Hot air blasted past Irvine, and he smelt its heat, heavy on his lungs as he drew breath to scream. Around him clods of dirt were still raining down. A smart missile had blown a smoking crater in the airstrip right across the buggy's path. Only a sharp swerve from the police driver had thrown the damn thing off course. The Galbadians had started spilling off the chutes on the far side of their plane as soon as the shooting had started, but they'd been checked by the police marksmen scattered through the thorn trees and rocks that ringed the strip. It was the side of the white jet facing the hangers and buggies where all hell had broken loose. A missile team and two portable maser cannons had started targeting the buggies from the chute doors, trying to support the scouts. Other mercenaries had broken the plane windows and sent spell-blasts arcing out. It looked to Irvine, his ears still ringing from the near-miss, like it was raining fireballs. The carefully packed-down earth of the airstrip was torn up and churned by the blasts and the spinning wheels of swerving vehicles.
The buggies were catching the worst of it; by tearing back-and-forth along the length of the jet hosing it with autocannon fire, they turned themselves into big fat targets. But they were needed. They acted as a screen for Sergeant Deem's men as they boiled out of the hangers and stormed the CC-880. Irvine had lost track of the pilots in the melee, and he didn't think he'd be able to hear Deem's voice right now if the Sergeant screamed down the com-net. He badly wanted a cigarette. Gods he hated command sometimes.
The brakes squealed as his driver pulled them round with a handbrake turn, and the hijackers' plane swung back into view. Only this time a black omnithopter hovered across its beaky nose cone, while a second circled protectively above, guns spitting at targets on the ground. Irvine flung back his head and whooped raucously when he saw them, the pride at the sight of Selphie in action tinged was with the relief she'd made it down safely. That pilot was getting his drinks bought for him tonight that was for damn sure.
He turned his attention back to his sights, lining the autocannon up with the door nearest the nose, where the missile team had fired from. The mercenaries outside would be pounding on the cabin door by now, he thought. They could use a distraction. Besides, he grinned to himself, he couldn't let her take all the credit…
The buggy's seat buckled sharply under him, like they'd just hit a rock in the strip. He seemed to hang awkwardly in the hang for a minute, waiting for gravity to catch up. His straps should have bounced him back, but he just kept rising. There was no sound, but the air seemed to coil itself sinuously around him, plucking up his outstretched body effortlessly. He flew upwards; riding a wave of fire up till it broke on the sky, and sucked him back down with its retreat.
Smoking
he was sosore
heburned
and
Selphie stood up and freed her nunchaku with a sharp flick of her wrist. To her left Sakia also got up and shook her head to clear it, making her blonde topknot bristle even more wildly. Denjac's hand snaked through the air, making his spell's gestures with the same crisp precision that she recognised from Irvine's spellcasting. He pointed at her and released the energy with a wave of his hand. White bars of light encased her body in a flickering box that shrunk to fit her shape.
"Shell!"
Sakia wasn't far behind, weaving her spell in her own personalised system of hand gestures. Balamb had always encouraged students to shape their focus in the way they'd remember best.
"Haste!"
Pink dust filled the inside of the 'thopter, sprinkling them all. The shaking of the deck seemed shift to a languid rolling as Selphie stepped up to the open bay doors.
"Happy landing Ma'am," Denjac muttered as she passed him by. He was eyeing the drop nervously. Selphie tilted her head to look at the ranker and batted her lashes- well it put some of the colour back in his face. Then, just to show she could, she stepped lightly off the 'thopter without looking.
"Float!"
She dropped most of the short distance quickly, but to her eyes she glided gently down rather then fell. The spark of Float magic pulsed through her bones and she imagined them turning light and hollow, like a bird's, changing her body to flight. The spell stopped her above the nose-cone, and she hovered in front of the cabin windows there, checking the scene inside. The Haste magic made everything seem hard and slow, as if she were watching through a snapping shutter. People turned slowly to look back through the glass at her. She saw their mouths start to gap open emptily through the windscreen, like fish in a tank.
She gave them a little wave, then kicked out, hard. As the 'screen flew to pieces, she stepped fluidly through and onto the cabin's control panels. Hasted, she seemed to flow like water, while her enemies seemed caught in treacle. Her path had put her straight between two of the hijackers. They'd put themselves at the front of the cabin, keeping the crew between themselves and the locked door. Both were hunched against the roar of the 'thopter, but twisting slowly round towards her. She brought Strange Vision round in a back-handed arc from her knee. The adamantine baton lashed across the unarmoured jaw of the man to her right. Selphie didn't stop to watch him fall. After Strange Vision hit them, no-one got up.
She snapped her wrist, flicking the chain to draw the lead baton back to her grip. She bunched the two together and twisted left to bring the weapon into a low guard, where the second mercenary had taken a tremendous cut at her legs. The man's blow was so slow had there been any space she could just have skipped round it. Instead she blocked it, poorly, catching the blade's edge with Strange Vision's bulbous green mace-heads. She heaved upwards, breaking the struggle and sending the hijacker staggering backwards, suddenly unbalanced. Hands reached round from behind and gripped his arms and waist, immobilising the man.
Lightening roared in the small cabin, and Selphie saw it spark and crackle as it played across her skin. She felt her eyebrows beginning to singe. She came off the bank and lunged at the entangled mercenary, clubbing him before the man could get his guard back up; ribs, shoulder, head. A crew member pressed past her, dripping blood, his arms raised in a warding gesture against the red-armoured figure who'd cast the bolt at her. The hijacker's leader was stretching out with a vengeful hand. She smelt the rich stench of the death spell that his fingers' traced, but the crew were blocking her in. Behind her, glass crunched. She couldn't get clear of all these tall Trabians to save them; and she screamed out at them to move, move, get out of her way-
Blam!
The mercenary officer brought his spell hand slowly up to his neck, and pushed two fingers against it, as if to plug the new hole there. He started to stagger backwards, when there was a fleshy thunk as Sakia's bio-knife buried itself into his chest. Then he fell gargling to the floor and began to twitch as the blade delivered its poison to his bloodstream. A last sigh gusted out of him, whistling over the sounds of the other people in the cramp cabin.
Selphie barged a stunned crewman out the way and knelt by the man to check he was gone. Satisfied, she pulled the knife out and wiped it on the cheap blue cockpit carpet. She looked up over her shoulder to where Denjac and Sakia stood on the control panel and nodded silent thanks. Then, with a single gesture, she dispelled the magic upon them all. The crew's excited babble suddenly sped up.
There was a thump as Sakia jumped past Denjac onto the deck to claim her weapon. Selphie passed it to her hilt first with a second grateful look, and then stood up briskly. Outside the cabin the hijackers were smashing at the reinforced cabin door. Selphie glanced at it briefly and decided it should hold safely for another five minutes. She turned back to the freed hostages who were watching their SeeD rescuers mutely. Denjac was already helping the only woman in the group, a pretty brunette badly needing a fresh foundation, scramble up to the broken windscreen and safety. Selphie clapped her hands sharply at the four male stewards and pointed smartly at the omnithopter waiting outside the jet.
"Come on guys! Don't keep your ride waiting! Out, out, out!"
The incessant bleeping of his portable pulled Squall out of a very deep place. He blinked blearily and reached down from the bed for it. He didn't bother to strap it on. Next to him Rin stirred sleepily, and he felt the touch of her mind brush his thoughts.
- What is it?
- It's nothing. Go back to sleep.
- Don't be long…..
He padded out the room and into the hall, closing the door softly behind him. The wooden boards were cold under his bare feet, and he thumbed his acceptance of the call, impatient to get back to bed. It was Xu, dark shadows under her eyes. Still up working at this Gods forsaken hour Squall thought irritably. He'd have to order her to get more sleep. It looked like the only way he'd get his. He glared down at her image, not bothering to tidy his tousled hair. She didn't say anything to him though, just stared dumbly up at him. Squall felt the hackles on the back of his neck rise. A chill that had nothing to do with the air in the hallway prickled the skin between his shoulders.
"…Xu?" he asked her searchingly.
"Squall," she spoke huskily, with a tight throat; "I'm so sorry."
"What? What's wrong?"
"It's your sister."
