Don Karnage and company had not been able to give Crownland a warning of what doom was coming their way; as they got in range, the radio airwaves were already blazing with red-alert chatter. At first it was only Kit, Karnage, and Flynn around Jock and the helm, but soon the bridge was crowded with the others behind them, ears cocked to the noise of static and panic coming through the speakers in sometimes barely-intelligible bursts.
In summary, a monstrous "vulture" had been reported sighted at sea, headed for the mainland, by the Royal Navy. The warships engaged. It was too chaotic and broken up to keep track of, but one officer was one the air screaming to his commanders that an entire destroyer had just been picked up whole in the jaws of the monster and flung away into another ship. Others cried out about fire in the sky. Mostly it was some variation of crying out for 'help!' and 'what was that?!' The battle was over before anyone on land saw for themselves this inbound terror, but the warships had gotten their SOSs through. The mainland had been warned. From there, the radio traffic shifted to Crownland scrambling to its defenses, though they knew not what they were defending against.
The pirate crew listened to the chaos with deep apprehension. Not that they were adverse to chaos, especially when they were the ones creating it, but this wasn't pirating. This was like going into a warzone, and the zeppelin was moving full steam ahead. The feeling really hit when they passed over where the warships had been sunk, as made apparent by broken hulls of great, capsized ships still yet bobbed upside down in the water. There was no sign of their crews. It was around then that the blaring radio transmissions started reporting the monster was now over land.
Don Karnage finally shut the radio off with a slap of his hand against the switch, and rubbed his ears, wincing. The contrast between the terrified uproars that had been coming through the speaker and the utter silence that ensued around the helm was like the contrast of staring into the sun and then standing in a pitch black room. The noise lingered in their eardrums for a time in a dull ring.
At last white cliffs emerged through a low-lying fog. Crownland's shore. No one said a word. Kit had binoculars pointed out the front window, scanning the gray sky ahead, the lenses shaky in his nervous hands. Silence continued. Rain droplets tapped sparsely on the windows. They lost visibility going into a stretch of clouds that hung from the overcast ceiling like curtains. Emerging from the other side, beyond rolling green hills, wide grassy fields, clusters of smaller towns, and spread over both sides of the banks of a wide, murky river, was the city of Olde Victoria. A dark storm roiled over it, stretching out like wings.
Kit lowered down the binoculars, his eyes wide as its lenses. He quickly put the binoculars up again, getting another look, then lowered again. Don Karnage, at that point, wrenched the binoculars from his hand, giving him a no-time-for-games kind of scowl. The captain looked into the lenses at the roiling darkness… lowered them with eyes wide, raised them again for another look… lowered them again, over his heart. A little whine wheezed out of his clenched jaw. His jaw wasn't the only thing clenching, but we'll leave it at that.
"Is that really…" Kit began, but he did not finish, instead swallowing hard and clasping his hands on his face.
The others peered and squinted through the window, trying to make sense of the strange mass moving over the city, bafflement stricken on their faces ― except for Flynn. He grimaced stoically, knowingly.
They were not much more than a half a mile from the mass when it suddenly turned to face them, twisting around like a shark in water. From that distance, the cyclopean visage of the Iron Vulture was distinct, gazing at them, its eye like a spotlight that pierced their very being. Its ghostly wings stretched out longer. It grinned at them menacingly.
"It's… it's alive," stammered Ratchet, his voice shrill. He and his counterparts trembled.
It became visible that warplanes were swarming the monster, steaming bullets and launching rockets, but balls of fire launched from the darkness of the Vulture's wings vaporized them in short order.
"By the powers, veer off," said Flynn, trying to overcome a quavering in his voice. "I'm afeared if we get any nearer, she'll kill you lot in a heartbeat." No one had to tell Jock twice; he spun the steering while as far left as it would go. The zeppelin turned at such a rate that everyone had to grab onto something, even if that meant the arm of another pirate, or the captain's arm (Karnage ended up having to do a lot of swatting away like he was being assaulted by mosquitoes). As the zeppelin turned away, the Vulture twisted back toward the city, seemingly uncaring of its new aerial companion.
"I suppose…" Flynn had to pause to take a breath, his hands nervously patting down and straightening his pinstripe shirt. "This is my cue. I better make haste. Curses, how am I to get to her ― I can leap, but not that far. Still can't sprout wings and fly. I don't know how I'm about to close the distance. I could have a go at your shiny flying machine in back, but I'm just as like to plant myself in the dirt with that thing, and none of you can fly me there without risking your own life. Open to suggestions, mateys, and in a hurry."
There were a lot of apprehensive mumbles as the pirates looked at each other for ideas; even Karnage, fingers massaging his scheme-hatching head, was giving it thought. Then someone had an idea:
"I can fly," a voice uttered, uneasily. A distinctively young voice.
Don Karnage jolted like someone had just kicked him in a sensitive location. His fangs went flashing, "Exc-UU-hoo-hoo-sé?!"
"I am the only one who can get him there," said Kit, whose face scrunched as he mustered the confidence to even think this idea aloud, let alone stand up to Karnage about it. "The Stormhawk can get him there in just a minute. He can't fly it, but I can."
"You don't fly!" roared the captain, with such decibel power that it made the rest of the crew step back, lest they catch a piece of that exploding temper. Kit, however, didn't as much as flinch. His face was frozen in a distant, sullen expression. He replied, numbly,
"What's the worst that can happen."
It would seem to the crew, at that moment, that Don Karnage's coppery red fur turned a hue of scandalized purple. They were quick to part a path for him when he grabbed Kit hard by the arm, hoisted him away from the helm and dragged him down the corridor. Notwithstanding the unimaginable nightmare that floated in the sky ahead of them, in watching the yelping kid get pulled into an adjacent room, even Flynn joined in their collective gaping expression of 'glad that's not me!'
Karnage was not gentle in how she shoved the boy into the cabin, an office space sparsely decorated in lightweight furniture. "What do you think you're doing?" he seethed. "No!"
"B-but Captain…"
"No! You don't get to do this! Not to Don Karnage!"
Kit was genuinely confused by that; but before he could even utter a "do what," Karnage leaned into him,
"You don't get to make me feel like a loser because you ran away, or like a monster for the things I did. You don't get to make me want to take it all back, not Don Karnage, no! You don't get to make me prove to you over and over and over again that you won, brat! You made me want to be the one ― th-the one you believe I can be, and ought to keelhaul you for it! You... bested me, and made me feel like new. You don't get to make me feel all these stupid things ― all these stupid things a pirate does not sign up for ― you don't get to make me want to call you my boy, oh no! You don't get to come back and be this one thing real to me, just to ― to ― go away again!" He threw his arm out sideways, pointing in the general direction in front of the zeppelin, and with the other hand grabbed Kit by the chin. "No! You don't get to go out there, only to go for good! You don't do that to me!"
Kit wrangled his face free of the captain's grasp; he was stunned silent for several seconds, with that tongue-lashing reverberating in his head, and processing the meaning behind it ―but he also picked up on something else, which prompted him to throw back some words of his own,
"You, you, you! Everything's not about you!"
Now Karnage was stunned. Of all reactions for the boy to have over what he just told him, after so uncomfortably ― and unselfishly, so he thought ― laying out his heart like that, if there was one reaction he never remotely fathomed possible from the boy, it was this one.
Loud and angry, Kit's voice cracked with emotion. "I walked out on a perfectly good home, ya know, from friends! A-and a family!" He stopped, swallowed, and took a breath, lest he get overwhelmed by that thought. Quieter, he went on, "'Cause I wanted to stick with you. An' I still wanna stick with you. But there's not gonna be anything left, don't you see? I've seen it, what the world'll look like. No more sky, no more me, no more you, no more anyone. I've already hurt my friends a whole lot, I'm not gonna let 'em get hurt worse. I'm not gonna let you get hurt. Not when I can help do somethin' about it." With a sniff, he steeled himself and stood up straight, resolute. Though his knees still quivered. "I'm goin' out there," he insisted. "I'm gonna help Flynn."
Don Karnage, by then, had shaken off his previous shocked state. "Oh, are you?" he scowled. "Well! Good luck on that, because I am setting that blasted plane on fire!" Turning in his heel instantly, he stomped out into the corridor with his finger raised, looked to the helm and yelled, "You, Hacksaw! Yipe!"
That yipe was incurred when a strong pull on his tail dragged him back inside the cabin, rump-first.
"You can't stop me!" yelled Kit.
"Blast it, brat! That does it!" Karnage grabbed Kit under his arms and hoisted him against the wall, putting a fanged snarl in his face. "Heroes are morons! Morons die! You are hearing me?! Kit Cloudkicker does not have to save everyone!"
The power of his words seemed to have the effect he wanted for how Kit flinched. But then he saw a tear escape, beading down the boy's cheek, slow at first and picking up speed on the way down.
"I gotta try. Please. I gotta."
Karnage realized Kit was pleading this despite his face showing he was clearly frightened at the very thought of what he was pleading for. It was a wonder to the captain, then and there, how a three-foot-nine stack of fur could have such an immeasurable reserve of courage. And stupidity, too, but also courage. Karnage let him go, and like struck with dizziness, plopped his backside on an uncomfortable plastic chair. With his head slouched over his knees, he signed heavily. "It would be my luck, of course," he muttered. "I get the only pipsqueak pirate in the whole history of forever who has to… ugh... save everyone. And you know what kills me, boy… is that perhaps, you can. You do things that I cannot even ―" His voice faltered into a groan. "I think there's a chance... about this big," he said with his finger and thumb measuring about the girth of a pencil, "that you can do it. And this much chance," here he swung out his arms wide open, "that you die, for real and for good, if you get too close to that crazy-woman." Then, back to that small measurement between his finger and thumb, he gazed on it. "But for this much chance. It's who you are, no?"
Kit wiped with his sleeve where that tear had escaped, but said nothing. Karnage gestured for him to come closer, which he did, and he clasped his hand on the boy's shoulder. "If I let you, you do it my way. No arguing." Kit conceded with a nod. Karnage continued, "You get him close. Just close enough, comprende? Then you come back. Straight back. No hero business. You let him deal with the rest."
There was a second of hesitation on Kit's part, which got him a good shake by the shoulder. He nodded again.
"You come back to me, boy," said Karnage. And perhaps it was his own reckoning that his words were full of that softivity he was always careful to avoid, but he ended that thought with a hard, menacing glare and this warning: "Or else."
Kit gulped, and nodded once more. "I promise."
Karnage stood up and went on with his instructions: "You let him jump, then you come back to one of these fields under us. You use all smatterings of your smarty-pants to bring that plane down easy. You listen to the radio, I tell you what to do. Then we swing down, pick you up ― and there better be something left of that plane."
In the middle of further nodding as the captain spoke, despite anything and everything else Kit was struck with a sudden, involuntary indignation. "What makes ya think I can't land it inside the zep?" The look Karnage cast down on him didn't deign to explain that Kit had absolute zero experience in making those types of precise landings, but rather only emanated powerfully with the suggestion of imminent caboose kickery for even asking. Kit seemed to grasp the point, and quickly. "Okay, okay, fair enough. Aye aye, sir."
There was a murmuring commotion heard from the helm. They had turned the radio back on. Will turned the frequency dial, and every channel from the city was either a cry for help or a frantic newsflash broadcast trying to keep with events as they were happening. Citizens were urged to lock their doors and take cover. Air traffic control was experiencing a meltdown in communicating to pilots to stay grounded, in bits of that chaotic chatter it could be discerned that some airplanes were wrecking into each other on the runway in their attempt to flee. The dial eventually turned upon a shaky voice, which was being received relatively clearly. In a moment of listening, it was apparent the person speaking was an amateur radio hobbyist, reporting through-the-window observations from his own apartment.
'They're walking, they're everywhere. The dead have risen! The dead ― oh mercy, they just cut a man down! Oh! What are they doing to that poor ― oh, I can't watch! I can't watch! M-mercy, I think they saw me!' The broadcast ended there, silent.
All the while, the ghostly wings flanking the transformed Iron Vulture erupted with bursts of flames from deep within their darkness. Like heavy clouds on the verge of letting pour rain, so seemed the fire in the wings, ready to unleash hell from the sky. And yet with the same wings the Vulture floated along slowly and lazily, perhaps even holding back the welling flames, but that was no matter of mercy. Its face looked down upon the city, turning this way and that, and its eye eagerly scanned to watch, as much as possible, all the chaos below. It was savoring the savage violence, savoring the terror. Savoring it all before all burned.
"I can't delay," muttered Flynn, with flop sweat upon his brow as he observed the Vulture through the window. "I must take it upon myself. Bugger all if I can't steer that metal bird, I'll have to try."
"No need," said Kit, coming up behind the group. Karnage was beside him, grimacing. "I'm gonna get you there."
"You're sure, lad?"
"Hey, someone's gotta bring my plane back," Kit shrugged, but even with his forced air of levity, no one reading his face was uncertain he was dreading this task.
"His plane," grumbled Karnage, rolling his eyes.
En route to the Stormhawk, Kit laid out the plan to Flynn, as concisely as Karnage had told him earlier. All the while, Karnage, walking beside the two, had his eyes narrowed at Flynn. Kit got himself a pair of goggles and climbed into the plane's front seat (taking the telephone book from the back seat), and as he did the captain bruskly took Flynn aside. Kit could not hear what was said, for the captain spoke in quiet, calm tones in Flynn's ear, but telling by expressions whatever was being said obviously made Flynn uneasy, if not also a little queasy. In Flynn's shock of what he was hearing, he didn't notice Karnage discreetly drawing his cutlass; Karnage finished the conversation with a menacing smirk, and by surprising the golden-furred canine with a little poke on the chin with the tip of his blade.
Flynn went to the plane, his face stiff. "By thunder," he whispered to Kit as he climbed in the back. "That captain of yours comes up with some quite creative ideas for torture, doesn't he."
"Why? What was that about?" asked Kit.
Flynn shook his head. "Let's just say, I'm not allowed to let anything happen to you."
