27/05/22: Yours truly strikes again. Did you know this story is rated T for too many tragic twists and turns?
Shulk arrived too early for the time he had given Teelan. Little more than a ghost of sunlight crept above Alcamoth's balconies and balustrades. But the sky already promised a perfect blue. The ideal conditions for a test flight.
A little drowsy, Shulk ran his hand across the repaired Havre and admired the elegant design that concealed so many complex mechanisms. Then he climbed into the vessel. Upon a flip of the central toggle, the screens sprung to life and illuminated the multitude of switches and levers used to steer the ship. Shulk ordered the system to perform a self-diagnosis, and with a soft humming the Havre obeyed. Routine guided Shulk's fingers as he checked the ether supply tanks, the cooling units, and all the little gears in between that lifted a ship into the heavens.
He could have slept longer; the dream of the boy and the girl had spared him this time. Unfortunately, his inner clock had chased him out of bed with the cruel hand of habit. Melia had stirred and noticed his departure before he could vanish through the teleporter. After a short but pleasant conversation, she wished Shulk good luck for the day and prepared for her duties.
She looked more at ease than yesterday. The tension in her shoulders had almost disappeared. Shulk took it as the first good omen of the day.
Maybe if he started his research on the Shoulder's hover stone, she would stay like this. More at peace. Radiating this calm warmth he had felt from her when they had first explored the Shoulder's fields and ruins.
But before the future, Shulk had to think of the complex machine under his feet. The internal scanners sent their report via an optimistic, green signal on the main screen. Everything worked as intended.
Shulk listened, but in its docked position, the Havre offered only a quiet whirring.
Despite all the promising signs, Shulk rounded one of the seats, kneeled down, and placed one hand on the floor. Underneath his fingertips, the engine sounded its standby mode. He closed his eyes, pressed his palm against the metal.
No vision.
Of course not. While in the past, contact with an object had sometimes sparked a glimpse into the future, Shulk had never been able to summon a vision at will. It would be like shouting at the sky and expecting rain. The visions came to him whenever the Monado, or rather Alvis, had deemed it fitting. In times of need or to avoid a great calamity.
A fully-functional Havre wouldn't trigger a vision because there was no calamity to warn from.
Still, Shulk breathed more easily as he finetuned the last systems and waited for Teelan.
Once he arrived, bright-eyed and with an undeniable energy in his steps, they wasted little time before Shulk pushed the main lever forward. The Havre rose into the air. A little tremble befell the engine's whirring, but the oddity vanished when Shulk increased the altitude by another meter.
Teelan awed and shifted in his seat to not miss a single of Shulk's movements as he cranked levers, pushed buttons, and flipped switches. Compared to the Machina's flying ship, Junks, the steering mechanism felt a little outdated. With Junks, Shulk needed nothing but hand movements to tell the vessel where to go. But Junks hated nothing more than a trembling hand. Meaning Shulk had come to appreciate the simpler and sturdier controls of High Entia ships in the past years.
The screen showed more promising green emblems. Everything was under control.
"What's this one for?" Teelan asked when Shulk reached for another button at the side.
"The transmitter. In the base setting, it opens Alcamoth to us." Shulk pressed the button, and a glass panel of Alcamoth's dome slid aside. "But if you crank here, you can change the frequency to everything from a standby message to an emergency signal."
"Do you think the range is wide enough to reach the Telethia?"
"I… don't know."
Teelan hummed. He seemed to have expected that response. "Hey, uhm, I dropped off a few samples from the Shoulder in your lab. On the workbench to the right. Hover stone, you know? I thought, if Tyrea doesn't find the pieces anymore, she will have no choice but to work with you."
Shulk froze, his hand a few centimetres from the next lever. "You stole them from her?!"
"Not really." Teelan squirmed in his seat. "She just told me to drop off the samples. She didn't specify where."
"Won't she be angry with you?"
"Maybe. But I will take her angry glares if that means you two will work together from now on. That would be the best for the future of Alcamoth, right?"
Shulk steered skywards. This could be his chance to make amends with Tyrea. Even if they never built a true friendship, they could support Melia side by side. Maybe, through many twists and turns and unknown tides, this was the path his visions were pointing him. A bridge might once again span the abyss between the boy and the girl. Shulk closed his eyes for one breath and basked in this possibility. The sun on his face prickled, and made the possibility seem certain.
"Thank you, Teelan," Shulk said. "I will take a look at the samples once we get back."
Teelan beamed. A moment later, they had abandoned the city and drifted through a boundless sky.
A faint taste of salt hung in the air, mixed with the freshness of a young day. The wind carried all troubles away, they escaped them as they had escaped gravity, and Shulk smiled. Truly. Fully. He breathed the air as if for the first time, greedy, overjoyed without knowing why.
The world was vast.
Teelan could no longer sit still. He jumped out of his seat and leaned over the control panel to soak in more of the breeze, more of the view, more of everything. Like a young bird he balanced on his heels to take flight in a moment's notice. His headwings flapped.
Before them, against the light of the morning sun, the Bionis' Shoulder hovered tall and marvellous. A relic that had lost nothing of its beauty throughout the centuries and would still inspire awe in the hearts of its beholders at the end of time. The countless waterfalls glistered. Flamiis circled the spires. The wind howling through the old Giant temples and brushing through the treetops created a melody heard nowhere else but here.
Shulk directed the Havre forward, and soon the sound of wildlife joined the wind's whispers. Buzzing, cooing, roaring, all at once, all at peace. The Havre glid along the Shoulder's cliffs, above and below, and Shulk could not have stopped smiling if he had wanted.
How had he missed out on this feeling all these years? How had he allowed the weight of the past and the fear of the future to shackle him to his laboratory?
He could not think of an answer. He didn't want to. He merely existed for one long, sunlit moment.
Teelan tiptoed to see better. "Everything looks so different from up here. I never knew…"
"How beautiful it is?" Shulk asked.
Teelan nodded.
"I know that feeling. Seeing the dancing ether particles during the nights in Satorl Marsh or the sun rise over the beaches of the Fallen Arm for the first time – I can't put it into words. I only know that I will treasure the memory. It's the same looking at the Shoulder now. I want nothing more than to hold onto this moment and make it last for all eternity."
Shulk shook his head. "I'm sounding like an old man, aren't I?"
"A little," Teelan said with a grin. "Which is even weirder considering I'm older than you."
"Well, then you should start collecting some experience worthy of your age." Shulk stepped back from the console. "How about you take over the controls for a moment?"
"Really?" Teelan reached for the buttons and switches. But he restrained himself. "I don't want to break anything…"
"You won't. Here, let me show you. This lever adjusts the altitude. These switches regulate how much ether is fed to the main engine."
"Which will change the speed at which the Havre is flying."
"Correct. And this button right here…"
As he had done yesterday, Teelan memorised everything Shulk showed him at an astounding rate. After a few basic manoeuvres – turning, diving, speeding up, and slowing down – Teelan stood in front of the console with the posture of a veteran. Shulk stepped back and let him dictate the course. At first, the Havre lurched, and the change between two movements was halting. But soon the vessel transformed into a graceful sky creature under Teelan's hands, and with a continuous grin, he steered through and above the Shoulder's rich landscape.
The Tranquil Tarn shimmed as the sun climbed higher. A herd of Armus startled and galloped for safety when the Havre passed above their heads. The sweet scent of ripe kilopumpkins reached them from the fields north of Gran Dell.
Shulk leaned back and enjoyed the view. Whenever he looked up, he found nothing but endless blue, so pure and wonderful that no digital screen could hope to recreate it, even if the engineer spent all his life trying.
He fantasised about taking Melia and Aaron out on a flight like this. Almost like a… family trip. If Aaron found half as much joy in the sight as Teelan did, maybe he would smile more. Melia would have to make room in her overcrowded schedule, but Shulk might manage to abduct her from her office for an hour or two. He could ask Tyrea to stand in for her.
The idea rooted in his head and grew until it filled him with something like warmth. A warmth that could lull him to sleep. For a short moment at least, his thoughts drifted without direction and without purpose. His head grew heavy.
"Shulk?" Teelan's voice mixed puzzlement and concern. "What does this symbol do? And why is it blinking?"
Shulk forced his eyes open. The Havre still split the sky at an even pace. But the humming of the engine stuttered, gurgled like the lungs of a feverish patient.
When Shulk bent over the screen to look at the symbol Teelan pointed at, he frowned.
"I don't know why it appeared," Teelan said breathlessly. "But I swear I only touched the buttons you showed to me. Nothing I tried made it go away, and I don't know—"
Shulk barely listened. The system reported unnatural spikes in the ether supply of the secondary jets, those used for precise landing manoeuvres. He shut them down. The warning symbol remained on the screen.
Worse, the Havre rolled from side to side, tumbled like a drunkard. Primary and secondary thrust nozzles worked against one another in their best efforts to tear the vessel apart. The metal creaked.
Shulk didn't know why. Sweat chilled his foreheat.
He punched commands into the system, demanded an analysis of the problem, his fingers flew, but the Havre continued its tail spin. And in front of them, the Shoulder's cragged mountain range grew larger.
"Is it bad?" Teelan asked. A slight tremor had invaded his voice.
"Yes. Critical."
More words didn't make it out of Shulk's mouth; he was thinking, thinking back to yesterday and the repairs he had done, he rummaged through his memories in search for the one mistake that would explain the Havre's behaviour.
Part of the main engine's ether supply was feeding the secondary jets. No direct link existed between them. The blueprints didn't allow it because such an oversight would lead to this exact scenario. An insulation panel separated the two channels and…
The insulation panel. No doubt. The fickle thing needed absolute precision to set in place, a millimetre of empty space could upset the whole system.
Shulk couldn't remember whether he or Teelan had adjusted the panel.
It didn't matter.
The responsibility was on him.
"Sit down," Shulk said between gritted teeth. "Hold tight."
He couldn't waste a second to offer Teelan a look of reassurance. Gravity had taken hold of the Havre, and their momentum carried them towards the dark, unforgiving mountain side without remorse. At a bad angle, the ship would crack like an egg upon impact. And then nothing but darkness.
Teelan whimpered.
Shulk yanked at the main lever with full force in a desperate attempt to reverse the engine. It wouldn't budge. The nozzle propelled them forward, the secondary jets tossed them left and right, but nothing would upset their curse for the cliffside. A high-pitched buzzing escaped the ship's insides.
Shulk recognised that sound. A death rattle.
His fingers clawed into the controls, the blood roared in his ears, icy cold controlled every fibre of his body, and he felt his feet slipping.
Then he killed the engine.
The buzzing vanished and left only the howling winds in Shulk's ears. Inertia of mass carried them forward. Silently. But deadly all the same. The cliffs grew larger, the peaks stretched their bone-shattering edges towards them. He forced himself to count to five, the minimum time required for a hard reset.
At four and a half, Shulk reactivated the engine and yanked at the main lever. It clicked, and it moved. The thrust nozzle combatted the Havre's momentum, tearing it backwards with all the ether energy it had left.
Not enough. Gravity had its grip on the vessel. The air froze in his lungs as the Havre continued its deadly plummet. Please, not like this.
Not. Like. This.
Not yet.
The reversed engine would soften the impact. It had to. The small ledge there in the cliffside could save them.
Shulk hammered onto the button for the emergency signal a second before the Havre crashed onto the ledge and the world caved in.
Pain.
The stench of smoke clawed into Shulk's lungs, and he coughed. His coughs sounded strange, distant, as if part of an experience not his own.
But the pain was his own. His side seemed to burn, a hot agony like the bullet of an ether rifle, like the shot Dickson had landed at Shulk's back. Distant explosions shook his head; a concussion maybe.
He counted to ten and then ten more, but the air still tasted of burning synthetic material, and he could not find the oxygen to break through the fog of his head trauma. Pushing himself onto his elbows was pain. Blinking against the ash flakes was pain. Running his hand along his side, where the rocks and pebbles had torn through fabric, skin, and flesh alike, was a pain too great to comprehend, and in a moment of weakness, Shulk wanted to curl into a ball and die. Anything to escape this pain.
But his heart beat on. His lungs drew in another sip of oxygen. Defiant till the end.
With tremendous effort, Shulk climbed to his feet. The Havre, or rather its bent and broken remains, stood ablaze and threw distorted shadows onto the small ledge. No way the transmitter for the emergency signal had survived. But with luck, the call had lasted long enough for someone in Alcamoth to hear.
A handful of meters away, Teelan stood in the open. He swayed, and his empty expression showed he was in shock. But he had survived the crash mostly unharmed.
Shulk's relief almost washed away the ocean of physical pain.
After half a shaky step forward, Teelan moved his lips. But Shulk couldn't hear him. He heard nothing, nothing except the distorted echoes of his pulse. When he touched the left side of his head, his fingers slipped on blood.
No panic; if he focused on breathing and if a rescue team arrived in time, he wouldn't sustain permanent injuries. The wind carried the smoke skyward, so he didn't have to fear fume poisoning either.
Teelan still moved his lips, but neither his words nor the crackling of the fire reached Shulk. The soundless scenery flickered with the flames.
Until a shriek sliced through the silence to strike at Shulk's very core. The pain vanished. And in its stead reigned only one feeling, one feeling that drowned everything and tightened every cell in his body:
A familiar, all-encompassing dread.
The Fogbeast rose above the shell of the Havre in a cloud of sparks and shadows. Amidst the swirling tendrils of fog, Shulk could barely make out the Pterix underneath, but the might of its presence robbed him of the little balance he had reclaimed. He stumbled. The fog clogged his nose. He couldn't breathe, couldn't think, could only stare as the Pterix craned its scaly neck and shrieked in despair. The fog tore the creature left and right, as though two minds fought over one body. But the rage within triumphed.
And Teelan stood right there, unarmed and small in the Fog Beast's shadow.
Shulk ignored the aching of his limbs, stood up, and ran. The Monado replica rested on its stand back in Alcamoth, and Shulk had no means to defend either Teelan or himself. He could only dash in front of Teelan and beg.
The first swing from the three-fingered claws knocked Shulk from his feet. His skull connected with a rough stone surface, and the explosions in his head returned twice as forceful. Somewhere in the future, a bridge exploded in a shower of sparks. Shulk tried to breathe but couldn't. He tried to move but couldn't.
The silence deafened him.
His field of vision shrunk.
Somewhere far away in this fog-framed tunnel, farther even than the metal bridge, he saw blood staining the pebbles. Too much blood. Not his. White feathers scattered.
And then darkness.