A/N: Hey, this is going to be my last update until Sunday. I'm going to be out of town until then, and it's going to be hard to fit in enough writing. With luck, this chapter will be enough to keep you on the edge of your seat!

Chapter 25: The Zeppelin

Will's Perspective.

The elevator opened and we were greeted by the sounds of a firefight again. You know, I'm noticing we get less and less break time. Booker and I hopped out with guns at the ready; Sally only had four rounds left in her, though, so I needed to find a way to fight without ammo until I got more. I contemplated vigors, but none of the ones I had would be particularly effective.

The Vox Populi were on one side of the bridge we had come across before, where I'd had a rather not-fun run-in with a Volley gunner. On the other side were their opponents, Fink's elite Founder force, which wasn't doing very well. They did have a sniper up on the bridge, which I pointed out. "Look out for that guy up there with the rifle," I said, rather nonchalantly. "Let's take cover in the ticket booth."

Booker too my suggestion and in we went, weapons at the ready. There was a Vox soldier standing inside, but he offered no opposition and only support. He pointed out a weapons cache at the back of the room, which Booker and I looked at immediately, memories running through our heads. The vigor. It was still sitting there, surrounded by ammo of all sorts, the bottle unscathed. Booker started to step towards it, but I grabbed him by the shoulder. "Ah-ah-ah," I said, grinning. "I won the first time, and thus, this bottle's mine." I pushed past him and ignored his complaints, taking the bottle and downing it and tasting the bitter liquid I'd grown familiar with through the salts.

I dropped it to the ground and felt the sensation in my hands, though this time it wasn't quite as painful as it usually was. They were being enveloped by a thin layer of mist, getting whipped around by what looked like miniature tornadoes. I heard the sounds of charging rams in the back of my head from a source that couldn't be identified, and before I knew it the feeling was over and I had a new toy to play with.

I pulled out my knife and put my other hand on Sally, taking a few steps outside. Time to give this new toy a try, I thought, before activating it in the natural process that became present as soon as you consumed the drink. I felt myself being enveloped by wind, and before I knew it, I was launched towards the nearest Founder, wrapped in a hurricane. I involuntarily drove my knife through his neck and watched as the life left his eyes, his head lolling to the side. I felt my physical form returning to normal as I dropped back to the ground and his body slid from the blade. I was in the middle of the bridge now, right in the middle of all the Founder forces.

I smirked. I have a new favorite toy. I activated it again and wrapped myself in wind, before flying towards the nearest person. The hurricanes I left behind hurled other Founders around, so none of them could successfully attack anybody else. I could tell the Vox around me were rather enthused by the display; they were screaming and shouting and firing into the crowd with grins on their faces. I couldn't tell what Booker, or anyone else was doing, for the most part, completely absorbed in the task at hand. I crouched down and prepared to charge up once again, but nothing happened.

Oh, right. Salts.

I wasn't an unstoppable force enveloped in the power of the wind anymore. In fact, I was more vulnerable than I'd ever been; stranded in the middle of their forces with little help, no salts, and four bullets. I broke into a run and started towards the other side of the bridge, causing the morale of the Founders to skyrocket. "He's running! Get him!" shouted one, with a thick accent. I felt bullets whizzing past me and more ramming into the magnetic field that surrounded me. I was barely saved by the large brass pipe I dived behind just as the shield shattered. I swear a bullet flew right where my head had been just a few moments ago.

I took a moment to breathe and collect myself, observing the battlefield around me. The Vox were still certainly going to win this battle, and there was no doubt of that; they had Booker and me with them, not to mention there were five Founders for our twenty Vox. It was certain victory, and all I had to do was wait. So wait I did. I sat behind the pipe and stared out as the battle progressed, watching as our forces - including Booker - slaughtered everyone on the other side, screaming gleefully. Booker loaded a shotgun slug into the last Founder's back, and a cry went up around the Vox, praising him entirely. Why does everyone fail to realize I exist?

I stood up and dusted myself off, straightening my hat. Lucy and Elizabeth had now joined Booker, and it was just up to me to catch up. It felt nice to be able to fight without a migraine afterwards, I won't lie, but I was still pretty beat. That vigor was incredibly useful, though it couldn't be overused. Elizabeth crossed her arms as I walked towards her. "That was reckless," she said.

I shrugged. "Didn't have much of a choice. No guns, nothin' else too useful. It helped, didn't it?"

She groaned as we continued into the cargo loading and unloading room. Booker pulled the lever again, setting the crates in motion. "It just bothers me that you don't even care about it. You risk your life more than any of the rest of us, and you're so careless, but it doesn't even bother you. You've almost died countless times, but it never phases you. I have no idea how you do it. . ."

I tilted my head slightly. "I never really looked at it as risking my life carelessly. It's my job. Someone has to do it. Might as well be me, right?"

"Why might it as well be you?" Booker and Lucy observed the conversation silently, making the wise decision. "It's not like you don't have any purpose, and people would care if you went missing."

I shrugged. "Wouldn't have come up here if I was afraid of death, little miss. I've done things that no amount of life-risking can account for, believe it or not, but I still have to try." I stared at the far wall and waited for the crates to finish moving, letting us get out. Just a bit more. . .

"You may think that, but the fact is, you're important now. To me. So you have to stay alive. I won't let you do anything else. Now stop being so stupid," she said, before crossing her arms and turning away from me. "We've got to get moving," she said, before walking out of the unloading dock without the rest of us.

I looked at Booker. "What was that about?"

He shrugged. "Got me."

The Plaza was completely deserted. It looked almost as we left it; the gore was all still there, even if we were in an alternate dimension. I guess there were things that never changed and remained the same, even if put there under a different circumstance. This dimensional thing warrants some explanation.

We opened the door to Chen Lin's reception area, but were greeted by an entirely different sight than the usually-deserted room; we saw Chen Lin and his wife - still the white one - murdered brutally on the floor, just as tortured and maimed as he'd been in the other world, or perhaps even more. The room was coated with blood, and to be honest, it looked like . . . the Vox's work. "No!" shouted Elizabeth. "They're dead!"

I gritted my teeth, trying to remain nonchalant in the face of this brutality. "There's nothing we can do about it. . ."

Booker patted Elizabeth's shoulder and stared down at the bodies. "Come on. Let's go get that airship."

The Vox had amassed outside the door to the factory, all arriving while we examined the scene inside. They were cutting the lock with a welding tool; one that Elizabeth could probably pick, for that matter. The process was excruciatingly long. I tapped my foot and checked my pocket watch, before taking notice of something. The front of my watch was completely coated in blood. My blood, from all the wounds I'd suffered throughout this trip. My jacket was dyed with it as well, and I didn't want to see what my undershirt looked like.

The door finally came open, revealing the infiltration crew from the Vox. In the middle of the room there were some dead factory workers, piled up in the middle of a pool of water. They were all strangled and beaten to death, not shot; there were no bullet wounds. Their faces and bodies were bruised, and most of them had red marks around their necks where they'd been choked. Normally I'd cringe at such a sight, but as of late I'd been doing worse. The door on the opposite side of the room which connected this bridge to the factory was locked as well, and they set about burning through it now. Part of me wanted to ask Elizabeth to show them how it was done, but upon seeing her facial expression, I opted to wait a while and get prepared.

I felt a prod on my shoulder and turned around to see Elizabeth, barely mustering an obviously-fake smile. She held up a crate of ammunition. "For Sally," she said. "It should be enough to at least keep you safe, right?"

I smiled at her. "Of course it will. Thanks," I said, taking it and loading some of it into Sally. The rest of it went in various cartridges around my suit, ready for loading whenever Sally needed it.

The door was slowly getting cut through, and when it finally burst open, I think any morale the Vox might have had jumped out a window or something. The factory was far away, across a bridge that only offered low rising sections of it for cover, and their side was completely covered with their forces. They had two turrets set up; not regulation turrets, though. These ones fired rockets. Giant rockets that could easily wipe out five men at once. There were already blood puddles from where Vox Populi had tried and failed. Apart from those, there were two motorized Patriots guarding the staircase into the Factory, and Founders were jumping off the skylines left and right, armed with weapons ranging from basic pistols to complex rocket launchers.

I grasped Sally anxiously and rushed forwards, taking cover behind one of the low rising sections of the bridge. Elizabeth crouched next to me and Lucy and Booker took one slightly across from us. Most of the Vox rushed past us, only a few with ranged weapons remaining behind. I leaned forward and started to fire at people with Sally, but the rockets put too much pressure on for us to get out with much wiggle room. "Lucy!" I shouted, blindly firing around the corner with Sally. I heard a sound distinctly like a head exploding, so that was probably a good sign. "If I can cut you a path through the field, think you can get those turrets on our side?"

She nodded. "It'll be easy as cake, as long as I don't get shot while doing it. Think you can manage it?"

I stood up and pulled my knife out of its scabbard, holding Sally in the other hand. "Just leave it to m-" Elizabeth grabbed me and pulled me back down into cover before I could finish.

"Will, you promised you wouldn't do anything stupid anymore!"

"Uh. . ." Did I really say that? "This isn't stupid, it's necessary!" I broke free from her grip and stood up once more, vaulting over our small cover, despite her protests. Sally and I spilled blood all over the field, leaving large puddles of it underneath corpses. The forces weren't getting cut through as easily as they should have been, though. And it was all because the Vox couldn't deal with the turrets. Rockets can put quite a bit of pressure on, I suppose. I used Charge to get closer to the rocket-soldier standing next to one of the turrets and jabbed my knife into his throat, life fading from him. That was a load of work put off. "Lucy," I shouted across the battlefield, "Get a move on!"

She started to rush forwards with Booker behind her, him handling any soldiers she couldn't. I vaulted over the fence and ran back to where Elizabeth was taking cover, ignoring any rockets that whizzed past my head or exploded behind me, knocking me off balance. I pulled my rifle off my back and was about to look into the scope when I noticed Elizabeth staring at me with a cross expression. I shrugged at her. "What?" I asked. She simply ignored me and moved up, looking for supplies. I shrugged and stared through the scope, thinning the ranks behind the turrets.

I saw the red light above the rocket turret turn to a bright green and observed as it slowly began to rotate, firing on Founders instead of Vox. I internally celebrated while firing off the heads of Founders behind enemy lines, watching as she repeated the process with the second one. The battle was turning in our favor now that we had automated rockets doing all of our work for us; the Patriots were quickly eliminated, now piles of scrap metal, and the Vox charged forwards and handled any soldiers that had sheltered at the top of the stairs. "Victory is ours!" A chorus raised around us, raising their guns in a celebratory fashion.

As usual, they started cutting down the doors to open the lock. They were getting there when a large air-horn sounded off from our rights, and we all turned to see what the source of it was. As luck would have it, a giant, white, Founder-operated Zeppelin with rockets shooting out of every pore was staring over us, firing down into the crowd. The man operating the blow torch was killed, and everyone who survived or wasn't injured immediately jumped into cover. "They can't open it if we're getting fired upon!" shouted Booker.

"What do you propose we do?" asked Elizabeth.

"I've got an idea!" I shouted, before breaking into a sprint towards the Skyline. I heard Elizabeth shouting protest behind me, but I didn't have time to listen; my sky-hook hooked onto the line, and I was sailing towards it rather quickly. Booker jumped on behind me and I turned to face him, reloading Sally. "So," I shouted, "What do you propose we do?"

"I say we take the engine out and get the hell off that thing before it takes our heads - and everything else - off." I nodded in agreement and listened to the wind as we whisked through buildings, waiting until we were above the Zeppelin. My opportunity came just as we rounded some giant clock tower and the deck was directly below us. The whole thing was swamped with soldiers, though, who were using ropes to descend from the ship to attack the Vox. I jumped off the skyline and landed behind the lot of them, preparing a tendril of water.

"Here, let me help you with that," I said, before blasting a load of them off with the water. I pulled out Sally and blasted three rounds into the heads of those who remained. More came out from inside the ship, weapons raised and at the ready. Booker landed in front of me just in time to hurl a fireball at them, which exploded and sent them all off the boat, coated in red liquid. "Nice work, Booker, now let's go sabotage that engine." I leaned over the side of the boat and waved, hoping everyone down below had seen the light show. A giant cry went up all around us, so I imagined they saw me. I sighed. "Still got work to do."

We stepped inside the Zeppelin. To our right, there was what looked like the Captain's desk, had he been there; I assumed they were all at different war stations, or dead, by now. To our right, there was the engine, guarded by three Elite Columbians armed with shotguns and a motorized patriot directly in front of the engine. Eh, that's not so tough. Booker and I took cover behind one of the iron poles in the middle of the room, peeking out to fire at the commandos. I blasted the head off one of them with Sally, and I smiled with light satisfaction as I watched Booker down the other two. That was the easy part; now, for the patriot.

We couldn't get behind it to do any significant damage, and it was constantly winding up the crank gun, so it could turn us into corpses in a matter of seconds if we peeked out from behind cover. "Booker," I muttered, "start putting Shock Jockey traps on the ceiling. Loads of 'em. Connect them to him when I give you the signal, got it?"

He nodded and did as I said, lighting the ceiling up with a web of sparks. I moved up and waited behind the next column, barely avoiding a barrage of lead from the barrel of his gun. Booker fully coated the ceiling in the blue gel-like material, and then, it was time to launch our assault. I blasted it and the area around it with Undertow, and then gave him the signal. "Now!"

He fired one last gel ball onto the wall immediately behind the patriot and I watched as the area was enveloped in bright blue light. It shot out the sides of the zeppelin, hopefully giving everyone down below something to talk about. The Shock Jockey pumped electricity into the water, and, in turn, the patriot, causing him to vibrate furiously. He fell to the ground, immediately before exploding in a flurry of blue lightning and red fire. And, what do you know; he took out the chords that connected the engine, as well as doing a ton of damage to the balloon. "Will!" shouted Booker. "We gotta' get out of here!"

I nodded and stood up, rushing outside onto the deck. The cries down below were louder and more celebratory now, and I scanned the area for a skyline to use. There was one down below us . . . by about a hundred feet. "We can't make that!" I shouted.

Booker shook his head, "No, damn right we can't! We'll rip our arms off!" He grabbed the railing and clenched it until his knuckles turned white. "Just wait for a better opportunity!" I did the same thing he did and waited as the ship got closer to the skyline.

And then the balloon burned up. It started to plummet downwards at a speed much faster than before, and I barely heard Booker yell "Jump!" I leaped off the side of the ship without much direction, hoping that the magnetized hook would do the work. For a moment, I was just drifting through air, seeing nothing, but then I felt pressure on my arm and knew I was on a skyline. I sighed with relief. "Woo," I heard Booker shout over the wind, "that was close."

Down below us, a chant had been taken up: "DeWitt! DeWitt! DeWitt! DeWitt!" they were shouting, praising their savior.

"So why does everyone praise you and ignore me," I asked, smirking as we got closer to the docks.

Booker grinned. "The camera boy's only good at his job behind the scenes. He snaps the pictures, he's not in them, so just leave the glory hogging to me," he said, smugly. I missed this Booker.

I smirked at him. "Damn you," I said, before jumping off the skyline and down onto the dock. I landed with a thud and Booker landed next to me with an identical noise, both of us breathing heavily. I glanced at him and grinned again. "We just took down a war zeppelin, didn't we?"

"Unless I'm dreaming, yeah, we did," he said, laughing slightly. It's not every day you do something like that.

I turned towards the crowd to see the girls running towards us. Lucy had her arms spread and looked completely ecstatic. Elizabeth, though - that was another story. She looked as if she was ready to rip my head off, running towards me with an expression no human should be capable of wearing. I was half-tempted to run away from her and live another day, but then I realized how insane that sounded. I waved at her with a cocky expression, only to hear her shouting "Idiot!"

Lucy rammed into Booker and wrapped her arms around him, giggling. "That was amazing, you guys!" She hugged me as well, smiling furiously. Then Elizabeth reached us. I stared at her expression, the anger in her eyes, and I'm sure she saw the confidence leaving my face. She frightened me, alright. She leaned closer to me, and I waited for the barrage of insults or scoldings, but that wasn't what came.

She rammed her lips into mine and wrapped her arms around my neck, pulling me into an embrace.

I wasn't sure what to do at first. It was completely and entirely unexpected, and I had no idea what to do in the situation. I subconsciously reciprocated and wrapped my arms around her waist, getting some strange feeling in the pit of my stomach. We stood there in that position for minutes, before she finally got bored and pulled back, her hands still nestled behind my neck. Her expression was replaced by a soft and kind one, staring at me happily. "Oh, thank God. . . I was so worried. . ." She grinned radiantly. "I thought you. . ." Her face flashed with realization for a moment and she jumped back, spinning around and lowering her head, her face beet red. "I-I'm so sorry! I didn't. . ."

"Hey," I said, but she ran off towards the factory before I could say anything. "Wait!" I called, but she was long gone.

Booker walked up behind me and patted me on the back. "Nice work," he said, grinning that evil grin of his. Lucy came up behind him with her arms crossed.

"It's about time she did something," she said, acting all matter-of-fact. "She's been like that since Battleship Bay with you. Can't believe you didn't notice."

I scratched the back of my neck. "I don't really know. Never had a keen eye for that sort of stuff."

"Evidently not," she said, before following after Booker.

Well. That was an interesting development, I suppose. I rushed after the rest of the group, trying to focus on the task at hand.