Day 26: Waterfall.
Warnings: Plane crash
With thanks to Sineater for her help with the American measurement system.
Planes were his bread and butter. Whether that was designing, flying or rescuing them, planes were everything to him. Flying was everything to him. So whenever there were rescues involving planes Scott was slightly more…excited about them than other rescues.
(Not that he would ever admit that out loud, not to his brothers.)
((They knew it anyway.))
John called it in. A six-seater Cessna Turbo Stationair HD carrying a tourist group flying over Angel Falls for photos had developed engine trouble. The tourists were currently seeing a closer view of Angel Falls than any of them had ever wanted.
Speed was of the essence and that was Scott's specialty. Virgil had set off in Two, but if they were going to stop that plane going over the falls then One needed to get a move on.
Thankfully, Scott lived for such moments, and pushing One to her limits meant he didn't take long at all to get there.
A plan on how to rescue the five people in the plane was needed, and fast. He couldn't hit the plane with One's grapple, the plane was too precariously balanced.
Scott jetted down and carefully set down on the tail, securing it with One's grapple and using the remote to pull the cable taunt. It was too dangerous to try and secure the plane any other way without either tipping it over the edge or breaking it up.
He used his grapple to secure two lines into the rock and vegetation around the falls and used them to send the rescuees either side of the plane. It was a slow process as they inched their way across to safety but there was only one left as Two arrived.
Virgil had to land a little way away from the falls, not wanting to damage the World Heritage site, and he and Gordon jogged over to check on the tourists while the pilot was making his way over.
That was when everything seemed to happen at once.
John swore under his breath when Scott, Virgil and Gordon's signals all winked out at once. He immediately contacted Kayo, who dropped everything to get to Venezuela.
Gordon who saw them first. Mecha's. Two of them, heading straight for Scott, who was still on the plane, making sure it stayed stable until the pilot was safely on the ground.
'Scott! Mecha!'
But there wasn't anything that Scott could do without putting the pilot in danger, so he stayed put, while Gordon was trying to get the pilot to hurry. But there was nothing that he or Virgil could do but watch as one of the mecha's dived down onto Scott, grasping him by his jet pack and attempted to pick him up.
Scott twisted and swung wildly, but eventually he did the only thing he could. He slipped the jet pack off, falling the few feet back onto the plane. The craft creaked, tipping up just as Gordon pulled the pilot to safety.
One whined as she took the strain of the plane again, and one of the machines severed the cable, causing the plane to shift further towards the edge.
The grapple shot out, Scott hoping to snag some of the rocks around the falls, but the mecha were back, one hitting the claw and deflecting it while the other made a beeline for Scott again.
He ducked under the machine as the plane upended, and the last thing his brothers saw was the plane and him falling, pursued by the mechas.
As suddenly as the signals had disappeared they appeared again, to both John's relief and horror.
Angel Falls was the tallest waterfall on Earth, and as John frantically tried to get in contact with any of his brothers, all he could think about was something he'd asked Google once.
Can I survive a fall of Angel Falls? The chances to survive this fall are minimal and overall, you don't want to figure them out.
Scott was falling, but he was a tenacious bastard, and if anyone was likely to survive the fall, then John's money was on his big brother.
Millions of cubic feet of water, a 20 second free fall at a speed of 120mph. Rocks all the way down. The force of the water would make resurfacing immediately impossible. Freezing water could result in hypothermia. Scott also needed to avoid the plane and the mechas.
John loathed his curious mind and its need to find answers to obscure thoughts.
20 seconds was not a long time at all.
Yet it was also a lifetime.
20 seconds. It took longer for Virgil to get Two airborne. The rescued people were happy to wait on the top of the falls as Two plummeted to rescue Scott. There was nowhere for Two to land, so Gordon took attached a cable and jumped, warnings from both John and Virgil in his ear about the two mechas they hadn't seen fly off.
The water was frigid and turbulent. Gordon found it difficult, even with his drysuit. Scott would have struggled even more in just his uniform. He searched and searched.
There was no sign of Scott.