The Guardian Who Came in from the Cold

by Mauser-KAR98K

The Chronicles of Aleutian. A continuation if Knuckles had a full brother. Aleutian's painful depression has his father seeking to mend their fragile relationship after 16 years of running away. All the while Snively has something up his sleeves. Vio,gore

37. No Shore for the Oarsman

Hello all and welcome once more. I hope my absence hasn't diminished anyone from going away from this story. I do have to report that my writings have been slow, but I'm getting close to being done with this fan-fic novel. And I hope real soon!!

This chapter was spawned almost now two years ago, hard to believe. But as I got to it, it came very slow, almost painstakingly. I thought I knew how I wanted to approach it but that all went away when I arrived to finally writing it out. I'm crossing my fingers that as soon as I get the next chapter written out, the next few don't follow the path of this one in creation. The three main barriers that came with this one; how to start it, where to start it, and can I keep the voice I wanted to write this one all along. My dear friend Zycho32 got a sampling with this when I was rout with writer's block and in the middle of it after restarting from a long mind-vacation. He said he didn't see anything wrong in except I probably out did myself...and in course, you are trying to out do myself in keeping the same voice. Yep...that was it.

And it came out long...way longer than I wanted it to.

The title came from a song by the Kingston Trio, "Micheal Row Your Boat". The song struck something in me on the subject and tone this chapter was becoming. With it came the title...and the chapter itself.

Disclaimer: I own nothing of the Sonic character's in relation to rights creation, or ownership.

And in so being...enjoy, though some of you may not like what happens here.

---

No Shore for the Oarsman

By: Mauser

---

Dread; it slithered throughout her body, sparing no nerve, letting no strand of pink fur defend against the cold air inside the eerily calm ship. It was as if her skin was fully exposed to the elements of the corporeal world and her crushing thoughts that revisited her with every flicker of white light she was aiding in the descent toward. Maybe that was why she felt tormented? Not of descending towards it but watching the birth of the worming snakes of lightning course a path in the dark, aggressive blanket of clouds below her, sending long forgotten reflections from a region in her anatomy she thought she had hidden well within to subject her heart with the cruelness of its bleak irony.

For Julie-Su, it wasn't a figment of chance revenge or an enlightened moment of pathos that usually comes with the sense of satire, but of a lesson that her former ilk had taught her in the pursuit of embracing the way of life and faith she was born into. The lesson had a very basic element of understanding and, in fact, beauty to it that she was witnessing vanish under her perched position behind the controls of the Freedom Fighter Special Mark Two.She could almost recite the writing on the data-pad when she was only fourteen, pledging her body and mind to the cause of Technocracy: There is a line where sunlight and darkness converge on the globe, causing day to fall away to night. The simple term she faintly remembered was called the gray line. But at this moment of descent, her hands pushing the control yoke in doing so, seeing the pink, orange color fade from the heavy fluff of clouds, become replaced from gray, to blue, and quickly to blackness, it was the truer name of which she felt the weight crush her chest with the foreboding premonition she feared that she would witness in the very near approaching moment of time.

"Terminator."

Another snake of lightning flickered against the cockpit visor, tracing every contour of her face as if with a wandering torch of phosphor. It cauterized every gapping wound she felt was opened to the elements, trembling with the notion that more were being slashed open. "Is Knuckles okay?" She was now wishing she had gone for him. But how would he take it knowing she had gone to save him instead of his people he was charged at birth to protect? Would he have disavowed their love because she held his safety higher than the lives of many? Could jealousy be deemed as a crime? It was a factor, no doubt, in her mind to either go and save her equal, or save her people. It was with her our honesty and new found convictions, that at the moment she heard the transmission, her snap decision became that Knuckles would indeed never forgive her for at least taking the chance to save as many as possible.

"Yeah, but look what he's doing?" she festered to herself optimistically, guiding an eye to a screen at the center of the console and watching the marker arrow heading hadn't shifted from it's straight course to the east. "He's trying to save others..."

She tried to push the argument that she was going after their people. She tried to solidify the argument into an emboldened passion and truth towards principle. But why couldn't that simple argument become the preponderance of the evidence she needed to win the case? Why was the fear of Knuckles' touch fading away from her torn heart? The fear shouldn't even exist! She was doing what needed to be done. She was holding up the work her equal had fought to ensure would be seen through, even without his presence. His work...his charge.

And yet, with an upwards strike of lightning that could only have been seen from her high altitude in the stratosphere, the curve and backlighting of the instrument panel against the cockpit visor drew her face in the reflection...and split her smooth right cheek with a dark line that bolted in the realization of why she could sequester the churning throb of rejection from her true love.

She had forgotten him. In the trials of the past day she had already forgotten about him, but in a way, her heart hadn't. And it was why she was charging herself with the upkeep of Knuckles' endeavors in keeping to his families responsibilities.

"Aleutian...how would he feel if Mathias' last act of sacrifice was all for nothing." If in the course of Aleutian hearing about the Hawkings' fate, what if she had gone for Knuckles instead of no one being dispatched to at least look for survivors: then all the tears they had shed in the past week would have been in vain, and her equal unknowingly placing the guilt on her because she placed his safety over his brother's attempts to find his way back home. And thus, losing his new found brother and never knowing who he really is.

"Should we go to red, Julie-Su?"

It was hard to believe that such a faint voice could shaken her from what felt like a troubled sleep, engulfed in a fearsome nightmare. But from over the steady vocal pitch of the lone engine that seemed to find the entrance to her triangular ear canals, the back pressure and even tremors feeding back to her hands and hopelessly numb feet sweating inside her boots and socks, the confidence from Ray's small voice had overpowered and conquered the ambient noise, and gladly, her baleful tugging conscience.

"Yeah," she replied, coming out as if she had returned from some far-flung reaches of a different world.

She felt it.

Squeezed around her and Ray like a horseshoe, the instrument panel exhumed a notion of safety only Ray was engulfed in. She watched the young, yellow furred flying squirrel jut his left hand like a hungry snake hitting on an unfortunate prey, touched a button just below the main radar screen, nestled amongst more buttons of it's ilk, and what Julie-Su had realized was the main source of light around her. The instrument panel's pale readings subdued to a dull red. Only the blinking mix of yellow, green, and a single blue nod lights told her that normalcy was still in command.

Right hand switching from its place on the lone throttle bar to the control yoke, Julie-Su drifted her cybernetic replacement arm to a touchscreen diagonal from her shoulder, tapping it to bring up it's option menu, which showered her face and tank-top-body-armored chest in a dull green light, and searched the commodities that acted as a border to the screen's edges. As her fingers were split inside her three fingered gloves, she worked her index finger astride her middle for her desired configuration: a punch for the heads-up-display; a select for altitude, elevation, pitch, speed, heading, course plot; then retrieving just as the reminder hit her, night vision that came to life in its green textures on a smaller screen that divided her and Ray just like the throttle board beside them. And when her fingers ceased their actions, a sallow flicker that expanded from top to bottom covered just a degree under a quarter of her sight to the rising, dark outside world. She could still see through it but she had to get past her mind reading the figures and information running inside their holographic cell that the onboard computer had lit on the cockpit window. They had just passed seventy-thousand feet, watching the beginning high prime numbers of the sixty-thousand descend. This all transpired to the left of the screen, showing what altitude she had just passed and what was soon to follow, eyeing the arrow that indicated the current status. To the right of the small, transparent display was the elevation pitch: "two-thousand five hundred feet per minute." Pressing her left hand forward which seemed to strangle the left handle of the control yoke, her right finding the throttle bar to bring it back, slowing the engine, she felt her body become pressed further in the seat. The ladder readings dropped, showing a three-thousand foot per minute descent rate.

Above all this on the screen was a three digit reading of numbers in red to the right and another in green to the left. A press of her foot on the left rudder peddle produced an oscillating discomfort as the forward direction had shifted some, Julie only letting up when the two numbers matched. It was the G.P.S. It was the course of her apprehension.

"This is going to get bumpy real soon, fellas," she said dryly, never looking over her shoulder to the rear, but instead drifting her eyes to the rising clouds. They looked like a hilly land, the last quarter of the moon illuminating the crests and slops from the west. "Better tighten your straps."

Webbing screeched from behind, making her stray her head over her right shoulder to see Mighty tugging at his dual restraints with both hands from the weak backlighting. Doctor Quack's cream colored feathers were nothing more than a dark shade of pale, clutching his medical bag with one hand as he tightened the straps of the chest rig one by one with his other, his eye patch helping to darken one side of his face. Charmy, sitting to the Doctor's right, had his hands placed on his lap, staring out the cockpit window like he would if he was the middle child on a family hover-car trip.

Her emotions were still eating at her. She spawned a thought that she wished her inner-self could laugh at when her concerned eyes drifted to Victor. She imagined the crocodile bouncing around inside the cabin, slamming his head with one throw of the Mark Two by her command, then jamming his tail with another. Such twisted thoughts would have made her deviously smile.

But she was glad to see him anchoring himself down on the seat with his belts in his position behind Quack and sitting to the right of Mighty. She was even happier to see that he'd stowed his headphones away.

Facing forward, she rolled her fingers before tightening her hand over the throttle bar, doing the same with her left hand over the control yoke. She looked across her left shoulder down the clouds, but found her eyes staring at the forward swept wing. They were indeed getting lower. Not only had the clouds' contours become more entrenched with hollows and valleys, but the humidity from the storm and the friction of the air moving across the wing was making a slim contrail on the tip, extending for more than ten feet before dissipating into the high altitude air.

"Speed...what's the speed?"

Glancing at the heads up display, she automatically brought the thruster back, bumping it with her wrist, wondering if it took her pulse and reveled her heart rate was pounding against her chest wall. They were gliding through the air at a brisk seven hundred miles per hour.

"Ray," she gently said. The young kid's face turned to her's. "Be ready on the spoilers when I tell you."

"Okay."

"Don't jam on them, got me?" she warned. "We don't want to loose any wings."

He shook his head, gulping as he did before facing to the outside and landing his left hand on the spoiler leaver just beside the throttle.

Taking in a long breath through her noise, and with it, narrowing her eyes that frowned her face just a degree to make her feel it, Julie-Su inched the control yoke forward. The horizon slowly climbed across the window, making the rising clouds act like a flooding watertable. A flash of lightning brightened the dark ink into a gray patch, diminishing just fast as the altimeter was falling. Fifty-thousand feet. Had her dwelling thoughts and instructions taken that long?

Shudders began to creep up her limbs, the yoke fighting her hold. "Spoilers, Ray," she struggled to say in a calm voice. She backed the throttle down, hearing the engine whine crescendo. If she'd back it down further, the engines would be idle, and where they were diving could possibly earn them a flame out. But their speed had jumped fifty and was climbing. Looking down at the throttle board, Ray's small hand was clutched on the smaller spoiler lever, meticulously bringing it back.

Seven-sixty-one; it hovered there.

"Forty-thousand!"

She felt herself leave the seat momentarily until she was slammed down back on it as if someone had thrust her shoulders to the floor. It was the upper level trough that was feeding the storm its energy to sustained its ferocity. Not long after the initial jolt that sent a electrifying pain through her spine, Julie-Su felt the yoke wanting to have a mind of it's own, tilting the ship to the left and arousing every pink hair strand to stand up on her body. She fought back almost instinctivly, leveling the Mark Two just for a brief moment until the slamming wind took back control, pushing the ship further over on it's right wing. A kick of the rudder peddle was all that was needed.

Thirty-thousand scaled by and the cloud cover looked as if the sea was just mere inches away. She strayed her attention to the speed indicator. They had lost over a hundred miles per hour, yet the controls still seemed stiff from the onslaught of air over the foil controls. And the shakes and shudders had intensified, making her replacement dread-lock bounce on the left side of her head, much less the rest of her toned anatomy.

But a different feeling was beginning to wash over her, dissolving the foreboding ire and dread she had come to befriend since she woke up this morning without Knuckles. Anxious? Could it really be that? Through the current heat of things, her muscles in her arms, and now legs, began to tire all of a sudden. The terror of the dead she might see floating on the water once they got below the storm along with the desire of getting to the last known relative bearing of the Hawking came to her like being slowly soaked in a very warm bath.

How far were they? She forced her left hand to the display screen and punched in the distance-to-destination. Twenty-two miles and decreasing!

And the fluffy sheet of rolling clouds seemed like a jump away.

"Here we go, Ray!" she heard herself say in a charged voice. "Help me hold the course and ship level. This is going to take both of us!"

He never strayed his eyes from his heads-up panel. "I'm with ya, Su! But boy this is a fight."

"Why I brought you along," she confessed proudly. "Figured you might want some new excitement."

Either he nodded giddily on his own or it was the jumping shake that had scored a piece of equipment–sounded like a tool chest–to crash to the deck in the rear open compartment. But Ray was egging for the dive into the unknown. It certainly seemed that way. To Julie, the sheet of clouds that her mind had been describing the whole time she had first laid trained eyes on had changed shape with the sensation of falling into a large comforter on a very large, welcoming bed. Her eyes unknowingly widened at the mere thought of this, and her body exploded with this feeling. Then the bed had no mattress. And the serene view of the heavens sailing in the dark smeared out from the cockpit window and collapsed into a foggy cast of black steam.

The heads up display seemed smaller and farther away than the foot and a half distance. Twenty-eight thousand feet! Elevation pitch at a feverish four-thousand feet per minute. "Speed?" Six hundred and climbing.

"More spoilers, Ray," she said, finding her voice was trembling through the shaking of the ship.

"It's almost to the floor!"

And her mind flashed to the rear of the Mark Two and the wings. The extended panels must have been fully up, making the ship look like it was dragging a cone, or a hoopskirt around its engine cavity while the wings had the effect of growing protective razors spreading finely across the wing area. She tried to look out the window to see if the wing was shaking but the intense cloud block brought visibility to nothing.

Then the control yoke in her left hand began to move on its own, but it didn't feel like it was the winds' doing. It was Ray. "What are you doing?"

"Check the artificial horizon, Su," he said calmly when she thought he might bite back at her.

She turned to the digital, circular gauge that housed a crude figure of a plane tittering on a ball cut in half horizontally by a light shade of green on the top and ink black on the bottom. The wings of the craft were tilted far over to the right, and Ray had nearly rolled the yoke over to the left to compensate and bring the wings level. She didn't even feel the craft roll it was so quick and motionless. "Rely on your gauges, girl!" she about exclaimed to herself as her eyes met the altimeter: twenty-thousand...nineteen-thousand! Then she spotted the pitch indicator, and soon realized in sinking horror that they were nearly in a nose dive: six thousand feet per minute.

"Stupid!" she shouted to herself this time with a corse, strained voice, pulling the yoke to her stomach. "You just got yourself vertigo!"

"Ray?" she voiced aloud in panic.

"I'm helping," he resounded back in the same tone, nearly standing on the rudder peddles to pull the control yoke back.

He must have seen the gauges too. Possibly was even more attuned to them than Julie-Su.How long had it been since she flown in bad weather? Two years, maybe three? How long has it been since she has flown in really bad weather? "Never like this." She groaned. Least not to let Ray know her inner thoughts to unsettle him.

To both their inner relief, the fast descent had slowed to a mere two-thousand feet per minute, placing them just above nine-thousand feet and dropping. But the cloudy picture of the outside hadn't lifted.

Julie checked the speed: five hundred and eighty and gladly dropping.

"Let off on the spoilers, Ray."

"Don't have to tell me twice," the young flying squirrel bolstered.

And then trickled in a voice she so didn't want to hear. "Are we there yet?"

She could've given Victor the satisfaction–and to her very own but grinning surprise–that they had notched over thirteen miles in the short, but terrifying, lose of control of their equilibrium and thus, the Mark Two. "Only eight or so miles to go. But where's the sea?"

It had to be somewhere in the worse soup she's flown in. "Victor, you were getting on my good side in keeping your jaws shut!" she managed to snarl back. For once, something felt normal in a great way.

A meek laugh came from beside her. "I didn't know you had space on your good side for him?" Ray was hopelessly mocking, but she was hopeless in defending herself, turning to him just to simper her reply. What she saw in him though was an alarm of curiosity.

"Hey, Su, I don't see any lightening," he said.

She faced forward, then squirmed her head over to the left side of the cockpit. He was right! The light show she'd seen during their initial descent wasn't around them anymore. Checking the night vision screen, it was awash in green, telling her the residual light that had been absorbed in the clouds was going to make the search a little more tedious once they broke the cloud level.

Seven-thousand feet...and like a lifting vial, there it was; the moon light was just strong enough to show the swells that capped white foam like blurred stars on the surface. The night vision showed this very well on the monitor, almost to the point of uselessness. How her eyes traced all of this without her head jarring from what seemed like a mortar case was a feet she hardly had time to register as a minor achievement in the shaking, bucking ship. But gazing passed all the electronic aids, her natural eyes caught what none of the monitors had told her. Small dimples had pelted the window, becoming streaked when the hash wind grabbed the water droplets and slid them passed her.

"Now it rains," Ray seemed to say in a blunt tone of agony.

Julie glanced over to him, her face looking as if a bad light had clicked on somewhere within the stiff soldier. "How's your V–T–O–L coming?"

A heavy snort made her stray her attention and concerned face to a sneer that faded just as quick as Victor's remark. "Now she asks him."

She drew her visage closer to Ray, conveying comfort and confidence. They needed him to have it, now, more than ever.

"The–the computer can handle it...right?" he softly said, hoping the whine of the Mark Two and the pelting of the rain would shadow his question from the others.

Julie slightly shook her head with her eyes wandering back to the control panel, touching the screen with the night vision tuned to it and selecting the forward-looking-infrared. The screen blinked from grainy green to an engulfing white, only hinting at the angry ocean's contour with what appeared to be shadows. "Ray, this could be a little tricky," she said in an ebbing, concerned voice. "Yeah, the computer can handle most of it, but you need to keep her steadier than what the computer can do." Bringing her eyes back to him, she did relinquish a meager smile for Ray's encouragement. "At least you won't be fighting it to keep it upright."

The flying squirrel rolled his eyes and snapped his head back. "That's what I meant, Julie-Su. I can take care of the rest."

Shaking her head, she broke into a smile before tuning her eyes back to the instrument panel. The HUD readings were gracious now, unlike the flight: speed slowing below three-hundred, altitude settled below three-thousand feet. But as soon as comfort had creased into psyche, a hard slam bounced everyone and everything inside. Julie's engraved stiffness of her countenance returned just as fast as the ripples from the jolt struck ever fiber in her body.

"Radar?" she asked with a degree of ire, though she had not wanted it to come out that way.

"Clear," chorused Ray, Julie watching his hand fall the to the throttle platform. "Taking out the spoilers, Su."

How could she forget. "Yeah." Then she felt a shiver of a reminding echo run through her spine. "Watch the temp, Ray. If the engine get's too cool from the water–"

"Yeah, I know, Julie," Ray cut in, however gentle, lifting the spoiler lever to the close postion, "we flame out and we're dead-stick."

His rebuttal kept her starring at the young, yellow furred squirrel, finding her heart yearning for the hope he learned his flying skills through Tails or Rotor and not by experience. But no, she remembered; he'd once been a prisoner; had once been innocent. Mighty had done the noblest of deeds in keeping Ray as sheltered as the presiding chaotic world would allow. Was this why she still felt angry, torn within herself? Was she undermining a strife so hard from friends that she was so thankful to even have, that she felt she was using them all in keeping Knuckles' heart? Was she–

Red! The crimson color flickered on the white screen just an eye blink away. But it wasn't there when her instincts locked her full face onto it. Right hand on the throttle, pushing it gently up for an extra push from the engine; left gripping the yoke like strangling out her feelings. She didn't breathe for the longest; waiting, watching...grinder her teeth for another red flicker or flash to come across the FLIR. The ship rocked! Her left wrist turned downwards, correcting the wind's eagerness to play with the Mark Two.

And there it was; dismal to the average onlooker but like a smile showing itself in a crowd of deadpan faces, Julie-Su witnessed her cue to inhale a fresh gulp of oxygen. "I just saw something on the FLIR," she nearly exclaimed.

"Changing my screen to it now, Julie," came Ray's quick reply and moving right hand. It seemed like a second coming of the Ancient Walkers had come to their little domain of a cockpit. "Wish Rotor would make it possible to adjust the intensity of these screens. Man this is bright!"

Julie wavered her head over towards Ray. "Keep your mind on your job, Ray, and stow your complaints till we get back."

"I'm just annotating out-loud–"

"Ray," she lightly scolded, fixing her eyes on her white-washed screen.

"Okay," he said, holding a short pause. "So what are we looking for."

Stabbing the yoke forward from the sudden pitch-up of the nose, Julie replied, "It's a red smudge on the screen when it appears," –throwing the control yoke towards her stomach; kicking in some right rudder, aiming the nose with the infrared lens just underneath it for a better sweep– "we're still a little far out–"

Ray busted in with a yelp. "I saw it, I saw it, I saw it! Something is bobbing in the water!"

But it faded from Julie just as her eyes fell back upon the screen. Before long, red shown like a dot in a pool of lithium. Then came a second...then a third.

"We're still a ways out, but we're closing in."

Checking the distance from the course plotted on a screen that felt like it was way on the other end of the control panel, they still had about five miles to go. "But the current and swells could be carrying them further to us...if there is anyone."

Shaking her head then rotating it back behind her shoulder, she let the soldier in her become partially unglued. "Victor–get yourself ready for a swim!"

Belts clanged around the fuselage as Julie watching in the red lit compartment, not one but several bodies rise up from the seats.

"Where's the light?" came Quak's voice, "I need to search for my medical instruments."

"Hold tight," Julie-Su said, facing front but carrying her voice to the rear, "we still have to slow down and we really have to search. For all we know, we could be seeing fires."

"In this rain?" Mighty's voice quizzed.

Bobbling her head, and not from the shaking of the ship, Julie replied, "Yeah, whatever."

Her hand then dropped back the throttle some more; her eyes lighting up when the FLIR started to look like a constellation in a space only exempted for one. She kept her face on it until she felt her chair tilt slightly back when someone came between the two seats. Looking over her shoulder, Mighty's features glowed beside her from the wash of white light from the infrared screens.

"Geeze, it's a soup." His eyes must've just then fell on the screen. "Whoa."

"Yeah, I know," the pink echidna groaned, felling her chair again move, seeing Mighty's head turn to the rear.

"Hey Charmy, better start shrinking yourself."

"Better tell him to bring a coat, too," Julie snuffed partially under her breath.

And then, save for Vector and Charmy's movements, the Mark Two lay silent. Only the engine and the rain resounded inside. Enough to jar Julie's nagging worries to her throat.

"Ray," she said, turning to him. The young boy's eyes met hers, letting concern fill her voice, and for once, making it soft. "Ray, whatever happens, you keep your mind here, and only here. Don't look back, but don't hesitate to shout if things get a little hairy." He nodded, his face dissolving from anything resembling the courageous boy that had come along. "Okay," she said gratefully.

And again, there was silence.

"It's not fire," Mighty said in low voice. "I'm guessing debris, but I can't see any fire outside the window."

"Thanks, Mighty," replied Julie, "and I do hope most of that is debris." Her heart ached at the notion if all that churning in the ocean were drowning echidnas.

But then her heart slowly simmered, cooling and healing for a fleeting second that felt as if a year had gone by. All thanks to a whisper from Mighty. "Thanks, Su." And he was gone before she could at least convey something to him from her warm, caring eyes. He knew what she was doing; he knew he had an ally in Ray's best interest.

"Alright everyone," she rallied, "hold on to your tails–we're switching to hover."

---

"STENSON!"

Her next gulp of precious air had almost swallowed in water when a swell from the turbulent waters nearly forced Lar-Na completely under. Holding Vickers unconscious body with her outstretched left arm while clinging to her's and Stenson's life by his soaked and ripping cloak with the other, she could feel every ache and burn from her shredding muscles. Yet, she held true to Stenson, as she had been for close to twenty five years; even as the swell pushed all three echidnas aloft further from the rest of the floating debris around them.

Like that which her only beloved savior was lying upon. Between the rain, the rolling pudgy breaks, and the heavy overcast of the dwindling storm, hindering what was left of the pale moon to shine down, Lar-Na could still at least see the darker shadows of her Stenson, the bobbing of crates and tangled masses which had better water displacement, pitching all around her and reminding her that the sea had yet to claim them.

So she kept at what she had been doing when silence came and the bow of the Hawking had slid under the heavy waves; screaming out to Stenson...to wake him up.

"STENSON! WAKE-UP!" His back didn't move. Only the pitching from the small chopping swells hitting the plank gave the now unconscious Field Marshal any movement. He looked so venerable to her. "Stenson, please, wake-up–"

"Milady."

The voice was very week, almost nonexistent. She held her breath. Would she cough? Would she hear something again? Her eyes didn't leave the hard, black spot on Stenson's back.

"Mi–Milady Lar-Na."

Her outstretched left arm began to slowly recoil, relieving the heavy strain, adding strength to her neck to turn her head. She could see white behind some very weakened, scared eyes.

"Vickers," she gasped with a heavy, but relieved breath. "Vickers, can you move any?" She could see his lips were a quiver with movement. "Vickers?" Three bobs in the water and prayer in her heart for salvation. "Vickers, say something–keep focused soldier."

His voice protruded out like a pin on a rock face. "Ma–Ma'am, I feel something tugging–on–my robe...what is it?"

"It's me, Corporal. It's me," Lar-Na assured in a laboring voice. If she had a cough attack now, none of them would survive. "Vickers, can you move?" she asked as clear and calm as she could.

"I–I–I feel something pulling me–me done, ma'am."

"It's your cybernetic leg, Vickers," she said, her voice showing the sign of losing her control. "Can you move!? I need you to move, Vickers."

Silence washed over him like the small wake that bounced what natural dreads he had left to give to technocracy. "My–" His voice faltered, Lar-Na hearing him spitting water out from his mouth. "My leg...it's–it's not...mo...moving. My chest...it's burning from the inside...mi...milady."

Vickers had unknowingly described her right side just above her navel. "Vickers, listen to me. Can you grab my arm." She prayed he could. Her fingers were starting to go numb, rapping them tightly around whatever fabric looked good at the time to snag just before his cybernetic leg drug him down. No response–she could make out something glossy on the left side of his face. "Vickers?"

"I'm trying, Milady–"

"Well, try harder damn it, or I'm going to loose you, Vickers," she spat out in letting go of something. "Now move your–" She heard a sob come from his direction, ceasing her voice just as fast if Stenson were to shout at her. Now more than ever she wanted him to. She gained control of her voice, swallowing the acid feeling of the saltwater lodged in the throat of over the overbearing wife of a Dark Legion Field Marshal. "Vickers," she began, like testing the air if it could handle her tone, "Vickers, please, I need you to grab my arm and help me pull you in."

She looked back, tracing her right arm up Stenson's back where somewhere her hand was strangling a piece of the fabric, then swung her head back to what she now realized was a very injured boy. "Vickers, can you still hear me?"

"Ye–yes."

What a wonderful sound, though the weak sobbing could've stopped. "Good...that's great, Corporal. Now can you, please–" She felt her voice falter from the mother she so wished she could've been. "Vickers, please, just wrap your hand around my arm where you feel the tugging on your robe." Silence. No movement. Then a hard shudder of another sob. "Vickers, please..."

"Milady, if–if you sto–stop crying, I will try again."

"Me," echoed the clear voice in her head. Was she the one all this time? "Okay," she said, feeling something that felt like composure worming through her system. "Okay, now come on, Vickers. You can do it."

"It...it hurts, Milady."

"I know, Vickers, but you soldier the pain out and aid me." Her eyes met his sagging, battered pupils. "Vickers, please, just touch my arm, wrap your fingers around it and hold on. I know they're both there."

"Ohh, thhaaaattss comfortiiinngg. I just feel numb all ov–oveerr."

Did she release a smile. It felt like it. "You're not the only one."

His head was starting to sag. She felt her heart eclipse to sheer panic.

Then her eyes snatched a vison that froze her heart into the next life. "VICKERS!" she shouted, staring past him at the rolling shadow that blotched out the looming, dark grey overcast horizon. "Vickers, grab a hold of my arm now!" she shouted with a flexed voice. The shadow was creeping closer now, white foam outlining the crest of the coming swell. Her scream came with what strength she had left.

"VICKERS!–"

She tilted her head up in time before she swallowed her voice and the saltwater; fought her fingers to keep hold of Stenson. Her body pitched up from the undercurrent, then was pushed forward into the plank, slamming the pit of her arm against it, only to be pulled away when the swell had moved on in search for land or another floating corpse she could not see. But she held on to Stenson, staying afloat and alive until perhaps the next one came. That she knew was going to be the last with her arms being–

Her left arm...it felt relieved–

She nearly screamed in pure agony when her eyes darted across to her left shoulder, finding it was not holding onto anything.

"VICKERS!"

Her head moved as fast as her eyes could keep up, but she couldn't descry the young echidna boy. Twisting right then left, she found her surroundings deserted. "No!" she shouted at the viciously championing sea. Options flickered straight to her mind behind her voice. They all rolled in so quickly that she didn't give time to discern all the logical ones, letting the illogical ring with an intensity that sided with the fierce passion.

She released her fingers...gulping in her best, deepest lung full of air she could, feeling the fabric of Stenson's cloak leave her touch. She was about to slide under. She was about to call her on arms to swim.

But her right arm was snatched just below the elbow with an iron grip. The shock forced her head over, only to glimpse at a large dark object trying to pull her in.

"Lar-Na," came Stenson's weak, but projected voice, "I–I got you."

She exhaled her grief, taking her passion with it. "I lost Vickers! I'm trying to go after him–"

"No, stop!" he said, cutting her off from any expedition. She heard him groan for a moment. "Lar-Na...you'll–you'll go down with him, dearest."

She thought to counter with a vengeance; to tell him she'd been holding onto his limp body for maybe the past twenty, thirty minutes...but reason and the new lust to survive came to her. "Stenson," she now said under a tearing voice.

"Lar-Na, I got–erhhaahh–"

She saw him recoil at his chest, simultaneously pulling her in but with a weaker grip than when he had snatched out from the clutches of Neptune. "Stenson!" she shrilled. "What's wrong?"

But he only responded with a harsher groan. Gaining courage over pain, she attempted to pull herself up on to the plank. But a howling noise restricted her, followed by a downpour of wind that raked the very ocean that was trying to swallow them. The wind turned to a roar, then to a sharper whine. Yet, Lar-Na was still trying to pull herself closer to her beloved; trying to be by his side if the wind was calling for their death. She wanted to be lead with him to Aurora if not waiting. She wasn't going to let him–

Her eyes were forced closed when light struck down at her pupils and made them constrict when she wasn't ready. She could feel her chest riding against the edge of the plank; she could hear Stenson's moans of pain...but the invading, flooding light froze every fiber of her being.

Gradually, and painfully with the misting saltwater slamming at pupils, she began to open her eyes. At first her vision was beyond the typical waking blur. Yet the light began to sweep it away, illuminating why Stenson had recoiled inwards. He was clutching his chest. His face, bloodied and stained, flexing the muscles all around his visage as he breathed with the pain.

A roving beam of light reenforced the one that had lit up their dark surroundings, calling Lar-Na's eyes to peer upwards. But she couldn't make out what was bearing down on them. The light was so blinding, along with the harsh whine intensifying the whole ordeal, and the onslaught of the wind churning the water like a living jagged rock formation. She got her free hand up to shield her eyes, but it still didn't allow for textures that overpowered the lights.

Then her mind halted. Between losing her last ounce of freewill to death, or struggling to keep it, she had ceased all thoughts of survival when a sliver of light began forming a line downwards, followed by one adjacent to it with a darkened space before it began to take a three sided square shape before broadening to that of a rectangle. Almost as soon as her mind came to shout out what was happening above them, her eyes seemed to twinkle when she saw a silhouette appear at the edge of the now formed ramp. She nearly wanted to cry when she saw another small silhouette slide behind the first.

But Stenson's agony filled voice reversed her joy to sorrow.

---

"Ready for the plunge?" Mighty asked Vector, looking up as he spoke, for the large panel that housed the rescue pulley. Being mindful not to use his known strength to rip the lever to pieces that hung close to the large, flushed panel, the red and black armadillo grabbed the black handle and yanked it down. Electric servos seemed to sneer at him when the small sprockets on the inside lifted the door and then slid towards the nose of the Mark Two, exposing the main coiled steel cable and a five fingered claw. Mighty's expression melted to confusion. "Uh, where's the basket thing?"

The crocodile next to him, just a few short breaths ago was looking over the edge of the lowered ramp, turned and faced something that Mighty should have had etched on his face. Utter worry. "Hey, Doc! We've gotta problem. Your patients ain't gonna like the ride up."

Across the cabin and over the seats, Doctor Quak could be seen with the aid of Charmy searching and plucking medical gear out from pulled heavy white drawers, seemingly paying no attention to them.

"Hey, Charmy, you're needed outside," said Mighty, shifting his voice around.

The yellow-jacket bee with his aviator's soft leather helmet popped upon the call of his name. "I'm helping the doc, guys."

Julie-Su's voice seemed to have tumbled out of the cockpit like an angry mother on the march to punish her mischievous child:

"I'll be over there in a jiff, Charmy. Get out and fly around, see if you can find anymore survivors?" The whole ship seemed to have frozen when they heard her pause for a breath. Then returned the tyrant in pink fur: "Is Vec out the door yet!?"

"Are 'ya gonna loose some height first?" Vector retorted in a nervous, mocking voice. Just seeing the water at their present height made his body quake with the coming hard slap of it against his skin. And with another look down to the water his painful apprehension dissipated.

"Hey, Mighty–tell home-boy back there if his Royal tail isn't out of the door by the time I hit the water, you're throwing him out."

Mighty could only turn in confusion and surprise when he saw Vector leap out off the lowered ramp. He fell with what little drops of rain water that had clung to the smooth hull of the Freedom Fighter Special, only to experience a sensation that boardered between euphoric and sheer terror that he could only describe as his organs trying to shift up from the fall while the positive gravity pulled him down. For the while, he seemed to be suspended in his own plane. He watched with nondescript eyes the toiling ocean rise up to him in the illumination of the ship's searchlights, stiffening his back to make his body become a crescent, straightening his large, powerfully built tail before crossing his arms, his hands at the tops of his shoulders as he held his breath, tilting his head up just before–

Impact came when the homicide of pure, unrestrictive sound, suffocated into the muffled rush of water attacking his scaly skin. He threw his arms to his sides, thus stopping his almost instant plummit to the bottom. Gathering his surroundings with the light that came drifting from above like the undercurrents, Vector began to thrust his tail from side to side, boosting him to the surface like he had just jumped up with a spring in his legs.

His head broke through to the mist filled air from the Mark Two's main engine's downward thrust to keep it level, watching this before he swung his head and then body to the west, paddling his arms and swimming as fast as he could to the girl he could see trying hard to cling to a pile of wood with a large lump atop it. Three strokes later he could see it was an echidna...and a familiar one.

"Help!"

Vector had to narrow his eyes to keep the blowing mist from hampering his sight completely, following the crying voice he just heard with his last few strokes. "Just hang-on!" he barely shouted as he tried not to swallow in any water. He had one arm pounding the surf right after the other.

Reaching for the heavy plank that he was sure was a piece of furniture, he edged his way across with his hands to the girl. When he got close enough to see her soaked blue fur from the neck up, and her tired, heavy eyes, all the male in him could do was smile.

"Hi, toots! Need a rescue?"

He'd never saw a glowering look come across someone's face so fast before. "Shut-up and listen to me!" When her breath was retaken from the assault, she fired away at what was left of Vector's egoistical psyche, only this time, he could see she was more frantic than turned off. "I had a hand on a boy, but I lost him in a swell!"

"When?" Vector fired off, inhaling deeply to oxygenate his blood and air-sacks.

"Just before you lit us up."

Nodding, he looked up to see the cable and claw being lowered. "Can you handle–"

"Yes, I can handle that scrap metal you call technology! Now go under and get him!"

It was here, and just before he said good riddance to the surface and her, that he finally realized where the attitude was coming from, and why the same inflicted barbed feelings where being cut open but with a different knife. The glimmer from her replaced cybernetic dreads were the clear indication. "Legion! It must run in the ideology."

And he went under. In just close to thirty seconds and a earful later, he'd gone from air, to something resembling a surface, then straight down into a world that possibly had little less care of his existence than the pair of female Legionnaires struggling above the two plains. Then, he could be wrong. But while he contemplated whether to surface ever again, he had settled himself into a swaying pattern with his body, keeping his head straight–possibly the most labor intensive part of his groove–while commanding his abs and back muscles to wriggle at such a slow pace, which in turn powered his muscular tail to thrash at the water, creating his own personal ribbon behind him that propelled him deeper than his oxygen filled body would ever allow. If only he could see through the dark, however clear, water.

Turning to what he recollected was west, he eased up his descent, concentrating on where the lights were shining down to. He was still in the ray of the main searchlight possibly blinding the blue female echidna he had left up above, but either it was Julie-Su or Ray that was sweeping the secondary light, searching for more survivors. If there were any.

Another pass and he still didn't see any being around him, or anything. The broad stroke of the light circled towards the north, rounding away from him. He followed it with his eyes, slowing himself down even further, until...

Was he mistaken? His mind hadn't even flickered to journeying to the worlds of fables and fairy-tales, but yet, he thought he saw a girl floating in the undertow of the ocean. He didn't see it from the roving floodlight but he caught a glimpse of it just below him from the radiant glow of the direct light above. Vector kicked with his feet to help point his nose down, wriggling his tale to pursue what he thought was a mermaid. At present, illusions or not, he had to find someone. He didn't like the idea of resurfacing to that angry–

A darker shadow to the already dark water made contact to the rational side of his brain and ordered his tail to be kicked in high gear. Closing in, he saw the gilded hair wasn't actually hair but dreads. When he reached out his arms to snag the boy, Vector's lungs seemed to squeeze his soul when the look from the cloaked boy, his face lifeless but yet seeming he was calling out for help, his arms beckoning for someone to come and retrieve them, hanging in the watery void as if suspended from an unseen force, and his dreads, sprawled out beside his head, floating like his robe and fingers, weightless in a weighted world that enclosed and encased its victims. If it wasn't in the past, or if he didn't remember it then, he thought he realized for the first time what dire dread for another suffering party felt like. It propelled him faster. It made him scoop the boy into his arms with a force that was too fast for the motionless limbs. It almost made him stop completely as he fostered the feeling of carrying a helpless soul to its reviving. It made him wonder if he would ever experience the same feeling again, asking himself if this was and would be just a one shot deal.

And it made the trip to the surface a longer road back for him. He swore his lungs, though not heavy in sensation, were going to burst open anyway with anticipation, with a sincere longing for the surface.

Breaking the water, he didn't take in the long, rejuvenating breath that most land-dwellers would strive to take. He did, however, breathe out to finally see the young boy in his arms was that of a Legionnaire. Yet with a clearing blink to add proper moisture to his eyes, the notion of a former, though it still felt like it, enemy had been reclaimed but in the lifeless body he was holding in his arms.

Vector threw his head around as quick as he could, first looking where he was in relation to the four winds, then searching for the girl and the large body of the Captain. His locked onto the empty plank, it was bobbing just as violently as he was. A second sinking feeling–and one he would never reveal to Julie-Su or the rest of the Chaotix as long as being cool was his fashion–struck like a plasma bolt to his headsets. Had they gone under? Could she not use her hot air to keep her and that Stenson fella afloat?

It was when a shadow drifted over him had he pitched his head up, the young boy's face looking as if doing the same but on a different, and ominous level, according to the crocodile. The blue female echidna was all guts and sincerity than bluster after all. Kinda like Julie-Su.

"Just great...now there's two of 'em."

---

"Keep the pace steady, Mighty. One knock or jolt could send her falling. And I know she can't splash down like Vector can."

Coming from the Doctor, that was possibly the weirdest thing the armadillo had heard from him. And if Quack could honestly see what he was doing with the child's play controls he was using, he was pretty sure the duck would've just said never mind after one observation. But he kept to himself and kept the speed dial where it was on the square panel just over his head, and his hand squarely on the actuating handle.

"You guys still going to need me?" asked Charmy in his high voice behind them.

Quack stole a glimpse to the bee, noticing his posture had the effect that he hated wasting space. "It looks like one patient so far, Charmy," replied the white duck, his doctor's coat flapping in the stray winds, his face turning back down the edge of the ramp. "But I can't find Vector."

Julie-Su's voice broke through the male dominating space inside the cabin. "He needs to do a search, Doc. Our optics can't give a close inspection like Charmy can."

The bee smiled at his new appointment, reaching up to his goggles above his head and lowering them to his eyes. "I guess I'll be on my way then."

"Just wait till we get our incoming first," replied Quack. "Hey, bright side is, young Prince...it's not raining as hard."

For the moment it seemed the skyward bound cable was the hour glass to the main event for them. Quack kept his even face down while Mighty, Julie-Su and an anxious Charmy waited.

"How's Ray?" Charmy asked Julie-Su, wanting the tension relieved.

"Well," the pink echidna began with a knowing smirk, "we haven't crashed, have we?"

Charmy gave a mocking smear of a smile for a brief instant, only to mask it with a true seriouness when he glimpsed Quack lowering himself down to his knees and extending his right hand in a very caring way.

"Easy, ma'am. Just take my hand and I'll help you up. Are you injured?"

Julie watched as a slim, feminine blue hand reached into Quack's. "Not that I'm aware of," came a briskly, emotional voice. It wasn't until the head of where the voice had come from risen above the ramp's edge had Julie-Su finally began to have doubts about her decision. The blue echidna was old, and she was a Legionnaire.

And then the shock and surprise engulfed her pink body when the woman spoke:

"My husband is in and out of consciousness, and I don't know how many more are down there," decried the blue echidna with a narrowed face to Quack. "That brute you sent down went after Vickers. I'd lost him from a swell and he sank down."

"Husband?" Julie gasped beside herself.

"I can see the both of them," Mighty shouted out, peering down the edge.

But for Julie-Su, at least there was one quality about their rescued party: they both shared a healthy good disdain just by her mere description of Vector's entrance.

Gathering her boots under her, Julie-Su set after the large hulk that was wrapped around the five fingered claw, only stopping briefly when she noticed the hardened face of the Captain of the Hawking.

"Captain Stenson?"

"What happened?" she finally asked when her senses reacquainted her.

Julie could see the response coming, and she was waiting for it. The blue echidna had it on the tip of her lips until the world around them froze when both females' eyes solidified in a mutual glowering stare against each other, Julie-Su's only coming after she identified the foreboding detestable scorn within the other echidna's eyes. Aside from her dark, drenched blouse, her wet, messy hair that was tangled around her just as equally soaked and dripping dreads, the echidna's appearance added more knots to Julie's stomach than she knew anyone could tie up.

"Lar-Na," Stenson's moan came from behind the blue echidna. Julie seemed to stare on in quiet amazement as the trailing of the older female's name dissolved the mask she had seemed to purposely place on her face just for Julie. And she didn't know why.

"Easy, Mighty," eased Doctor Quack, holding the rescue claw and it's captive with a wide spread of his arms when the pulley line was fully relieved of any obvious slack.. "Can the assembly be slid back inside."

"Working on it, doc," came the Armadillo's pensive reply, Julie-Su straying her gaze to see him place his right hand on a handle directly beside the one he was using. A hard shudder latter and the inside of the fuselage was filled with the cry of an electric motor.

"Little help here, Julie," said Quack, using what strength he had to keep Stenson's ride as gentle as possible.

Julie's legs pushed her forward, but Lar-Na was right there at the doc's side, holding with caring hands around Stenson's head and face. "Stenon?" she wanted to scream. Everyone close by could hear it in her voice. "Stenson, my husband, please don't–"

Julie-Su's face lite up on hearing Lar-Na's plead to her equal; to her husband.

"Lar-Na, don't talk," Stenson whispered in a tired, raspy tone.

"Julie," called Quack over his right shoulder, both his arms underneath Stenson's back. "Get on the other side of me and be ready to help me lift him. I have a spot just past the seats for him."

Nodding for affirmation, she seemed to scurry around the large red echidna's boots and placed both her arms and hands beneath his back, weaving them like one might interlace their fingers beside Doctor Quack's. When she was ready, she nodded again to Quack, who in turned, twisted his head over to Mighty:

"Okay, release him."

With Mighty slamming his finger on one of the many buttons on the ceiling mounted control panel, the heavy actuators of the claw moaned as their phalanges separated away from each other and Stenson's full weight was gently given to Julie and Quack.

"You have his head, ma'am?" Quack asked Lar-Na as he had to squeeze between two of the claws fingers.

"Yes."

"Okay, let's move him back. Go ahead and rotate him so his head points towards the tail."

Squatting to get under the claw, Julie-Su was glad her morning stretches were becoming useful, having to twist her ankles and abs to negotiate the minor ballet to do as Quack had instructed–keeping her eyes forward while straying them some so she didn't trip, occasionally looking at Lar-Na as a guide and to see if her disdain would come back on her face.

"Mighty, go check on Vec," she shouted back just before she traversed the gap between the passenger seats.

"Already on it, Su."

A slither hissing from the blue female echidna. "I thought so."

Julie-Su had only a fleeting second to see Lar-Na's seething face return before concentration set back in and on her equal. The seats were a tight squeeze, but the passage did more harm to Quack and Julie than Stenson. A few feet more and Quack had motioned with his head to the right. "Put him by the wall," he said. Walking backward for Julie wasn't a hard task but it was far from easy with the Captain's heavy hulk. And with another nod from Quack to her and then to Lar-Na–her lips quivering and her visage bearing something resembling pain–they carefully lowered Stenson to the deck.

"Okay, let me get my instruments," said Quack, getting to his feet and turning away.

"You do that, I'll go check on Mighty," Julie-Su added, she too turning before Quack stopped her with a firm grip to her right arm.

"No, stay put for a second–"

Mighty's voice boomed through the Mark Two. "Hey, Vec has someone else in his arms. The claw is almost to him."

"Can you two get him?" Quack asked just as loud.

"You're asking me, remember."

Another nod, than a stern, but requesting face to Julie-Su. "Get a blanket for her and I'll be right back."

She nodded as quick as she could and stood to bolt towards one of the seats where there awaited grey cotton blankets. Snagging one with her cybernetic hand, she looked up to the cockpit. "Ray, how you're doing?"

Her strengthened voiced was answered with Ray's arm extending a giant thumbs up. "It's pitching every-which-way, Julie, but I ain't making it come loose."

"Cool." And she turned with the blanket in her hand, moving as quickly as she could back towards Stenson and Lar-Na. She nearly slid into them when she dropped to her knees.

"Here," she calmly offered, opening the blanket.

To her great and hurtful surprise, Lar-Na didn't wait for the opening of blanket, but instead she snatched it ruthlessly from Julie-Su's hands. "Just give it ta' me," she barked, then discarding it behind her. Her stare hardened, her eyes motioning behind the pink echidna. "So you have recruited kids to fly. I thought that was below you."

For reasons she didn't care of why Lar-Na was acting like this, Julie matched her tone and expression at her. "Hey, I can just throw you right back out and take my rescue somewhere else."

"What's going on here?" Quack bellowed as he nearly ran forward with a pair of hooked scissors in his hands. "Have you checked him yet?"

A shake that flung dreads around and her temper aside. "For what?" Julie-Su asked in a easier voice.

But Doctor Quack didn't answer her, shooting his stare to Lar-Na. "Please get that blanket wrapped around you."

"I'm fine!"

"No you're not, ma'am," Quack shot straight back with a larger caliber voice. "You're in shock and you don't know it. I don't care how many enhancements you have, shock is shock and your fundamental anatomy is suffering from it."

Lar-Na's stare harden, almost encrusting. "And what do you want me to do."

"What I tell you...warm up and calm down, or you will be my next worst case."

Letting his words hammer at her without a reply, Quack took the hooked-shaped scissors and placed them at Stenson's collar, sheering open his cotton jumpsuit and exposing his furred–and to Quack's medical shock–twin metal chest plates. His eyes were wide with his voice. "What in Gray's anatomy is this?" Reaching behind him, he placed his hand on a large white linen towel and carefully pressed it at the chest of his large patient, dabbing at it until he rolled the sheet off. It was purple, his head darting closer to Stenson's chest with a closer eye.

"Did you see what happened to him," his voice distantly asked Lar-Na while his attention was roving at Stenson's chest, looking for where the bleeding was pooling from. For the moment he asked her, he thought he saw the captain's blood oozing from between the lower metal plate and his soaked fur.

Lar-Na's laboring, although strong voice reached out and brought his head up. "He grabbed me and drug me back behind him before the blast."

"What blast?" Julie-Su nearly snapped in an awe of disbelief.

Lar-Na shook her head from the pounding of questions from all around her; including her own. "We were hit by a torpedo–I think–"

Heavy footsteps ranged inside the large cabin. "Coming through Doc. This guys bleeding pretty bad, and he's unresponsive."

"Vickers!" Lar-Na shouted in disbelief, but sorrow.

It was Mighty, his arms carrying a dangling, lifeless boy, not much younger than him, between the seats and towards Quack. "Over there," the doc said, pointing to the back and left of where he was.

Then he turned and grabbed Julie-Su's arm, picking her up and like one of St. John's helpers to the King, escorted her to the forward most seats, out of earshot of Lar-Na. "Can you keep whatever war's at bay between you two?" he asked right in the pink echidna's ear, looking off at Ray as he did.

She kept her stare on Mighty as he lowered the young Legionnaire to the floor. "It depends on her," she said, forcing her face over to Quack with her eyes trying to read his. "Look, I can go back and help Ray."

"No, I need you the most–right now."

"Why?" came her sharp tone, bringing her eyes away from him and back to Lar-Na.

She felt Quack inch his bill closer to her left ear, almost touching her cybernetic dread-lock, his breathing becoming labored, unknowing to her turned away face of the intensity his own was forming while his thoughts were organizing. His tone had the perfect match; slow, direct. "Because when a few fighters came to Knothole after driven from their home, I did a physical examination on a girl in the bunch, and nearly had to ask Rotor to come and run a diagnostics on her."

That girl was her. She remembers seeing his face when she was very leery of him taking her X-Ray. The procedure was fine but to see her inner-hardwire and hardware baffled him. She didn't have to see the X-Ray to know how her devotion to technocracy in her very youth had made her, had consumed her body, inside and out, and had made her feel; for she felt it. Every lead to every mechanical or computer component hardwired to her basic and functioning anatomy; from the chip where he brain meets her spine, to her replaced dead-lock that functioned as her antenna and first article of her body to be sacrificed to the cause; and to her cybernetic arm, that thanks to the chip, she doesn't remember ever receiving. She was Knothole's only science project that she wished they could undertake with one goal: to get rid of it all, and retake her body that so many other Echidna's she'd had seen–and endured their distasteful looks about her–and to become them.

Then there was Knuckles; the magic in her life that never looked at her the way she did to herself, but only at her full heart.

Yet in all this, her face bore a thought to Quack that she noticed it kept him staring at her. "What about Bunnie?" she asked him in a steeping voice.

Quack's eyes, then head, faltered to the side, turning towards Mighty and Vector, who were hunched over the young boy. His tone was soft, but inflicting to Julie-Su, even if he didn't aim it to be:

"She didn't volunteer."

And he stepped away from her, abandoning her next hope of acceptance.

"Hey Doc," crashed in Vector's voice, bring the pink, sullen echidna out of her resurfacing turbulent thoughts that she knew she had locked away long ago. "You need to see this dude's face!"

He seemed he didn't have to when Quack detached from whatever person Julie last saw him as, to become the doctor they were needing. "Miss Su, get him on his side and rub smartly at his back. Make sure his mouth is open."

A sharper female voice assaulted him from Stenson's side. "But he's breathing!"

Julie met with Lar-Na's acidic eyes as she dropped to her knees. "C'mon, I'm trying to help."

"It's to get anymore water out of his mouth so it doesn't obstruct his airway." Quack, himself, was now lowering down to the unconscious boy's left side, placing his hand on the kid's right shoulder while examining his face. There was no single gash, but, from what Quack could see was a large removal of Vickers' fur and skin from his temple down close to his cheek, spreading over to the back of his head. With his eyes burning from this he went on with his explanation to Lar-Na, "A teaspoon of water down his lungs could kill–" He stopped himself in order not to scream when he pushed the boy's muzzle over to trace more of the large wound. Three of the echidna's dreads were ripped away from his head like a blade had made a downward sweeping diagonal cut, leaving a fourth dread-lock towards the nape of his neck partially filleted. Blood was pooling around him and the unconscious Legionnaire.

"Did he have any dread-lock replacements?" he asked after achieving his breathing again.

"One on his left side," filtered Lar-Na's voice, Quack looking back to see both female echidna's were placing Stenson over, the blue female pressing against his back.

The heavy moan from the large male was satisfying to Quack's eyes.

"Okay, gang, now our turn," he said, eyeing at Mighty directly across from him, then to Vector, holding the boy's head still with one hand. "Mighty, we're rolling him towards you."

Placing his hands underneath Vicker's body, Quack lifted up and Mighty eased in the direction. Water trickled out of the Legionnaire's mouth and some out of his nostrils. When Quack pressed and rubbed at Vicker's back, Mighty watched as more came with it...followed by the trickling of blood from his lips.

"Hey, he's bleeding from his mouth."

Quickly hunching over and looking down, Quack's face shook in dismissive. "Nah, I think it's the blood pooling around us. Don't think it's pulmonary edema" A quick check over his back and shoulder to Lar-Na and Julie-Su before looking back at Mighty. "Okay, bring him back over."

Not an inch had they moved him when Vickers coughed, spitting up more saltwater onto the stained deck.

---

Julie-Su had brought Stenson back over, lying him on his back. When she looked to Lar-Na, sitting with Stenson's head in her lap, she had to follow the older echidna's stare and find out when she had a fleeting smile.

"Vector, go grab guaze...lot's of it," she heard Quack order.

"We need some, too," she put in. "And a blanket."

The croc rose. "Yeah, yeah. Coming, coming."

"Make it fast!" Lar-Na cried out.

To stop herself from laughing wasn't even a struggle, but Julie-Su did shake her head before looking back down. Why was she trying to avoid eye contact with Lar-Na? "What's next, Doc?"

"Check his pulse," came his reply, seeming farther than it should be. When she diverted her head over her shoulder, she saw the reply was mostly directed merely at him. Two fingers were at Vickers' throat.

"It's up, but strong," said Lar-Na, her voice easing from her frantic state.

A shake from Quack's bill pierced at Julie's heart. "Wish I could say the same from our kid here. His is very weak." His face drifted to her's just as Vector dropped an armful of white packets at Vickers' head. "Julie, his severed cybernetics–did they connect to any of his vital functions."

She stammered in her head. "Ahh, nero, yes."

Lar-Na's voice peaked over her thoughts. "Defibrillation, but it's a reverse method."

A stray of his head brought Lar-Na the most inquisitive, yet dire stare she had ever seen. "Better explain that to me," Quack stammered.

Julie-Su's voice finally engaged, accepting the blanket and gauze packets from Vector. "Our heartbeats and central nervous systems help power our technology."

Quack's face solidified a fear that not Julie-Su or Lar-Na could explain. He was still hunched, still clinging to Vickers' body. "Okay, for right now put direct pressure on any wound you find. We stop the bleeding pronto! Our kid here is on the verge of dropping into decompenstated shock if he hasn't already. So..." Quack's moment pause kept Julie's eyes on him. "So we keep him supine." This time his face found Lar-Na's. "Ma'am, what's his name?"

A heavy voice answered from below her. "Vickers."

"Stenson, don't talk," Lar-Na said, closing the space between her head and Stenson's.

"No," Quack gentle said, "keep him talking–keep him alert."

---

Ray's attention was deviating constantly between the controls, over his left shoulder, taking in the violet pooling all around the boy they brought in, then back to the controls, letting his job detract what he just saw.

Yet again, his attention was diverted with Quack's voice. "Vickers?"

As his eyes fell on the hunched over duck, Ray wondered why the doctor was creating more pain for the boy, watching him rub a knuckle at the kid's chest very harshly. When Quack produced a pair of hook scissors from his wet and purple blood stained lab-coat, the yellow flying squirrel turned away, not wanting to see what was going to happen next. "Hey, the rain is starting to let up more," he voiced to himself when his eyes fell upon the cockpit window, watching small drops of water sprinkle on the cabin. "Hope Charmy is okay." A fast ripping sound from the cabin darted his head back over his shoulder in the heavy seat, witnessing Quack cut through the heavy black robe of the boy, and to his astonishment, baring a knuckle again right on young, prone echidna's chest.

"Vickers! Hey young man, can you hear me? Can you feel a pain on your chest?"

Ray felt the ship jerk. He broke his stare and focused on the controls, easing the yoke down, slamming his hand on the throttle to add a little more power.

"Stenson, say something," echoed into the cockpit the older girl echidna's voice. But this time he kept his eyes forward. Even when a lite groan was carried into his domain, he still kept his attention more focused.

"Mighty, a little more pressure at his dreads," Quack generously ordered.

"I've only got two hands, and it's overflowing."

Doc's voice came back a little more demanding. "Vec, need more gauze, and find me the respirator. Looks like a sturdy green balloon, but I need a mask for a broad species muzzle."

"Keep looking forward, man," Ray said to himself. "You'll just be in the way. You don't want to see this."

A harsh shrill rammed from behind him. "Stenson!?"

Twisting back over, Ray was finally shaken when his eyes fell on the blue echidna, watching her press her hands at the larger red echidna's face, crying down at him with a sad face. It was all his mind could describe.

"Stenson...wake up! Please, wake up! You're not waiting for me!"

"Doc!?" shouted Julie-Su. She looked as if she was crushing his chest with some white tissue paper. She looked frantic in Ray's eyes, her own face looking back to Quack.

"What did she mean she wasn't waiting for him?" he asked, never minding what another voice in him was trying to reason. He'd seen death. He'd seen oppression. But he always wanted to forget about it. So he turned his face away. He kept to himself once more...doing his job. But still wondering why Quack was shining a flashlight in Vickers' eyes. "Is he trying to call for him? Is he trying to show the way for him to come back?" His wandering smile left him. "Is that all I need to do to bring people back, too? I can help with that."

"His eyes aren't responding to dilatation," the doc's voice came pounding in severe dissatisfaction. "Here, Julie, check and see if our Captain's pupils constrict."

Ray forced his head to turn back, his mind curious if Julie-Su could try the same thing–

THUMP–THUMP!!

Eyes locked to the left cockpit portion of the window; descrying Charmy supporting himself with one hand while hammer fisting another two knocks on the windscreen with the other, holding an opened, panic filled mouth straight at Ray.

---

"Hey, it's Charmy, Julie-Su."

She had to brush her hair back behind her when she looked up into the cockpit. Her cybernetic hand was placed firmly on the small pen light Quack had slid to her. "What?" she asked a bit dazed.

"Stenson?" Lar-Na shook at her equal's face, making Julie turn hers.

Ray's high pitched, excited voice pushed back into her attention. "It's Charmy, Julie-Su. I think he wants me to follow him."

"Can you do it?" she asked, edging over to Stenson's face, thumbing the clip that activated the LED light. Lar-Na rolled back his eyelids for her as she flickered the light back and forth, catching the Captain's pupil slowly constrict but dilated flush with his brown hue a little too slowly.

"I think I can."

"I need to know, Ray," Julie retorted back, but never looking up.

Quack's voice jolted her though in wake of her's. "Start squeezing some air into him, Vector."

"Hey Quack," she began, forgetting about Ray's reply, "He's eyes aren't reactive like they should be."

Before Quack could answer, Ray's ebbing tone shot through. "I'm gonna try."

Julie's head darted to the cockpit, glimpsing at Ray pushing the yoke forward and the throttle lever up for more power. But what she was expecting was for the engine to whine up, to announce a continuos roar of explosions...not a sigh...

...A sigh from below her.

"Stenson!?"

Lar-Na's voice had inhaled her equal's name, shaking Julie-Su's core that mimicked her own cry when she had seen Knuckles' lifeless body over a year ago. It rattled her so much her eyes slammed down. Stenson's head had turned...his chest fallen, not rising. "Doc! He stopped breathing!"

Quack's tone was as knee-jerk in his response: "Check his pulse!"

She found the artery just below the echidna's jaw where she needed to feel for–nothing. Not even a weak attempt to push her index and middle finger off his red, damp fur. Darting her eyes up, she searched for Lar-Na's but found she needed to search for her soul as well. The blue echidna was stricken with fright in a distant stare as if watching her world crumble in Stenson's lifeless body. Then the plain rocked; Julie-Su realizing it was the ship and not her emotions and soul quaking inside her. Looking forward to the cockpit she saw Ray fighting the controls, and not leaving one hand on the throttle. Glimpsing back down, all she could see was a soul leaving...then looking forward she could see a woman waiting for her equal's touch to leave her, waiting for his departing soul to end hers. Did Julie-Su want this to happen to Knuckles at this instant? If Lar-Na's total resigned look was the foreboding pain of what was yet to come, would her life ending now, over the ocean on this black night and a half a world away from her equal jeopardize his own life because her touch left him, breaking Knuckles down with the weight that in this very time, could make him venerable, defenseless, and in the fate of it, get him killed. Julie-Su knew what this coming pain was...she had felt it before when Knuckles was taken from her.

She didn't want to see it.

Getting to her feet, she fixated her eyes dead to the cockpit, fully determined to save the ship and everyone onboard. She started forward–stopped dead when a harsh pull and clutch of fingers came from her wrist.

"You're not deserting again, Julie-Su!"

Lar-Na's venomous voice, and when Julie-Su swung her head to see the older echidna's virulent eyes chasing at hers, made her freeze to almost becoming a fixed object in the Mark Two. "I'm not letting you betray me or anyone of the Legion again! And I will not let Stenson die because of you siding with the Guardian!" Lar-Na pulled Julie-Su forward, placing her muzzle to hers. "He's in you thoughts now, I know it. And I'll be damned if you directly betray and desert me and my husband..."

She saw her throat collapse when the breath Lar-Na was trying to force down escaped her. Her tight grip strengthened on a reflex Julie-Su could see wasn't driven by anger. Then a cough pushed out the woman's lips, followed by a sudden gasp for air that she had to bring up her free hand to her chest, as if to pull at her fur and skin to aid in respiration...and she coughed again, more violent, more repetitive, to the point her she had weakened her grip away from Julie-Su to place it over her mouth.

"What's wrong?"

A savior gulp of air, a waned voice. "Nothing you can...eh–fix."

And at the moment, Lar-Na inhaled again, deeper, steadier, lowering her head down to Stenson's lips. It was if she was giving him a long kiss...until Julie-Su saw his heavy chest rise. When Lar-Na lifted just an inch up from her lover's dormant face, she inhaled again and pressed her lips to his, forcing the air into his lungs, pouring what Julie could only feel as her passion into him.

"Someone better help Charmy?" shouted Ray.

Julie dropped back to her knees, interlacing her three finger gloves together and planting them on the gauze she was using to clot the large gash that traced Stenson's fur and skin and between his twin metal chest plates. Breathing in, she leaned into her arms, compressing his rib-cage. "What's happening, Ray?" she asked without skipping a beat.

"He's trying to lift someone up to us...Mighty–he needs you."

---

He was almost there. If the echidna wasn't so heavy he could've swooped in already. But the body Charmy had dangling in his arms weighed a ton without being soak-and-wet. Looking down and finally bathing in the two large flood lights of the Mark Two, he could see why.

"You Legion guys need to loosen up...big time!"

His wings were tiring, pumping on his back as fast as the cartilage and muscles would allow. A foot later he could smile with almost being in arm's reach of the ramp. An inch later he could touch it if he had the freedom to do so. A second later and his shoulder had a warm hand around it, never able to rejoice in having his feet touch the deck when Mighty had lifted him a full Mobian body height up.

"What'd you catch–"

Mighty didn't have time to blurt out Charmy's name when his brain etched the large red echidna's long dread-locks–natural and replaced–dangle on the deck, trailing rivers of his life's elixir down them. And then he looked over the rest of him, birthing an unbridled emotion of dispair for the soul Charmy had saved.

Then the thing whispered.

"Trent–Trent...how could you..."

"Help me bring him in. Maybe the doc can help him," Mighty observed, grabbing the Legionnaire's heavy black boots and lifting them off the floor.

"Turn him around so I don't trip on his dreads."

"Okay, Charmy."

---

They turned him slowly but rushed forward to the cabin in a matter that looked like movers on a mission, maneuvering between the seats and passing by Julie-Su and Lar-Na. Ell-Tee glimpsed this from the corner of his left eye, though it was throbbing and blurred from the water and stinging more from his blood flowing down from the center of his head, tracing down his stiff, but crooked jaw-line, his Field Marshal, his chest being worked on...and Lar-Na giving her all. He felt his body drifting. He felt his arms sagging under him; felt his dreads rub across the metal deck. But he could still turn his head. He could still speak.

"Laaaar-Naaaa."

But she didn't look up. She didn't hear him.

"Larrr-Naaaaa."

He felt himself lowered, watching the lights and the pale inside walls rise up around him. Then his back touched the floor–

"AAHHHHHhh!!"

He arched his back, squirming, wriggling, fighting to get away from the pain. He searched the space around him for something to hold on to, to cling to to transfer the pain away; but it numbed when his head swayed to the left, over to Lar-Na. Peace swallowed his mind, calling on his face to give a lasting smile at her when her's met his.

"ELL-TEE!!"

She started to dart up. She started to relinquish her hold on her equal...on his dearest and trusted comrade; his mortal friend. For Ell-Tee it drove his head to shake like a small ripple being born from a single drop of rain, inhaling a breath for his vocal cords to enjoy a pass over of free air of this world.

"Ssttaaayyy wiitthh himmm, misstresss."

She didn't move, only her chest and her searching eyes. But he could see her wanting to.

This time, he could only force his mouth to move for her:

STAY...WITH...HIM.

"Mighty, get over here and help Vector with Vickers," decried a sharp voice over from his right side.

Feet and shoes pushed and slammed all around him. Then knees beside his head. He could still feel his hands, though lifeless, stretched but mangled, seeking for anything more to hold them, wanting someone to help him slip by. When Lar-Na fell back down to her knees, when her eyes left his hold for his last moment with her, he drifted his head, such as his mind, over, tracing a handsome young bee's face directly above him, and across to a duck with an eye-patch over one eye, trying to talk to him, feeling at his neck, then his chest.

Ell-Tee stopped when he saw Corporal Vickers, lying on his back, a green crocodile pushing air into his lungs with a crude, primitive respirator. When the croc lifted the mask off his face, Vickers' mouth was motionless, opened. The red and black armadillo was checking at his throat...his pulse.

"Vickers?" he breathed into the air, willing his arm to extend out to the boy's.

His arm had stopped after only a few muscle spasms of movement. He felt the throbbing in his eyes slowing, becoming comfort over everything, glazing to blurriness...to stillness upon a lasting breath...

---

"...Vic..."

Quack turned his head down to his new patient. "What did you say, sir?" But the echidna didn't respond. He didn't even flinch when Quack buried his knuckle in the half echidna, half cyborg's sternum. "Hey, partner!? Can you hear me–"

He silenced himself when the sound of air escape, almost bubbling from somewhere from the echidna's body.

"Hey, Doc," called out Mighty from behind in a very grievous tone.

"Hush, Mighty," Quack answered back, his face scribbled with questions and puzzlement.

Taking his lone right hand, he pressed down on Ell-Tee's chest, lifting it up while bringing his head closer. He heard the gurgling hiss again.

"Hey, doc, I've lost his pulse."

He didn't hear Mighty this time. Doctor Quack of Knothole City was out of the office and now at this very moment putting his hand inside the Legionnaire's robe, extending it out into the light with a dab of blood on his finely feathered hand. Rubbing it on his yellow skinned legs, he placed the same hand back inside the echidna's heavy robe but followed the clavicle bone around the shoulder to his back. He didn't have to pull his hand out to know what the escaping air was from. The lake of purple blood around his and Charmy's knees should have been the indication, and even feeling the soaked metal floor from the large gash inside the robe. But he needed his hands for his second opinion, and the final call.

"He's got a sucking chest wound in his back," he sighed in low, disheartened tone, looking over at Charmy, whom he know hadn't a clue what he was talking about.

"Can you fix it?" Charmy asked like a kid asking his father to mend a shattered vase.

He barely shook his when Mighty called out to him. "Doc?" Turning his head he could see Vector trying to pump in oxygen with Mighty not wanting to kneel by him idly. "Want me to crank out the shock paddles?"

Before he could say it, the only two female voices, even though at odds, seemed to have finally found something to agree with and said it in unison.

"NO!"

Quack darted his head over to Julie-Su's and Lar-Na's direction as he stood.

"You'll short circuit him, Mighty!" Julie-Su barked at the sinking armadillo.

"And his wet fur could do a reverse defeb," Quack followed up. He paused a moment longer as he locked eye with the two girls; Lar-Na, he noticed, fighting for breath. "How's he doing?"

Lar-Na's head went back to Stenson's mouth. Julie-Su could only shake her head before going back to compressions.

"Fifteen and two breaths," Quack said with a distant, but reminding voice, turning back around to Mighty and Vector. "Okay, time for the ole' cardiac-pulmonary-recitation gig."

---

"One–two–three–four–"

She tried not to tear as Julie-Su counted, pushing on her lover's chest while she mustered all the strength she felt dwindling away to force air into Stenson's lungs. "Stenson," she whispered into the heavy air, closing her eyes.

"–thirteen–fourteen–fifteen–breathe!"

Pinching Stenson's nose, she engulfed his lips with her's and forced every nano-gram of air down his throat, watching his chest rise before falling. She inhaled again, fighting this time to expel her payload. Yet, when she lifted up, she nearly collapsed upon him, wasted with energy, struggling not to cough again.

But Julie-Su was picking up where she wanted to be, her muscular toned arms rippling around her pink fur and the hidden skin underneath. "One–two–three–four–"

"Stenson?" Lar-Na cried.

"Six–seven–eight–nine–"

"Stenson, you wake up. You fight this. I'm not going to have you wait for me on the other side–" She forced down a coming spasm in her lungs.

"Twelve–thirteen–"

"I'm not letting you fall in defeat now. I'm not burying you."

Julie-Su kept her count up but couldn't pull her eyes away from Lar-Na. "Fifteen!"

And she watched the blue echidna place her lips on her husband and forced air down to his lungs.

"Breathe, Stenson!" Lar-Na flatly screamed her order when she came up for air.

"Check his pulse!" shouted Quack from behind them.

Julie dove her fingers right for Stenson's artery at his throat. Again, nothing. "Starting compressions again."

"How long has it been since he stopped breathing?" shouted Quack again.

"I don't know," she almost snapped back. Placing her digit fingered glove at the base of Stenson's sternum, Julie interlaced her fingers once more and pushed at his chest. "One–two–three–"

And she pressured on, fighting all the questions in her head why this Lar-Na was calling the Captain of the Hawking her husband. They were Legion! Their customs had no place for marriage in the Legion.

"Charmy, close the ramp," Ray voiced from his high position.

But Julie didn't hear the bee's footsteps nor even cared why Ray had asked for the ramp to be closed. Her gloves were turning purple with Stenson's blood escaping out of his wound and her endurance was starting to go. "Fifteen–breathe!"

Lar-Na closed her lips to Stenson's, breathing down into him...but kept her lips locked to his. When Julie sought to question this, her eyes turned up to a moving but limp presence beside her.

"My–wife..."

Stenson's voice came in just when the ramp had shut to the outside, allowing him to be heard by only the surrounding party. Then his chest rose but to only fall under a heavy moan of pain.

"Lar-Na..."

"Stenson, don't speak," his wife whispered into his ear. "Just stay with me...keep squeezing me."

"Lar...Na."

Julie-Su crossed over him, searching for his eyes, and glad to find them open. With this, she placed her fingers seeking his pulse, finding it strong but not regular in rhythm. But his chest rose again, this time trembling with a heavier moan out his nose.

And when she saw him take in his third full breath, and with Lar-Na's face shining down on his before looking up, his voice came to them in a heavy tone of sorrow; Julie searching his eyes for the mournful stare he was beaming across the room to the raised voices across the room.

"Vickers?"

---

"No pulse," Quack nearly barked at the boy's body after removing his fingers from Vickers' throat. "Two shots, Vec." –His glance to Vector awarded him the two puffs of air from the respirator– "Count 'em out for me, Mighty!"

Interlaced fingers; knowing full well where to place his hands, Quack practically rammed his palms into the kid's open chest. And he was just that; a kid! Replaced anatomy to machinery didn't count for him in growing up. Just seeing his young face under the mask, recollecting Knuckles' height and stature, comparing the Guardian to his brother he had to work on just a week prior, and remembering the kids that looked just as young as Vickers on the same ship they had saved that same week broke every barrier in Doctor Quack not to give up on him. "I'm not losing two, today! I'm not taking no from you!" he shouted straight at Vickers' chest with his charging eyes.

"Fifteen, Doc!" Mighty said directly beside him, watching him readying his hands on the mask to seal it around Vicker's mouth when Vector puffed air into it.

"One–two!"

Back at it with a vengeance; his arms pumping a little harder this time. Why did it feel the boy's chest was stiffening? "C'mon. You're young!" he shouted down at his patient.

"Yo, doc!"

Quack shook his head away from Vector's page. "Mighty, I need you to count."

"I am," the armadillo reasoned a little harsh, almost pushing his face to Quack's.

"I need it out loud, now come on!"

A second of hesitation and Mighty's voice pierced the cabin. A moment later the count had stopped.

"Breathe!" Quack instructed, taking a few himself.

Two shots; hands over chest and compressing.

Mighty's lone voice bounced around the cabin walls. "One–two–three–"

"I'm not losing two, today!" Quack shouted aloud at Vickers. "C'mon boy, help me! I'm not losing you!"

He felt the nitrogen gasses escaping from his spine he was pressing so hard. He felt Vicker's chest wall loosen up, driving him further to compress, manually pumping his heart to give circulation through out his body–

"Doc."

The look on the boy's lifeless face under the small mask burned into him. Vicker's still eyes stared at him, calling him...driving him.

"Stay with me, Vickers!"

"Doc!"

He kept pushing, turning his head around to face the other three staring eyes at him; Lar-Na was still sitting on her shines, Julie-Su hovering around Stenson's left side, and the Captain watching on aimlessly at him.

"DOC!"

A heavy hand wrapped around Quack's arm...halting him.

He faced where it came from and saw Mighty's forgiving, but indurate eyes looking for the duck they seemed to have lost. "Doc! Stop, man...look." Quack felt himself shake when he inhaled his first breath back into the world he felt himself returning to, casting a long face and head over Vicker's mouth. His mouth had a purplish foam at the edge of his lips. And it liquified when Vector removed the mask as it streamed out of him like a releasing levy.

The armadillo's voice came as a forceful mumble, if he'd ever heard one. "He's dead, doc..." Mighty kept an estrange stare at Quack, mustering his will to speak again in the same punishing, soft, sighing tone. "...you broke his ribs, man."

It was at that moment, and in aid to Mighty's distancing voice in his ear that Quack realized that it wasn't the nitrogen bubbles being released from his back...and why Vickers' chest had become lighter in resistence. He got so involved, so inflamed with saving a life that he lost a moment of his, and did more harm to a situation that had no hope of turning around. He hadn't accepted it...and he had hurt a patient's soulless body in the process.

He found his strength, ordered it to his legs and climbed the long gauntlet up. Yet, his heart was heavy enough to almost yank him back down.

"Cover them," he said, holding a breath with a hardening face at the two bodies now before them. "Cover them," he repeated in a voice stricken in shame.

Turning around, he laid his eyes on the three Legionnaires–one reformed through love–and eased his way to them, finding a place beside Lar-Na and Stenson and sat down. He burred his head amongst his hands, rubbing the fatigue not away from him, but deeper inside.

"How is he?" he asked after a moment.

But not a word was spoken...not a word perfumed the air for the longest pause in time Julie-Su had ever felt pass in her existence. She wanted to break it, but couldn't. Instead, she scooted slowly back to the crescent wall, placing her back against it and tucking her legs against her chest while wrapping her arms around them to place her chin between her knees. She held this pose as Vector placed a blanket over Ell-Tee. She dropped her stare when Mighty covered Vickers.

She still wanted to hold her voice, but she couldn't. "How many were onboard?"

A longer pause before Lar-Na spoke. "Twenty...I think less."

Julie-Su brought her head over to the blue echidna, seeing that she was stroking one of Stenson's natural locks. "Twenty?"

Lar-Na sighed, her eyes firmly on Ell-Tee's and Vickers' covered bodies. "We made it to Albion...your equal was right, Su. But that pacifist culture could just sink to the bottom for all I care."

"But they made it?"

Stenson's voice called to their eyes.

"Where's–where's Wesson, Lar-Na. Did we find him?"

She rubbed his brow, lowering her face to his. "My love...we left him there...remember. He's safe."

But his stare was vacant, detached from them. "I'm–I'm sorry, Lar-Na..."

His sigh brought his wife's head closer to his. "Don't be, Stenson. You did what you set out to do. You helped–"

"I'm sorry I didn't listen...I'm...I'm not fit for Field Marshal if I couldn't listen–to...you." A pause Julie-Su wasn't sure she would forget. "I set them adrift," he continued in his distant voice. "I set us all adrift and there is no shore for us to go back to."

Lar-Na held him, placing her cheek on his brow, staring hard at Vickers' and Ell-Tee's boots. "There was never a shore. There never was."

A tiny voice broke Julie-Su's strain from the cockpit. "Julie, we need to go."

She could barely turn her head. "Yeah, power us up...back to Knothole, Ray."

A breath from her nostril; a sigh from her lips, Julie-Su drifted her eyes across to the same object Lar-Na, and now Stenson, were beaming towards.

They kept their stares at two sets of boots. That was all they could see...Vicker's and Ell-Tee's boots in the cabin light, swaying with the directional turn from Ray's controls, giving them the only movement to their bodies. Their boots were the last thing before the cabin light was switched...and for Julie-Su, feeling the dread of the gray-line fleetingly pass before darkness enshrouded her and everything. Even still, in the pale red light coming through the cockpit, their boots could still be seen.

And when the lone engine whined into its scream, she swore it was their voices crying from the other side of the river...that they were safe...that they found peace...

---

The sun was dawning, yet darkness still crested in the white room. The beeps from the machines were still abound though slim in tone and quality, and the flicker of the city lights gave the visual melody to the machines' calls, but to the world, grey was coming...and with it the blue that brought dawn...

And it was offset to a different feel, a different kind of air as a harsh, course, however faint whisper spread in the darkness.

"Nata-Le?...Nata-Le?"

And another brought his redemption to the coming morning...his coming life.

"I'm here, my equal...I'm here, Wesson."

---

Okay, how was it...I know the length was...well, long, but I did my best to have scene splits to break this up.

My confession right off the bat: originally, Wesson was suppose to die in this chapter as well. But since writing "Albion" I had a major change of heart in keeping him and his persona in the story. So, he stayed in Albion.

My angles I used for this were interesting on my behalf just to try a few new things, and give out some perspectives while telling the story. (Good reason why for the length) First...I haven't seen a fan-fic almost anywhere were Ray the Flying Squirrel has an actual role...and then throw something with his perspective in with it. I did have a hard time pressiving him as a child while in fact he is not. But he is still young, so his scene with watching Quack and Julie-Su trying to save lives did come from that child perspective and niavitiy. In some apsects with the ongoing war, it's sad.

But then I come to Ell-Tee. Had many ideas I wanted to use in his death, more so of building up to it, but I didn't want to write a book on him. I did have fun creating him, and wished I could keep him, but the story needs to go on without him. For those fans of his...I am terribly sorry. I really am...I liked him just as much. To be real honest, he was really suppose to be a fill in character. And that too was Vickers. Him, to me he was the fill in character, and there to be the punch line.

But in the end, they were all beings...life.

So to it is Wesson. We will see more of him...and since the many chapter's that have passed since his "Last Stand" I had to throw the very last scene in...and I look at it as the epilogue to Stenson, Lar-Na, and Wesson's sub-plot story line. I promise that this three ongoing character's will be truly seen again.

As for now, I'm on the verge on finishing the draft to the next chapter. And afterwards...the conclusion...one I'm still on the edge of my seat to write and see through...and I hope that's an omen that it will be done good and fast.