technically his colleague, but still—and she only would have told him that if she'd thought it would be useful to her later. The question was whether or not it would be useful to Deryn.
"Excellent institution," said Dr. Busk, beginning to grin. "Some really excellent fabrications, many of which are made by the doctor herself. Mr. Hohenberg's loris is an excellent example—clever little thing, you know, although I don't see much use in it, personally."
"Aye, sir, me neither," she said, although that was a wee bit of a lie.
The boffin laughed. "Anyway, I hope you'll perhaps become a fabricator yourself, lad. I still remember how interested you were in my lectures—not at all like that Mr. Newkirk," he added in disgust. "It's a wide-open field, indeed, and you can make quite a difference."
"I'd like that, being a fabricator," Deryn said, although she wasn't sure. She reckoned that her job for the Society would be more spying and less science, at least for the meantime. But Dr. Busk didn't need to know that.
The head boffin smiled again. "Perhaps I'll see you again, then," he said. "All of us fabricators know each other very well—collaboration and such."
"Aye, sir," Deryn said, trying to fade back into the crowd as unobtrusively as possible. "Thank you. Good-bye."
"And, Mr. Sharp," Dr. Busk called—in lieu of a good-bye—as she retreated, "don't forget that knee of yours! Don't put too much stress on it, especially in damp weather, and use a cane if it starts aching again! I've told Dr. Barlow to keep an eye on you!"
Deryn pretended not to hear him over the quiet chatter of the officer-filled bridge, not bothering to restrain herself from rolling her eyes—bloody doctors, always so fussy and timid. Soldiers knew better. Sometimes, as her da would say, you just had to shake it off and get back up on the horse.
Not that Deryn had a barking horse, or was much of a soldier anymore. She clenched her teeth against the unwelcome reminder and waved to Mr. Rigby, who she could half see through the crowd. He waved back and began making his way towards her. He looked uncomfortable and out-of-place in his fancy-boots dress uniform, she noted, obviously sorely missing his usual flight suit—that thing was like an extension of his body, he wore it so much, Deryn reckoned.
"Hullo, Sharp," he said, following the captain's example and clapping her on the shoulder. Deryn wondered, briefly, what it was with middle-aged men and shoulder-slapping as a good-bye. She herself gave Newkirk and Alek a whap or two occasionally—Alek more so than Newkirk, as it was a perfectly legitimate excuse to touch him—but this was getting barking creepy, just a bit.
"Hello, sir," she said, then cleared her throat, as it had come out dangerously girly. "Fancy seeing you here."
The bosun smiled. "The captain invited me specially," he said proudly, puffing out his chest a wee bit. "He knows that I've taken... an eye to you, as it were, and that I'd like to see you off proper."
"Sir?" An eye? What in blazes was that supposed to mean?
Mr. Rigby lowered his voice confidentially. "I wouldn't normally say this, Sharp, but you've got air sense good and proper, such as I've never seen in a lad your age. And I still haven't forgotten your saving my life over the bloody Alps. I'll be dead sorry to see you go." Unlike when the captain had said it, his sorrow actually sounded sincere—not flat and pale as the paper it was read off of, but colored with real regret.
"Thank—thank you, sir." Was she barking tearing up? Blisters, but she hated goodbyes—always had. Everyone always got all mushy, as did she, no matter how hard she tried to avoid it—just look at the bosun, complimenting her air sense and bloody thanking her when he'd normally be chewing her out for being a "useless, lazy, skylarking sod."
Mr. Rigby sighed. "Now that you're leaving, I'll have to manage with sodding Newkirk. Ach, well, at least we'll be picking up new middies in London, though they'll be as wet behind the ears as the barking ocean—literally," he added, looking behind Deryn to the soaked airfield beyond the bridge windows. "Where was it you said you were going to work, lad?"
"For the lady boffin—with the London Zoological Society and the beasties," Deryn replied, compulsively straightening her bow tie as she thought of Dr. Barlow—the boffin always insisted she look "smart," and she shuddered to think what, exactly, she'd make her do if she managed to stuff her in a dress somehow. A "smart" dress uniform was barking uncomfortable enough already.
The bosun raised an eyebrow. "I didn't know you liked her that much," he said slowly, looking Deryn up and down. She stiffened uncomfortably. "In fact, I thought you barking hated her."
"Well, sir, it's a chance to work with the beasties," Deryn blethered, aware that her explanation made absolutely no sense whatsoever, and paused, pondering how to phrase this next bit. She couldn't bloody well say "because of Alek," now could she? "And... personal reasons, as well." There. Nice and vague, and private-sounding enough that Mr. Rigby wouldn't dare pry. "But, no, I'm not that fond of Dr. Barlow," she added, dropping her voice in automatic paranoia. Dr. Barlow's loris had developed a nasty habit of lurking behind or under things and then repeating incriminating squicks of conversation back to its mistress—well, in its defense, Bovril wasn't much better, Deryn mentally amended. And you never quite knew at what time Dr. Barlow herself would appear silently behind you.
The bosun laughed silently. "Well-phrased, lad," he said softly, and then, even lower, "Is there a way that we could... keep in touch, Sharp? I'd like—well, like I said, I'd like to keep an eye on you." He looked down and shuffled his feet.
"Well, sir," Deryn said slowly, pondering how to go about this as cautiously as possible, "my br-cousin, Jaspert Sharp, is still in the Service. He's a coxswain on the Minotaur, in fact. You could look him up and ask him about me—he'd probably know best where I was at any given time."
"Thank you, Sharp—Dylan," he said sincerely, shaking Deryn's hand vigorously. She tried to squeeze back as firmly as possible. "I'll do that. Meantime, take care."
"Take care, sir," she said, so soft she could barely hear herself, and the bosun was swept away by the crowd almost instantly.
Into the breach swept the lady boffin, her loris perched haughtily on her shoulder and Alek trailing behind like a decorative dog being dragged by the leash through a posh walk in Regent's Park, Bovril clinging to his jacket front.
Dr. Barlow sniffed. "Well, Mr. Sharp, it's high time we were leaving," she said, her voice slightly edged with something akin to sympathy.
Deryn scowled—she didn't want anyone's barking pity!—and Alek put a lightning-fast restraining hand on her arm. She flashed him a smile, quickly brushing the place where his hand had been with her own—she swore she could feel the electricity of his touch, even through her stiff, posh dress jacket.
"We'll just pick up the luggage, and then we'll be off," continued Dr. Barlow, watching them with amusement. Deryn ignored her. "They are expecting us at the hotel quite soon."
Deryn turned on her heel, giving the bridge one last lingering look—it helped the ache in her chest that her primary memories of this room were of bombing Wasserwanderern and listening to Dr. Barlow discourse on champagne bubbles—and fell into step with Alek as they followed the lady boffin and her loris out for the final time.
PSYCH! Not an obituary for Arty! An obituary (of sorts) for the poor Leviathan! :D
Well, you know, not REALLY an obituary. (More of a good-bye tribute, actually.) It just felt that way when I was writing it, so I decided to name this chapter that and give y'all a good scare. ;)
Good-byes are sad :( I hope I did everybody justice, though, our favorite war whale included ;)
And yes, I managed to squish a little bit of fluff in there for y'all. AREN'T YOU PROUD OF ME? ;D I swear to God, my subconscious has this compulsive urge to stuff fluff into EVERY SINGLE CHAPTER, and it is succeeding, terrifyingly so. XD
I spent at LEAST an hour with a pen and a piece of paper, trying to figure out what, exactly, Deryn might own. She ditched London and Istanbul rather suddenly, so obviously not a whole lot, but I let the specifics drive me crazy for a while. :D I'm just obsessive like that. And now I know! My life has been vastly improved.
Just so you know, never having been discharged from the British Air Service, I therefore know nothing about how such a ceremony might be conducted and therefore made it all up. It IS true that, in the Royal Navy, officers are allowed to resign their commission, if first approved by the Admiralty Board and if it occurs under extenuating circumstances. I have no idea about the RAF, but the Leviathan Air Service seems to be more closely based on the Royal Navy in structure, with the Admiralty serving as an example of this, so I decided just to go with it. :D (For those of you who have not spent hours reading about the British Armed Forces/founding of various nations' air forces out of obsessive curiosity, there was indeed no such thing as the British Air Service in WWI. There was the Royal Flying Corps, the airborne branch of the British Army, founded in 1912 and consisting, at the beginning of the war, of a pathetic five squadrons, four of aeroplanes and one of balloons, used solely for observational purposes. [Darwinism, it would seem, has done great and glorious things for the progression of aerial warfare.] And then there was the Royal Naval Air Service, which was [surprise] the flying branch of the Royal Navy. It was much more boss, did awesomer stuff, was larger, and actually had airships. :D This appears to be what the "Air Service" is based off of. Actually, it was the "Naval Wing" of the RFC from 1914 to 1915, when it split off and became a separate entity, only to refuse with the RFC in 1918 to become the RAF we know today. [Fun fact: The RAF is the oldest independent air force in the world. Well done, British government! Way to be progressive!])
ANYWAY, yeah, that pretty much concludes this chapter's epic A/N. :D Last chapter earned me a WONDERFUL, WONDERFUL, WONDERFUL ten reviews! (One of them was in a PM, in case you were doubting my addition skills, such as they are. ;) ) TEN! There's nowhere to go but up! So I shall wrap up with my never-ending refrain of REVIEW!
