Helllloooo. Okay I didn't put in any author's note in the third chapter so apologise and I'm gonna make up for it now (though really i think author's notes kinda take away from the drama of the story so yeah). Anyway so I wanted to give a shout out to the three people who reviewed. Honestly, when i published the first chapter (since I'm actually an old member through my old account which is still up though i haven't updated the story on it hehehehe) I was gonna be a bit of a snobby female dog and go like humph no second chapter until i get a review. But when none came I was like never mind really, I know that I'm not gonna get a response this early and hey, I like writing this, so let's continue. That said, however, your reviews still got me pumped to write. Anyone who followed, favourited and (ideally) reviewed really played a hand in me writing and editing this to as much of perfection as my excited-to-post self accepted. Most (cough two out of three (literally)) reviewed as guests so like I can't really PM you my love and the one non-guest who reviewed (kAp4747) since you're like the only one out of them I decided I could just add you into the joint thanks. Thank you guys soo much for taking some time to put in a few words. Trust me, I'm really lazy, so you willing to give me a few words on my story really means a lot.
Anyway, enough of my blabbing (I think I've compensated for the silent previous chapter). Enjoy the fourth chapter!
"Are you sure about this, Lieutenant?" Reyna's face appeared by the port window once more, her brow furrowed. Her voice was muffled through the thick glass window.
Piper inhaled a deep breath, clutching her seat belt straps tightly. They offered no strength, though, and neither did the brush of her hand to her empty ring finger. She swallowed, though it echoed with the greatness of a gulp in the compact pod. She met Reyna's patient eyes.
"No matter how long I'll delay it, I'll never really be sure about it." She replied, finally.
"Then I asked the wrong question." Piper had to commend Reyna for her control. Because for a second, her onyx eyes glinted with apprehension and trepidation. But in the same beat Piper saw her reel and gather herself. The midnight sky of her eyes now shone with stars of determination.
"Are you ready?"
A true leader she was then, for her strength tugged on Piper as well.
"Yes."
Reyna gave her a firm nod before shouting an order behind her shoulder. Piper sneaked a glance through her port window and caught Leo's melancholic gaze before he hung his head. This was goodbye and they knew it for through all her planning, Piper never thought of herself coming back. Her plan wasn't defying the promise-maker and saving herself. It was the exact opposite. It was meeting him herself and leaving Half-Blood Forces with a cosmic bang.
Her eyes moved from her best friend, whose form had her heart ache, to everyone else in the room who watched her from outside her pod. They all had similar, sorrowful yet hopeful eyes as they replied to her stare with a salute or a nod. Word had gotten across about her abrupt mission and everyone in the safe sectors had rushed to the pod exits. Her friends, though, the ones fighting for their lives and the lives of the people were in the South and West Wings and she would perhaps never see them again. She would never see Squad 107, her family, ever again. She would leave without a goodbye. Thoughts of her father slipped into her mind, a flash of all the smiles she gave and received blurring through her mind in a bittersweet rush. Jason whizzed through her mind, his comfort and the bliss of his presence seeping into her, and she fought back the tears.
She supposed it was good they weren't all here to bid her farewell. She wouldn't know what state her mind would be in actually seeing them before leaving. And Jason…he would put up a barrage of protests before giving into the practicality of the situation. Yet all the no's would lodge into her heart like arrows and weaken her will. She expelled a slow breath. However how impractical she kept reassuring herself it would be for them here, she wanted them. All of them.
The straps of her seatbelt crumpled in her iron-grip as she clenched her fists.
Strength not weakness, she reminded herself.
She threw a nod to the port window, knowing Reyna was waiting for her signal, and aimed her gaze forward. The doors behind the pod shut in a vacuum-tight lock and Piper grit her teeth to avoid them rattling from the shaking soon to come. As expected, the doors ahead split and dragged open, their weight rattling the launch compartment and shaking her form. Filtered through the thick glass windows, the mighty rumble and groan of the doors sounded muffled. The inferno of possible danger degraded to a mere flicker of unease.
That was how Piper moved forward into the empty blackness of space. She imagined herself on a test mission, and herself, a cadet. She set up a net in her heart. No matter how she fell, she would be safe.
And like her father, she acted.
A crackling sounded in her ear and Piper stiffened in surprise. She wondered who dared to contact her while she was out in space. The ship was in bad shape and using its energy to conjure an iris signal to contact her out-of-range earpiece was a dangerous move. She'd only been out fifteen minutes.
Removing a hand from a lever, she quickly adjusted her earpiece to accept the signal.
She almost burst into tears at Jason's voice.
"Piper, oh my gods, what are you doing?" His voice was frantic and worried and everything to break her out of character.
There net in her heart was starting to fall apart and so was the stability.
She couldn't muster a reply.
"Piper you need to turn back right now, you hear me?" He had reached the summit of his control, as Piper called it. When he was a thread close to screaming, yet his voice was stable. "Piper, are you there?"
She nodded, caught herself, and whispered a yes.
"Turn back. Turn back, Piper, I…you don't have to do this!"
There was so no logic or practicality in his protests and so she shut her heart and said nothing, adjusting the gear as she edged past something that resembled a meteor. She squinted and caught the glint that it produced in the light of her craft. It was a chunk of metal, falling towards the gravity in the force field kilometres below her.
"Pipes, I have a plan, okay?" He pleaded. "What you're doing has no use! Just come back and let me explain everything. Please."
Was it debris?
She froze. Debris. Meaning—
A thunderous bang reverberated through the pod and Piper flinched as the craft tumbled and her head smashed against the control panel.
"Piper!" Jason's distraught voice rang in her ears along with the boom of metal.
Lifting her head, groaning against the sharp pain in her skull, she threw a glance through the split window to find a pod flying at rapid speed towards hers. She gasped and pure instinct shot her hand forward to a button on the control panel. She didn't even know which.
The rough smash of metal followed and Piper peered out of the port hole and almost grinned at the aftermath of the pod colliding with her craft's suddenly longer wings. She must've pressed the button to extend them. The pain of her head caught up to her and she shut her eyes briefly, trying to tune out the ringing in her ears.
It took a few seconds for her to realise the ringing was Jason.
"Piper! Pipes! Answer, goddammit!" She heard him inhale a shuddery breath and his voice was thick and almost teary. "Pipes."
She heaved an equally shuddery breath and replied. "I'm okay."
It was a loud exhale of relief that followed. "What…happened?"
"Ran into a...pod." She managed. "I don't have time, Jason, I'm probably going to meet others and my pod isn't in any shape to fight or fly back."
"No."
"I'll have to get out and go on with the individual attack." She continued, her voice strong and stubborn as she began typing numerous commands into the system. "It's the only way."
"No."
"Go through with your plan. I'll do what I can here." She pulled down a lever above her head.
"Piper, what are you going to do if he doesn't come to get you out in space?" Jason's voice was raw and vulnerable and Piper broke to see her strong and resilient Captain stripped to this.
"I'll keep fighting." She paused from her work to stare into the nothingness of space, slipping into her inner eye. "I'll take down as many pods as I can until…I can't."
"Piper Mclean, you fucking imbecile, fly back right now!" He roared, loud and desperate, raw and furious.
Jason rarely swore at people. It was the honourable soldier within him that refused to result to such words. And even if he were to swear, it was always a muttered curse and never a thrown insult at someone. Hearing him swear at her prompted more to his desperation that the pleading tone of his voice.
"Jason—"
"Shut up and fly back."
"I can't." She banged the arm of her seat, frustrated. "I don't have the fuel, one of my wings is damaged and I'll have more pods on my tail soon! For goodness' sake, Jason, accept that I can't come back!"
There was a long pause that followed and Piper knew she said the wrong thing. She should've began placating him instead of shouting back.
For Jason's voice was strangled as he choked out. "How do expect me to do that?"
She furiously wiped the tears beginning to fall from her eyes. She hung her head. She really did feel like going back now. Jason said he had a plan, he said there was another way. He knew something that could possibly help wade away the Atlas soldiers. Possibly save her.
Her ears perked as a dull rumbling shook her seat. She looked outside the pod and immediately blurted a curse.
"What? What happened? Piper, what happened?" Jason began right after the expletive slipped out of her mouth.
"A pod," she replied. "But it's fine, it's nothing. I…snuck in Katropis. I have my drift boots and I have my armour. And if…anything goes wrong, I have enough fuel in my boots to shoot me thirty metres. I can probably reach close to an entrance in the ship. I'll be okay."
Why was she lying to him now after she'd so savagely chucked him the truth? Perhaps Jason wasn't the only person she was lying to.
"You brought Katropis?" Jason breathed.
A weapon she'd designed and worked on with Leo to help her in her individual attacks. It was based off of an old battered blueprint she found. Word was that Helen of the great battleship Troy had designed it. But the death of her lover had driven her to depression and the blueprint was all but forgotten.
"I did." She replied. "And it's going to blow these Atlas scum to oblivion."
A weak chuckle sounded in her ear. Jason, pretending, like she was.
Her pod beeped a siren at the close proximity of an object and Piper managed to mutter a quick anticlimactic bye to Jason before she dove behind and grabbed her helmet, knelt down and activated her drift boots, snatched Katropis.
A few seconds before collision, she smashed the self-destruct button and powered her drift boots.
A door swung open and she shot out, using the fuel from her drift boots to jump thirty metres.
She made it just out of blast range when bright light erupted from her pod and a deep rumbling followed, throwing her farther than the drift boots could've ever managed and shaking her bones. The blast increased twice in greatness as the pod that previously rushed towards it caught the explosion like wildfire and burst into a million pieces, a white light surging from the centre. Piper attempted to shield herself but pieces pierced through her armour, some nicking the sides of her limbs, some lodging themselves into her flesh. She fought back the cries of pain as she turned away from the explosion, covering herself.
The deep silent trembling of the in-space explosion vibrated through her and the force from the blast kept her airborne until the gravity from the force field a few kilometres below the ship caught up.
And from there she plummeted, the debris from the explosion tumbling with her.
She fell, her face facing the blackness above her, her eyes straying to the massive ship to her right. The force of the fall created weights on her limbs. Moving her arms or legs against the momentum of her fall had the effect of pulling two same pole magnets towards each other. They deflected and deflected. She managed to turn slightly to peer below her. The force field rose closer and closer. Getting too close to the gravity barrier was fatal. She needed to act fast before she met it.
Crying out, she forced her arms down to her boots and managed to switch on the walk boards on the drift boots. As soon as thin icy blue rectangular screens formed beneath her feet, she was jerked to a stop. She braced herself against a whiplash and was then immediately righted, like a buoy in the sea, her feet the bottom.
She unstrapped Katropis from her back and pressed her feet together until the walk boards, lined up, merged into one large board, resembling a surf board. Piper grinned as she recalled the first time she practiced in space. It was like surfing in California with her dad all over again.
Another deep vibration caused her to whirl about. Lights flashed into her eyes and she squinted against it, gasping when she caught sight of another pod…
…pods.
Three pods, weaving through some falling debris, lining up before her.
Piper leaned back and the board moved simultaneously with her, putting distance between the pods and herself. Laser beams emitted from each pod and followed every move she made. Her eyes firm on the beams, she slowly knelt and dipped katropis in the energy board at her feet. The staff was slightly bigger than the board so she had to angle it in to allow the entire surface of Katropis to be covered in the icy blue substance.
The first blast ricocheted off Katropis, bouncing back towards the line of pods. The craft closest to it dodged the blow and shot another towards her. Piper pressed a button on katropis before raising it horizontally from her abdomen to her face, the space between the initial and final position of the staff now a translucent light blue shield that consumed the laser in a gulp. The shield crumpled like paper when she lowered the staff. She then aimed Katropis towards the pods and readied to shoot when a lightning quick laser caught her in the arm, wavering her grip on it. She cried out and grabbed the staff with her other arm when it began to fall from her grip. A hasty glance towards her hurt arm revealed her burnt armour and singed flesh.
She didn't realise how close the pods had gotten when bright light shone into her eyes. Blinking past the lights, she managed to see the pilots operating them and each were concentrated on the left side of their control panels. She knew the interior of a pod enough to know to dive out of their range when blasts emitted from the pods. She hurried to right herself when the pods turned simultaneously towards her. They fired again and Piper threw up Katropis before catching it to create another shield like she did before. A split second before the shield formed, however, two shots managed to hit the side of her thigh and her lower abdomen. She let loose a pained and frustrated shout. The numerous wounds were leaving her pained and stung and very ready to lie down and forget this. She looked through the shield in front of her and saw the lasers come and disappear as soon as they reached the shield and it was quite surreal, having a beam fly towards you and yet leave you unharmed. She was getting quite high on the feeling.
The pods split from their line and began circling her like sharks, the lasers still firing. Piper gasped, turning her shield around helplessly, fear clenching her heart. It was useless. She jerked as spasms rocked her body with each blow. It was blinding agony coursing through her as each shot burnt through her suit and burrowed into her flesh. The vice-like grip on Katropis offered no comfort or escape whatsoever, abandoning her in her own pain. The shield was firmly against her heart, blocking the quickest way to end her but it wavered as her grip did. As her strength did. As her heart beat did.
The world was blurring, the lasers before her muddled and blending into one white light that stung her eyes. Her muffled mind belatedly processed the dark silhouette, lined by the bright light surrounding it as it neared her. She couldn't back away, her body riddled with sharp blows and so she met the form with squinted eyes. Arms encircled her and the shots suddenly stopped. Piper slumped against the form, gasping and then panting. With one last ebb of strength she lifted her head to meet what she hoped were the eyes of the form, her finger straying to the one button on Katropis she'd prayed she wouldn't have to use.
And then destruction.
A sharp white light flashed from outside the windows, followed by the violent quivering of the ship. Jason and other soldiers jumped from their places and shot towards the windows, wide-eyed.
His heart dropped and fear placed a cold hand on his heart that threatened to beat right out of his chest. No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
He barely registered the sudden voice of the admiral ringing through his ear. "They have retreated. All medics must report to the West and South Wings to tend to the wounded. I repeat—"
Jason snatched the earpiece off.
He limped to the launch compartment's control panel, meeting the frightened eyes of Leo and Reyna. "What was that?" He demanded.
Leo held his head in his hands, his shoulders trembling. His state terrified Jason. "Piper." He all but sobbed.
Jason grabbed him by the shoulders. "What did she do?"
"She…" Jason turned to Reyna and startled. Were those…tears in her eyes? "That idiot self-destructed her weapon."
He looked helplessly at Leo.
"We were monitoring her vitals through the armour she was wearing and the fight situation through the signals from her ear piece." He said with a strangled voice. "From…what we gathered, she…was hit…so many damn times." His distraught gaze met Jason's. "But Katropis…Piper and I designed it to act as a shield that would…consume energy." Jason could tell Leo didn't want to explain, was too exhausted and pained to say the words. But he was desperate. He needed to know. "So…I don't know why, she must've met a valuable threat or…even the fucking promise-maker but she used the consumed energy to destroy her weapon. And since there was so much of energy within it, the destruction emitted an explosion and…" He sagged and his voice died out. His head hung and his shoulders trembled. "And…"
Jason couldn't breathe. And…
Reyna's voice, stable yet weak, picked up. "And from the signals and results we've received, it's completely destroyed the pods surrounding and…" She heaved a shuddery breath. "We can't pick up any living life forces from the area. Her armour…isn't providing any more signals."
They were empty words. Jason couldn't process the meaning behind them. His mind wasn't working. He refused to dwell on their defeated forms, their grieving eyes. Refused to recall what Reyna said. He numbly walked away from the hung heads of his sorrowful friends, no destination in mind. He wandered out of the room, ignored the dozens of eyes on him, and shuffled down a hallway.
Reyna and Leo didn't know what they were saying, he reassured himself. They had gotten the wrong feed. The wrong information. It couldn't be true. She couldn't be…
It was only a few seconds later, or was it an eternity, that he dimly registered pounding. Were they…footsteps? A warm hand on his shoulder swivelled him around and he met the blue eyes of a short, blonde cadet. She immediately pulled him in, her small arms gentle.
It took him a few beats to realise who it was. "X," he mumbled, his voice weak. "Piper Mclean, whatever you want to be called. Let go of me."
He wouldn't lie that it was almost comforting being in her arms. He adjusted his chin a little higher to settle onto the back of her head that she leaned into his shoulder. Tears sprang into his eyes for a second, though he knew not why. A feeling perched in his heart, a sudden emotion he didn't want to identify. He slowly pulled away and found that she had morphed back into herself, into Piper, and the sight of his fiancée broke him.
"Jason," X breathed. "It's okay, it's all right. I'm here if you need me."
He said nothing and pulled her back towards him, choking. It was the sight of Piper that broke his numbness and the wall he put up against reason.
We can't pick up any living life forces from the area. Her armour…isn't providing any more signals.
She's gone.
He knew he couldn't pretend anymore like he so willingly did when he last spoke with her. He saw the blast, he felt how it shook the ship.
And she was right at the heart of it.
He grit his teeth against the sob that threatened to burst out of him, shut his eyes against the person in his arms. No matter how much comfort her presence provided, it wasn't the same. No matter how similar the two Pipers were, he knew his without opening his eyes. They were like two recipes of the same dish and Jason was too accustomed to his to pretend they were the same. Her presence was beginning to work more as a mockery than as comfort, reminding him of the thing he would never get back.
He would never Piper back.
He untangled himself quickly from her grasp and continued down the hallway, the grip on his composure wavering with each step away as he slipped into the depths of his tumultuous mind.
If he had been faster, he would've been able to stop her before she'd launched and gone ahead with the plan he and X conjured. If he had only been able to prod the truth out of X much earlier, Piper wouldn't have had to be herself, her courageous, honourable self, and gone to fight. If only he'd allowed X to take him down when she attacked him a year ago, he wouldn't have angered the second-in-command and ignited his fatal promises and everyone would've been here, alive. Piper would've been here, by his side.
He halted in his stride and inhaled a deep, calming breath. These were useless arguments, he knew it. Piper would've already smacked him upside the head if he'd spoken these aloud—
Piper.
He clenched his fists against threat of tears, clamping down his jaw and gritting his teeth.
When he reached the crossroad before the hallway to his room, he took a left instead of the intended right and limped to the set of double doors that were surprisingly unguarded today. He slammed open the doors and his eyes struggled to adjust the sudden dimness compared to the stark whiteness of the hallway. He scanned the large dull purple-cast room until his eyes found the long table set at the end, people slumped on the chairs. He strode to the bar and once again ignored the sudden united stare of the room, the bartender the only one immersed in his work.
The moment he rested onto the chair at the bar, Jason's entire body slumped, his arms thrown over the counter, his head buried in them.
He felt the pounds of the bartender's footsteps through the wood of the counter and raised his head to meet the man's eyes. His voice was low and solemn. "Something strong?" D asked.
Jason nodded shallowly and rested his head against the table once more.
Something dug into his leg and he frowned, his hand lazily slipping into his pocket to retrieve what caused him pain. The moment his fingers found the object, he froze. Slowly, very slowly, hand trembling, he pulled his hand out and held it in front of him.
It was a ring.
His wall of numbness came crashing down. His dam of tears shattered. He couldn't do it anymore. He didn't have the strength.
He shoved his head into his arms and wept.
Even before opening her eyes, Piper flinched against the bright, blinding light. A constant chill swept over her bare body, slipping even through the thin cotton blanket lain over her lower half. The icy metal beneath her stung her skin and a constant beep sounded in the otherwise silent room.
She slowly opened her eyes and flinched once more at the now more intense light. Her eyes roamed the room and she found completely pristine white tiles surround her and a large glass wall to her left.
Was she…being monitored?
The door suddenly clicked open in front of her and she blinked, starting.
A tall masked man walked in and Piper almost gasped.
Promise-maker.
His eyes, the only feature of his face visible, found hers and…what was that intense look?
She saw his gaze move down to her bare breasts and she quickly moved her arms to cover herself as he neared, fear pounding in her heart. But he merely lifted the blanket to her chest to cover her and turned around, pacing.
"I'm sorry," he said, "I told the nurses to bring you clothes. You must be freezing."
Her eyebrows drew together, confusion swirling in her head. Why was he being kind? She watched him as he turned to her in his stride. What was that gentleness in his stare? That softness? She kept her eyes on him like a hawk, monitoring his every move. No matter how kind he was being, she refused to allow herself to relax. She couldn't trust him.
He chuckled at her cold stare. "I understand if you hate me, Piper." She frowned at the way he said her name. As if it he'd memorised the way his mouth pronounced it. As if he'd said it a million times. As if saying it was a drug.
"Well, I'm glad you're sane." She retorted.
His eyes smiled. "I'm glad you're here."
She glared, inching back, revolted. "Why?"
His hands moved to the mask that covered his face and he slowly removed it, as if to create suspense.
She had enough knowledge in theatre to approve of the elongated suspense.
Because the reveal made up for it.
She gasped.
"Jason?"