Chapter 11: Saving home part 3
The shadows were just standing there, watching them, waiting, as if daring them to make a move. There had to be 20 of them in total, and that was only the ones they could see.
"Seifer…you think we can make it out of here." Cho asked, a clear hint of fear in his voice.
It wasn't looking to good, he'd fought one of these things, he knew what they were capable of. There was no way in the world he could even attempt to fight this many. "Not really." Seifer looked toward his gun blade mounted under the ship where he'd left his jacket, ready to charge forward and recover it.
"Thanks for the vote of confidence." Cho said sarcastically.
"It's what I do."
"Any chance your thinking of a plan?" Cho asked hopefully.
"Yeah, we make a run for the ship." Seifer told him.
"No way, those things will catch us!" Cho said.
"Then we fight our way through, if we're luckily we can make it." Seifer smirked, knowing that they would never make it that far. The would need more then luck for that, they'd need a miracle. "Didn't you tell me you got a GF? Just think of this as a test run."
Fight? He couldn't fight! "Damn…"Cho sighed, so many thoughts filled his mind. 'This is a horrible way to die, those things will rip me apart…' That was thought number one, he'd seen some of what those things could do. But more importantly he realized that he'd failed, and if Nida was going up against something remotely as dangerous as these things he'd need all the help he could get.
"Don't space out on me now. Dose this artillery storage go anywhere else. Like a vent or something?" Seifer asked.
Cho shook his head "No, just to the guns."
An annoyed sigh from expelled from Seifer upon hearing this, could he get a break for once in his life? "Looks like we're going to run for it after all. Ready kid?"
"Yeah." no, not really.
"Alright then." Seifer took a deep breath then, with slow movements as not to pre-maturely agitate the creatures he got in to a ready position, with out farther hesitation he charged toward his gun blade.
From there on everything seemed to move slow motion for Cho as if his mind suddenly began processing his senses faster, he froze, unable to do anything but watch everything unfold in front of him.
He could see every spring in Seifer's step while he moved. He watched the idle wolfs suddenly come to life, jumping down and climbing up from all sides. Moving so fast that they almost appeared to be going at normal speed while Seifer was trapped at a reduced one. Seifer slid to a stop underneath the ship right in front of his weapon, he lifted the gunblade from the ground, uppercut a shadow as he brought it up into a ready position. That was the only blow he'd have a chance to get off, by the time he did that the about 10 more shadows dangerously close and were about to pounce.
With out warning they all faded out of existence, Cho, Seifer, even the Ragnork vanished when the newly junctioned Shadow summoned himself.
Starting from the bottom of the Lunatic Paradona, he began possessing the machine. The charged ground, the walls, everything began to turn black like a cloud passing in front of the sun, it happened just as fast, in a few seconds the whole Paradona was under his control.
A pair of red eyes glowed as the GF changed shape, those red eyes became part of a wolf's face that appeared at the bottom of the structure. With a small growl, the wolf rushed upward in a larger form, his mouth open and devouring most of other shadows. As soon as he was at the top he faded out of reality, taking his control over the Lunatic Paradona with him and returning Seifer and Cho to their original positions with a fighting chance.
"What the hell happened!" Seifer looked around, wondering if what he had just seen was real or not. Either way the shadows that once surrounded him were gone.
'Thanks!' Cho thought gratefully. "Dose it matter! Let's go!" With out another wasted second he ran past Seifer toward the side door of the ship.
It seemed not all of the shadows had been hit by the attack, those that hadn't were coming for them in full force.
Cho waited until Seifer was inside before closing the door, hearing a small thump when a trailing Shadow crashed head first in to it. That was close, too close. "How fast can you get this thing in to the air?" Seifer asked, sliding down the broken bridge of the main room and heading towards storage, with out that bridge they were forced to go around the long way.
"10 seconds, I had to turn off the engine so that the Ragnaork could refuel." Cho explained, exiting out the door in the center of middle of the storage room to get to the hanger.
"!" The boy slid to a sudden stop, nearly falling in surprise when he entered the hanger and saw a Shadow blocking the stairway that led to the hall holding the lift to the cockpit and the passenger area.
"Ok, I'll fight it, you run past it ok?" Seifer immediately stepped in front of Cho defensively with his gunblade lifted.
Cho nodded obediently.
"Alright..." Seifer paused, waiting for the right moment... "Go!"
As soon as he gave the word both he and Cho ran directly at the Shadow in a confusing manner. Making sure to get the attention off of Cho, Seifer thrust his blade forward in to the black shadow's chest since he knew these monsters always went for the weaker looking person, with Seifer handling that Cho managed to get past the creature and head upstairs. "Come on, don't look at him, I'm the one you have to worry about."
! - ! - !
'Made it, thank you Se--!' As soon as he reached the head of the stairs, Cho didn't have a chance to react before he found himself inches from a shadow lunging at him already in midair. "Ahhhhaaa!" Once again everything began to move in slow motion with out explanation, even slower then the last time. 'W...What is this?' Those inches that separated him and shadow seemed to grow wider and wider with each.
'You... your doing that.' Cho realized, right before he faded out of existence.
In his place the Shadow GF appeared, standing face to face with a regular one that he was exactly 2 times bigger than. He changed shape with a growl, from his back a line of spikes rose up and shot out. They easily went through the smaller shadow's body and leaving a line of small holes over it before it ever touched the ground. To finish it, the GF's forehead pushed out large blade reminiscent to that of a sword. With one thrust forward he sliced the shadow in half cleanly, right before fading again and pulling Cho out of the sub-dimension.
'Thanks.' Cho only got a small bark like growl in an acknowledging response and figured that was all he would get out of the wolf. 'Right...'
With a clear path ahead of him Cho took the lift up to the cockpit, immediately running over to the dash board on it's ascent and knowingly pushed the necessary combination of switches and buttons to start the engine.
It seemed about a second later that Seifer made his way back to the cockpit also, a little more bloody and then he had been when Cho last saw him. "Are you ok?" Cho asked at the sight.
"Only scratches." Seifer sat down in the co-pilot seat next to Cho, buckling himself in nervously, though wasn't from the fact that they were surrounded by monsters but more so he was afraid Cho would crash in to a wall. "Let's go already!"
The engine roared to life with a small rev from Cho, he took hold of the throttle and instinctively released the safety on the weapons. "The only way out is up so hold on." Cho pulled back on the throttle as hard as he could, beginning a moderate but still hasty acceleration. The airship ascended fluidly off the ground and in to the air, immediately the cockpit started tilting upwards until it was looking strait up at the sky through the whole burned in the ceiling. "Here goes nothing..." With another rev the engine, the thrusters in the back of the ship flared with the initiation of after burners and Ragnaork shot forward hard enough to force the air out of Cho's lungs.
To their disadvantage the Shadows weren't going to make it that easy for them. One of the dark furred wolfs jumped down from a higher level and landed on the cockpit window amazingly able to remain on it's feet while doing so, with a simple change of shape the shadow's head became a spike that shot forward and thrust through the windshield, shattering it with one blow, sending throwing a rain of glass shards on Cho and Seifer as well as letting the said monster inside. It fell right between the two pilot seat, landing on the wall before, at the moment it was the floor because of the way the ship positioned.
"Damnit!" Seifer quickly unbuckled himself, jumping down out of the seat on to the wall above the lift next to the shadow that landed on to.
"Can you handle it?" Cho asked nervously, uneasy that one of those managed to get in so easily, that was bullet proof glass for goodness sake!
"Yeah, you just keep the rest of them away." Seifer called back, knowing it was an easer job said then done.
Right now at lest 5 more of them had the same idea and were dive head first towards the Cockpit. 'I wish Nida would have let me practice more...' Cho pressed down on the two red buttons on both sides of the throttle controlling the Glatting guns on both sides, both them of the ship opened fire.
He shifted the nose of the ship somewhat to hit the group, firing a blur of quick streaks at an incomprehensible speed. His only thought of it was that it was almost like hitting water from the way the monster's body splashed when the bullets hit them. It seemed as if it hadn't worked at all but it was effective, he could none the less because that was what their body looked like when the head of Ragnaork flew through them. "Yeah!"
One last shadow stood in their way, it had changed it's form to spread out and cover hole completely.
"MOVE!" Cho pressed down on pulling the blue trigger resting on the underside of the throttle and firing newly loaded missile, hoping that he didn't get caught in the blast of his own attack. The projectile was more then enough to incinerate the shadow on detonation as well as expand the hole substantially, letting them easily pass through. "Made it!" As soon as they were safe Cho turned the ship right-side up again, making the unsuspecting Seifer, who had been standing on the wall where gravity had pulled him, fall flat on his face.
With a glare and a red spot forming on his face, Seifer pushed himself off of the ground, stomped over the Cho and gave him a swift punch to the back of the head "You could have warned me."
"I could have couldn't I?" Cho rubbed his head, replying in an innocent voice.
"When this is all over I'm kicking your ass."
"Yeah whatever."
! - ! - !
"What happened….." Nida couldn't believe what he was seeing as the Ragnaork approached the Garden at full speed, trying to observe the changes. It was as Squall had said, he just didn't expect this. He could assume that these monsters that Squall had referred to really had done something to the Garden because of it's extremely darkened tent that wasn't there before and how that new color appeared to be moving around on it's surface as far as he could tell.
He didn't have as much time to assess the situation as he'd liked to have had, as soon as he got remotely close to the Garden a thin black spike pushed it's way out of the possessed metal and shot forward at a startling speed "!" It smashed right through his windshield, Nida was barely able to tilt his head to the side before the spike missed his face by inches and tore through the seat's headrest. 'Is...is this what Squall was talking about?'
Prying the Spike out of his seat with one hand, Nida stalled the ship completely and began firing with the Glatting guns. The rapidly disbursing bullets rained down on the structure just above the tail, each was met with the sound and action of splashing and water as it ate away at the merged shadow, tearing off small drops of the manifested darkness with each shot.
The shadow countered each bullet in turn with an uprising spike, just barley trailing after Nida as he paned around the Garden in a circle with all the maneuverability and speed the airship could produce. But the Ragnaork wasn't fast enough, the trailing line of uprising spikes rose faster and caught up to the ship. 'It's too fast...' Nida made a sharp decent towards the water to avoid them, only managing to evade a few before the spikes managed to slice through the roof and make it as far as the cockpit before Nida's decent preyed the air ship away.
'It can...get away if I...' Nida, launched 3 missiles during his sharp decent. The missiles stuck and exploded in three different spots, flaring up in a rush of flames, burning away the part of the shadow that resided near over the training center on the first floor. 'Did I do anything?'
When the smoke clear a large hole remained, large enough to show the training center inside also notability dark from possession, as a result of the attack, and this time the Shadow didn't counter.
'A weak spot.' Nida said to himself triumphantly, when a hole was created in the object the Shadow possessed, it became a weak spot. Or at lest that's what he hoped. Nida began running Scans on the Garden using the ships receptors while he fired the Glatting guns in to the hole. Blowing apart the blackened dirt and manipulated plant life inside. Someone else's first instinct would have been to using something more powerful such as another, but Nida was mindful that Squall was inside and he wanted to take the Garden back not destroy it beyond repair.
Recovering from the injury, the merged shadow shifted itself around and covered the hole by thinning itself out in other areas, with the opening patched a counter attack finally came. 'It can't attack with an open wound.' Nida had to study it as much as he could during battle since he hadn't had as much time as he wanted to assesses it.
The Shadow pulled enough of itself from other areas, returning the thinned areas to normal color, to send a pillar larger then the Ragnaork itself at Nida. Even with a mass that size the attack was so sudden that he didn't have time to avoid. A wall of the black substance spit open as if it was a mouth and smashed into the ship, it seemed to be trying to pull the rest of the Ragnaork into itself after already swallowing the head. The first thing it did was seeping in to the cockpit like flood waters.
'Squall wasn't kidding about theses things...' Nida watched it nervously seep into the windshield's frame, and hoping that this stuff hadn't clogged his weapons, he tried to fire the Glatting guns. Though the sound was audibly muffled a spray of bullets was still unleashed and after a few seconds of consecutive fire the pillar stalled it's advance just before the substance was about to reach the dashboard. Which wasn't water proof by the way.
'Now!' With an open opportunity Nida moved the airship to the right while descending, moving on his general sense of direction he began firing blindly, striking just the area he was aiming for, the exposed metal in the before the Shadow could pull itself back in to place.
It immediately released him and wasting no time Nida panned over the Garden a second time from the right, striking the area he passed over just before the merged shadow could reposes it again. He couldn't help but grimace at all the damage he would cause when he reluctantly took the chance before him and pulled the blue trigger, launching a missile directly in to the open quad 'Damn, it's gonna take forever to fix this.' a disheartened moan came when he watched the whole wing cave in with a plum of forced outward smoke, also doing massive damage to the Shadow.
This time it's counter was quicker then other previous times, shooting three much larger spikes at the speed of a bullet in to the Ragnaork, one driving and rooting itself on the left side, one on the right and one through the ceiling of the cockpit.
Nida flinched when it decimated half of his roof and embedding itself in the wall just above the lift. "Damnit!" Nida leaned forward toward the control panel now a sea of sirens and blinking lights. He fervently began flipping switches and pressing different buttons to either adjust different settings or shut of the sirens for a problem he could do nothing about at the moment. "No, No, No..." He focused all of his energy on escaping the hold, targeting the three spikes with the Glatting guns in an attempt to shoot them off.
But he saw quickly that he was helpless and could only watch as the Garden began to rise out of the water for some unknown reason.
All of this and he was still trapped...he began to hear the horrible sound of metal being forced to bend and buckle under a compression being applied from the spears hooked into him. He was about to be crushed... "What the hell, the Garden can't do that…" Nida started to try more desperate measures, at first reluctant because of his close range he fired 6 consecutive missiles, 2 to each spike. All sets of them erupted in a strong, deafeningly strident blast, Nida was forced to unbuckle himself and dive down to the floor to narrowly avoid a wave of flame bursting into the cockpit from every window.
Nida scrambled back up to his seat and retook the controls, as he expected the Ragnaork received it's share of splash damage from the explosion. "!" The air ship still managing to break through the hold and fall free though still plagued with three spikes plunged in unknown vitality. But by then the Garden was above him and the rotating blade under it was coming down on him, he couldn't understand it, the Garden couldn't fly like that.
That's why it was so unexpected. "Damnit!" He did his best to turn the ship but it was moving much more sluggishly because of the damages from the spikes's near impalement, he could barely move forward with just one thruster of 4 running. In fact he was so stalled that that he was actually sinking. "I...I can't move..." Nida began frantically adjusting things on the dashboard, trying to at lest patch the problem well enough to evade... "No..."
"NIDA!" Cho's voice screamed over the radio so suddenly and loudly that Nida flinched.
Nida didn't pause for a second, even while looking up to try and find out where that voice had come from his hands moved around knowingly on the control panel even with out watching. "C-Cho?"
He looked down at his radar, and then followed what he saw to the left windshield, couldn't believe what he was seeing, another Ragnaork was coming toward him at full speed. On second thought this was Cho he was talking about, if anyone could pull this off he could. "Cho!"
"Nida! What the happened! Your --"
"Get the hell out of here!" Nida nearly screamed it into the microphone, he could still see the garden descending on him, but he was almost out of the way….
Nida knew this ship, and it became very apparent to him that there was no way he would clear this. "Cho! Go now! There was a reason I left you behind da--"
! - ! - !
Cho was helpless to do anything but watch as the ring beneath the Garden descended down on top of the almost out of range Ragnaork.
"NO!"
The rotating disc sliced jaggedly through the other ship, severing everything south of the cockpit with a substantial explosion. The only part of it still in one piece was thrown rapidly toward the water in a substantial blaze. The severed majority half of the Ragnaork fell right alone with it though now only a charred frame.
"Nida! Nida!" Cho roughly dropped down toward remaining part of the opposing ship, not caring how close they were too the possessed Garden or that he was half way about the crash.
"Holy shit, watch it kid!" Seifer was relieved when they ship stopped just above the water's surface, much to close to a violent crash landing then he would have liked.
Cho put the ship on Auto-pilot, something he barely knew how to do, barely noticing in his haste that the system was being flooded with data sent by the other Ragnaork. But that wasn't his main concern. Cho bolted from his seat and ran to the lift, a curious and half worried Seifer trailing closely behind him.
He ran at full sprint to the side door, the boy actually jumped across the severed bridge to reach the air lock to Seifer's amazement. Cho pushed open the door and looked down and was immeasurably happy to see the cockpit floated just in front of them, most of the flames extinguished on impact.
"No, don't tell me your thinking what I think your thinking." Seifer made his way into the air lock after having to jump down and climb up on the other side. "Don't do it! If you jump---Hey wait!" Seifer reached out and tried to catch Cho but the boy jumped out of the Ragnork with out hesitation. "Stupid kid, how the hell dose he think he's gonna get back up here!"
Cho's body fell luckily into the sinking cockpit, landing with a force out cry on top of the control panel in waist high and amazingly quickly rising water. Cho was forced to crouch down to reach a fully submerged and unconscious Nida strapped in the pilot seat. With unfounded strength and adrenalin he managed to rip apart the straps and freed Nida, with he water taking most of the weight he lifted the older boy on to his shoulders.
The boy gasped, panting with staved breaths after having to swim to the surface since the water had rose far above his head during his time freeing Nida. "..."
That's when he noticeably began feeling the Shadow junctioned to him start to work with his body, he'd already been giving Cho subtle parts of his own strength and speed.
The Shadow's strength flooded his body now, prompting Cho to move. With out hesitation he did, climbing up the side of the ship cockpit still protruding out of the water, then jumping off of it, managing to leap up to the door of the Ragnaork floating over head.
"W-What the hell was that?" Seifer lifted Nida off of the boy's shoulder and placing him on to his. He had more questions going through his mind than he had time to ask.
"Come on!"
! -! - !
Seifer slowly sat Nida down in to the chair the left of the pilot seat, making sure to strap him in, mindful of any injuries he might have. "What is going on around here..."
"!" Cho jumped into the pilot seat and grabbed on to the throttle, not even bothering to remove the auto-pilot as he drew it back pulled the ship backwards away from the merged shadow embodying the Garden before it could attack, heading in the opposite direction to get a safe distance away.
By then Ifrit, Griever and Bahamut had recovered some and rose out of the ocean after a host of complications.
As soon as he was sure he wouldn't be attacked, Cho returned the ship to auto-plot and nearly tripped over his seat to get to Nida. "Nida?"
Cho placed his hand on Nida's shoulder, almost afraid to touch him from fear he might hurt something. As softly as he could manage he shook the older boy, he seemed to hit a sore spot because Nida cried out weakly in pain.
That jolt pulled him in to what little consciousness he had left, and the first thing he knew was that everything was in pain, even his eyes hurt when he tried to open them. "Cho….?" He was burned, had more bruises on him then he cared to identify and despite being soaking wet after being submerged in the ocean he was covered in blood, farther agitated by the ocean's salt.
"Are you alright?" Cho had never felt so sacred in his life, his voice was shaking, his eyes trembled with the begins of tears, he just hoped that Nida wouldn't...
"….." Nida's eyes rolled back, was slipping out of consciousness again. A soft shake on an injured area and aloud scream from Cho brought him back. "You...gotta learn to listen...I told you...to...stay.. in Esthar. When I...wake up...I'm gonna...kill you."
Cho smiled, unable to resist hugging Nida despite how much pain he knew was Nida in. "How bad is it? Is anything broken."
"I'm ok." Nida tried his best to reassure him, he tried desperately to hug Cho back, but he couldn't lift either one of his arms. Every time he tried he had to resist screaming, but he had to resist screaming by just breathing. "Don't...Don't worry...about me..."
"Your not ok." Cho buried his face into Nida's chest, unable to stop himself from crying. "You can't even stay awake!"
"Just...get out...of here, It's to...it's too dangerous."
"What was all of this you sent me?" Cho asked, referring to the data that had poured in to his system.
"It's the data on the monster… I had to move it so... that it wouldn't be lost…" Nida tried his best to stay awake, but it was coming increasingly harder. He could no longer keep his eyes open.
"Come on…Stay awake!" Cho shouted, he let go of Nida, taking him by the shoulders and trying to keep him awake.
"Squall…He's inside in the cockpit…of the Garden. You have too--" Nida's voice trailed off, his head falling to the side loosely, he couldn't stay conscious any longer, his injures were pretty bad also. That wasn't usually a good combination.
Seifer stood over Nida, doing his best to clean the blood off of him with a towel while trying to get a good assessment how badly he was hurt. "..." It wasn't easy to tell while he was in this position but--...Nida's heavy breathing abruptly stopped and he arched upward, his mouth open as if he wanted to cry out but couldn't. Then he suddenly coughed. "Whoa..." Seifer quickly lifted the towel to Nida's mouth as a streak of blood was spewed out. "Looks like he's bleeding internally." Seifer looked up at Cho who hadn't said anything yet, he couldn't help but pause when he saw the boy. 'He's pissed...'
Cho was furious, his eyes narrowed dangerously, his fist clinched so tightly that his arms were shaking, looking as if he wanted to scream something out as loudly as he could but couldn't get the words out. … That shadow had nearly killed Nida. Maybe it was his age that made that level of fury possible, he was consumed by an anger that the Shadow inside of him had never experienced and inanely started to feed off of and take on. It engulfed him, he kept embodying that strong emotion until he embodied Cho completely, anger and all.
The boy's eyes started to glow a bright red and an inhuman growl escaped from his throat. A black aura flared up but passed quickly, it happened quickly enough to surprise Seifer but he didn't have time to say anything before Cho turned and jumped into the pilot seat.
Though his body may had been possessed, a small part of his mind was still there, though still under strong influence. What stayed the strongest was his will and anger.
The two conflicting voices spoke in unison, but like everything else at he moment, Shadow's deeper one nearly overpowered Cho's. "I'm going to kill that damn thing!"
'He keeps surprising me...' Seifer left Nida for the moment and sat down in the co-pilot's seat, studying Cho's face uneasily. "Kid…your starting to make me nervous."
Cho didn't pay attention to Seifer, he just only turned the ship around sharply and headed back for the Garden.