Chapter 28

A/N

Greetings, those still reading this story :D

(I'm talking to you, Val. Hi.) Soo…. Yeah. I'm back. Maybe another update will drum up some comments! Wooo.

Also, quick reminder.

Next chapter will be the final installment of Universe Hopping

…Get on to reading, I've kept you waiting long enough ~(^.^)~

R.E*R.E*R.E*R.E

Chapter 28

Linzy's POV

It'd been a while since the last time Kass and I had been lost and walking through an unknown terrain, though thankfully this time we had a decent road to follow… and were not suffering the blistering heat of the desert. That was a plus. Even so, I kept my mouth shut and ignored Kass as she talked my ear off about how much better walking was than "mole travel". To be honest, I'm not sure why she was saying that… since I'd been giving her a piggy back ride since the third mile. Honestly, just because my wings somehow got sucked back up into my shoulder blades doesn't mean she can just latch on and stay there. It was weird. And it was really heavy, especially since she was carrying T.B on her shoulders… so effectively I was holding both deadweights.

Ugh.

I rolled my eyes and shifted her weight so she was higher on my back, and less likely to continue kicking my thighs with her converse. Speaking of which, I didn't quite remember when my shoes had become inexistent. They might've busted off when I'd been buried and sprouted massive talons, but I was certain I would've noticed my bare footedness when I was doing everything else. If not, the lack of food for the past day was messing with my senses and awareness. I sighed as my stomach grumbled again. It was already getting to be evening, meaning that it really had been, almost exactly, twenty-four hours since our abduction. I suppose the inducement of our "Kaiju-ness" took a few hours between us, and then whatever happened when I was knocked out added even more time to that… but man, it was unfair. If you abduct us you might as well provide food, right? At least that was my thought process.

"Linzyyyyy," Kass muttered in my ear, and I turned my head slightly so I could look back at her. "are we there yet? It's getting dark, an' I don't wanna be out here when the creepiness sets in."

I sighed and shook my head, turning my attention back to the weathered road at my feet. There were several potholes in this section, and I didn't want to twist my ankle. Kass would have to carry ME then, and Lord knows I'm too heavy for that.

"No Kass, sorry. I haven't seen any lights or buildings since we started walking. At least the road signs have been pointing us towards the nearest city."

"But we only saw one sign, and that was like, 19 miles ago…" She groaned, and I swear she became heavier. Glaring at the road, I shifted her weight again and reminded myself that this was a lot better than carrying her when she was unconscious though the desert.

'Is it really? At least unconscious she doesn't yack my ears off.' Shaking the thought from my head, I replied, "It's been less than 10 miles and yeah, we saw one sign, but the road hasn't changed."

She grunted and nuzzled the back of my head. After a few minutes of silence, I heard her breathing even out and realized she had fallen asleep.

'Well, she must be tired. She has been up this whole time and didn't get the chance to have a (forced) nap." I thought, and that made me feel a little less agitated with her. Out of the two of us, she was the night owl, but even owls need sleep.

Soon night began to fall, and I heard several of Kass' kind hooting from the trees. Rolling my eyes at the irony, I stopped walking for a second and sunk my feet into the asphalt of the street. It felt amazing; you know, like how water of the perfect temperature feels when you're in a hot tub.

Smiling slightly, I pulled out one foot and stomped lightly so I wouldn't wake up Kass.

/The road continues about half a mile, then curves around a concrete structure. Metal boxes are situated under an overhang, which is secured to the ground with thin poles. A single vehicle is parked next to the building/

My eyes snapped open and I started walking faster. That was, without a doubt, a gas station! And if there was a car, there had to have been someone there!

My hasty movement didn't seem to disturb my sleeping friend at all, even when my strides abruptly stopped several minutes later. A single dim street light was slightly tilted over the twin gas pumps, flickering every once and a while under the gloomy sky. I took a deep breath and tightened my grip on Kass' knees, then walked up to the gas station itself. It was extremely tiny, and soft light was streaming out of the glass window panes. Looking inside, I saw that it looked more like a country store than a gas station interior. I tried the door, and it opened smoothly under my touch. As I walked inside I didn't notice anyone nearby, but the bell tingled overhead to announce my arrival. I figured that'd be enough to alert whoever was there to my entrance. Spotting a chair nestled next to a rack of questionably recent gossip magazines, I backed up toward it and set Kass down gently. With her literally off my back, I stretched and looked around. We were right next to the cluttered countertop which sported handmade soaps and an old typewriter-style cash register. I leaned on the counter and rested my eyes, breathing in deeply.

"…May I help you?" A voice I didn't recognize asked, and I straightened up immediately.

"Ah, yes. May we use your phone?" I inquired, even before I could see the person I was addressing. It was a very short old lady with spectacles. She was wearing 50's style clothing and looked as though she should be in some community sewing circle, not running a gas station in the middle of nowhere. Blinking, she nodded and pointed to the back of the shop.

"We have a landline you can use, in the back there. Let me know if there's anything else I can do for you." She glanced out the window as if to look for the vehicle we'd arrived in, and her thin white eyebrows rose when she didn't see any. Not giving her a chance to ask me any questions, I shuffled toward the phone and picked it up off its cradle.

'Who am I going to call?' I wondered, my mouth twisting into a frown. I had only memorized the school's phone number, and doubted anyone would be there at this time of night to hear the phone ringing. I dragged my dry tongue over my lips, and allowed my eyes to dart around the small nook where the telephone was situated. There was a coat rack to my left, upon which hung a shoddy looking jacket with holes in the elbows that didn't look as though it'd been touched in years. On the wall next to it was a hanging bookshelf, upon which I noticed a few romance novels and an old yellow phone book. Not a single one of them retained any dust, so it was safe to assume the old woman ran a tight ship… though I still wasn't sure why the ship she was a gas station.

…Wait, phone book?

Duh.

I reached out and grasped the phone book- which was much lighter than I'd anticipated- and tried to situate it on the countertop without knocking anything over. I flipped open the pages and searched up the first name I could think of.

Rosenblatt.

"Brriinnggg. Brriinnggg. Brri-" There was a clicking sound, then, "You've got Margaret! What can I do for you?"

I took a deep breath.

"H-hi Ms. Margaret, this is Linzy, one of Duncan's friends. Uhm… Is there any way I can call you in for a favor?"

R.E*R.E*R.E*R.E

Time skip

R.E*R.E*R.E*R.E

Kass was snoozing in the backseat with T.B as her pillow while I sat upfront with Margaret, though neither of us was saying anything. The older female appeared to be deep in thought, and though she was driving I kept noticing her glancing at my Kaiju features while she wasn't focusing on her surroundings.
On the phone I had roughly explained that we had been taken to the Falls by a gaggle of Feijuenumajus, and she'd immediately said she would come to get us. Not one hour later a M.E.G.T.A.F. issue helicopter landed across from the gas station, with Margaret at the controls. After bidding the old woman goodbye, I carried Kass to the vehicle, explaining that she was okay and had merely fallen asleep. To her credit, the woman had taken one look at me from my dirt ridden hair to my claw-like feet and had gestured for me to get in the passenger seat of the cockpit.

Presently, I looked at Kass over my shoulder, not surprised in the least that she could sleep through a whole helicopter ride like a log. Adjusting the headset Margaret had given me, I casted my gaze towards the rushing ground below us. I felt… sick. It was as though the ground- the earth- was morning, and the farther up we flew the worse it felt. Yet, flying itself wasn't making me feel bad. It was something else.

"Ms. Margaret," I urgently said into my headset, " There's something out there, coming straight for us."

She took her eyes off the controls for a moment to glance at me, then looked down at her radar.

"Is it a threat?" She inquired steadily, and I focused on the feeling of sickness.

"I think it is. Its… a sense of nausea, coming from-" I looked at the digital compass on the dash, "-the East of us. It doesn't feel like Kaiju, but it's not far away."

She hummed and peered out into the clouds, a fixed expression on her face. I admired that she not only seemed to believe me, but that she was taking me seriously. Maybe it helped that Kass and I were friends of her son. Maybe she felt responsible for the Femju's animosity towards us, because she'd taken the place of one of their own when she married Belloc. Whatever the cause, I was appreciative.

Unexpectedly, the copter reeled sharply to the left, and my knuckles turned white as my grip tightened on the seat. I looked to Margaret with wide eyes.

"It was a projectile coming from that direction." She told me, her head jerking towards the Eastern portion of the sky. "I didn't get a good look, but it seemed too crude to be military. I'm not sure what we're dealing with here." Margaret admitted, and I felt the blood drain from my face.

"Wah wus that?" I heard a muffled voice question, and I looked to the back seat to see Kass squished up against the window, the seat belt twisted around her midriff.

"Hey Kass. We're in a helicopter with Duncan's mom. Hold on to something." I said quickly.

"Whu-?" She looked at me without understanding for a moment, then began to take in her surroundings just as the copter rocked for a second time. She shrieked and I tensed, my eyes shooting towards the direction of this attack. Out of the plumes of clouds were outlined two shapes. I squinted, then slapped my forehead.

Why did we have to design them with hoverboards?!

Staring back at me were the two Kaiju Hunters we had created, J and Danny. They were wearing battle armor and stood behind tall shields that sprouted out of the sides of their hoverboards. J was holding a missile launcher on her shoulder while her brother was supplying her with ammo.

"Feel like filling me in?" Our pilot asked urgently as she swerved away from another missile.

"Long story short, they're Kaiju Hunters that showed up at the school one day and must've been following us. I don't think they have any way to detect halflings but-"

"-they tracked you down, so at this point that's more than a possibility." Margaret finished for me, her eyes cautiously locked on the siblings.

It didn't surprise me that even without an explanation, Duncan's mother knew exactly what was going on. I hadn't told her what we were, but hey, she's not quite as gullible as a lot of the people I knew. And she has a Duncan for a son, so maybe she's learned to spot the signs.

That too.

"Right." I replied, a moment too late for it to be considered a prompt response. To be honest though, I don't think she'd noticed.

"Linzzyyyyy," Kass muttered from the backseat, "Can't I just erase the hoverboards or somethin'?"

Margaret glanced at me in confusion and I rolled my eyes at her.

"Kass, wake up! No eraser will solve this." I lied, knowing that her sketchbook was safely stashed away in T.B., where I knew she wouldn't abuse it. "…And even if that did exist, falling from this height would, you know, kill them."

"Oh." She pouted. It was exceedingly obvious to me that she was mostly asleep, despite the harrowing situation we now found ourselves in.

I noticed Margaret's eyes go wide because J had managed to fire two shots in succession. One blew though the rotary blades on top of the copter. The other scraped the vehicle's side, making us veer sharply to the right. Suddenly, they were next to us, and there was a bright flash of light. I heard a heavy thunk, and the next thing I could see was the empty backseat and the retreating forms of J and Danny.

"KASS!" I screamed, yanking at my seatbelt as I tried to leap towards the unconscious form draped over Danny's shoulder. I was hyperventilating, my body heaving with adrenaline as the copter's descent took us closer and closer to the earth below. Besides me, Margaret was frantically searching through the cockpit for something, her calm expression morphing into fear.

"Linzy, they took the parachutes!" She yelled into the headset. THAT definitely caught my attention, and I looked at her in horror. For a moment, my mind went blank with shock. Then, all I heard was my own voice repeating "Think think think think think!" over and over again.

Jump.

One second I was free falling, Margaret securely nestled in my arms as wind whistled around my ears. The next, we were suspended in midair, my massive wings hovering over us in a halo of moonlight.

We watched in breathless silence as the copter went down in a blaze of flames, and, once it had hit the ground, crashed in an explosion of shrapnel and fire. I stared blankly at the carnage of the vehicle, my thoughts dead in the hush of the night as plumes of smoke drifted up towards the starry sky. In that moment, my heart sank, and the light in my eyes grew dim.

They had taken Kass.

They had taken T.B.

The only person in this world who'd been with me since the start of this crazy adventure, and the crazy backpack that had been helping us survive.

Now… she was gone.

He was taken.

I closed my eyes. At the same moment, my wings curled inward and I felt my body grow heavy. I began to fall, unaware of the way Margaret screamed at me, trying to make me snap out of my despair.

We fell.

R.E*R.E*R.E*R.E