Chapter 35: A Pilot's Intuition

A boulder stood behind one of the megaliths in the compound. Several stories tall, it had a good view of Tir in the distance and of the rocky steppe between. And because almost no one wandered in that corner area of the compound, it was Glimmer's favorite spot to hide out at when she needed a break from everything.

The panic attack back at the pavilion had long since abated; it had only taken a few moments of solitude for her to calm down, but that only made room for another issue altogether. She sat there at the top of the rock, hunched over, knees high, with one hand grasping a fistful of hair and the other staring at yet another unfinished draft to Bow on her PDA.

She huffed and deleted the whole thing. Nothing she had typed seemed right, no matter how many times she tried. A simple "Hey what's up?" sounded like she was playing ignorant to the tension between them still going strong after all these years. An "I miss you," came on too strong for her liking, and a "why didn't you send me anything last month?" was a sure way to guarantee he wouldn't respond at all.

She pictured him somewhere on Etheria—maybe at Entrapta's lab, maybe at Bright Moon with Adora, or, possibly, somewhere with Swift Wind and Sea Hawk. Then she imagined the irritation on his face at seeing a notification from her, bothering him with whatever she had sent, and gave up trying to draft a message altogether. Maybe it was too much to hope he'd forgive her for having left so soon after the emperor's invasion, on top of everything she had done before first activating the Heart. It was funny, how three years could feel like an eternity and a blink of an eye at the same time.

She groaned and she leaned back on her hands, staring out at the city and the mountains in the distance. Judging by how low in the sky the sun was, she had likely been sitting there alone for hours already. How time flew when she thought of him, good or bad.

A sound echoed up to her atop the rock then. It sounded like a pair of people walking by, likely having come from using the secluded bathroom nearby that no one knew about. She listened to their voices talking excitedly to one another, their footsteps growing closer, and sat as still as she could. The footsteps and voices started to recede, and she thought she had made it through unnoticed until…

"Glimmer, is that you?" said one of the voices from down below.

"I'm off for the rest of the day," she said, angling her voice down at them without turning to look. "I already cleared it with my shift leader and I'd rather be left alone right now. Please go away."

"Is everything okay? You're kind of high up there."

Did they not understand what wanting to be left alone meant? Glimmer turned to shout at them and regretted it the moment she peeked over the lip of the rock to look down. Kyle and Rogelio were standing at the base, staring up at her.

Lonnie had told her she wouldn't recognize Kyle if she saw him again and she was dead wrong. He had filled out somewhat and his face looked significantly less boyish and soft than it had when last she saw him, but she knew it was him the moment they locked eyes.

"I-I'm fine!" she said, suddenly wishing she could disappear. "Just not feeling well, so I took the rest of the day off." She hadassumed they had all returned to the Omen-Kador in orbit when her PDA warned her they had gotten off duty. What the heck were they both doing down in the compound?

"You should be in the infirmary, or at least resting if you aren't feeling well," Kyle said. "What are you doing up there on that rock?"

Glimmer slunk back to the center and hugged her knees closer. They couldn't see her at all if she did that, and she hoped they'd eventually just leave her alone and be on their way. Instead, Glimmer heard Kyle say something else she couldn't quite make out—likely to Rogelio—and then she heard a rhythmic clinking sound ring out from down below. When she peeked back over the edge, she saw Rogelio ambling off in some other direction, and saw Kyle scaling the boulder with an ice pick.

"What are you doing?" Glimmer asked, incredulous. "This rock is like, four stories tall. You're going to hurt yourself!"

"Help me up then!" he said, slamming the pick into the rock again. "I'd rather not fall if I can help it."

Glimmer threw her head back and groaned again before drawing a quick spell. It grabbed Kyle by the midsection and hoisted him up to the top to join her.

"Thanks," he said when she let him down gently. "Way easier than doing that the other way."

"Why do you even have an ice pick?"

"Would you believe me if I said it was standard pilot survival gear?"

Glimmer narrowed her eyes at him and Kyle laughed.

"It's not standard," he said, realizing she wasn't in the mood for jokes. "But I always keep it on me. We crashed into the side of a cliff on one of my first missions and had to scale our way out. Didn't want to be caught without something like this again after that." He folded the pick into a compact form, rolled up his left pantleg, and clipped it to the innards of the prosthetic there. Glimmer's eyes went from narrow to saucer-shaped when she saw.

"Is that…how did that happen?" she asked. "Did you lose your leg one of your deployments too?" When she realized she had been staring, she raised her eyes to look at Kyle instead. He was giving her a confused look with his head tilted to the side, and she feared she had asked something terribly insensitive. "Sorry," she said, waving her hands. "I didn't think when I asked that, I just—"

Kyle sat down cross-legged next to her. "It's fine. I actually lost it way back on Bright Moon. The emperor's first assault caught us completely off guard and I lost the leg in the attack. A ceiling beam fell on my leg and Adora and six more people had to lift it off me. The doctors couldn't save it."

"I'm so sorry," Glimmer said. Kyle had lost it before they had even parted ways to begin with. How had she not noticed at all that someone was wandering around with either a whole leg missing or wobbling on a new prosthetic at the time?

"It's fine, really." Kyle chuckled and gave her an easy smile. "I'm more than used to it after so long. Besides, it lets me store the ice pick without having to really worry about putting it in a bag or something."

Glimmer nodded and a beat passed between them. "You know, I'm a little surprised you wanted to come up here and talk to me."

"Why would you say that?" Kyle asked. He seemed genuinely confused.

"Well, y'know…I kinda turned the three of you down from being your Battlemage leader."

"Technically you turned down twelve of us," Kyle said, and the words nailed Glimmer like a punch to the gut. "Me, Lonnie, Rogelio, and I think nine other non-Vanguard grunts?" When he saw how Glimmer shrank under each of his words, Kyle laughed again. "It's fine, I'm not mad."

"You aren't? Why not?"

"Just aren't," Kyle said with a shrug. "Lonnie is a different story, but me? I was a little confused and worried when I found out. It just didn't seem like the 'you' I had known to turn down an opportunity like that, but I wasn't mad, really. Rogelio is fine too in case you were curious."

Glimmer breathed a sigh of relief and stretched her legs, splaying them out before her on the stone. "A lot has happened since I left home…since that day in the emperor's throne room and since…"

"Rinne?" Kyle finished for her what Glimmer couldn't say aloud.

She swallowed, with some effort. "I've come a long way, especially after Taline's mentorship, but leading and taking responsibility over someone else's lives in battle is just not something I'm prepared for yet."

"Yeah," Kyle said, mirroring Glimmer's posture. "You don't have to explain yourself to me. I might have heard a thing or two here and there about what happened."

Glimmer nodded. "So," she said, after another beat of silence. "Vanguard pilot huh? And one hell of a good one from what Lonnie told me."

"Last I checked, you have to be 'one hell of a good whatever it is you are' in order to be in the Vanguard," Kyle said. "But yeah, I guess I'm okay."

Glimmer snorted. Since when had Kyle developed such a fine balance between self-deprecation and a Catra-like smugness in his sense of humor? "How the heck did that happen? No offense, but I didn't peg you for a daredevil pilot back home when we were on opposite sides."

"You remember when we kidnapped you and Bow from Frosta's Princess Prom?"

The fact Kyle brought that up, and so casually too, surprised her. "Yeah, I remember," she said, carefully. "That wasn't very fun."

"No, it wasn't," Kyle said, shaking his head even though the nostalgia in his voice betrayed him. "And you probably don't remember this part since Catra tied you both to a chair and blindfolded you after taking off, but Scorpia was the one piloting the ship at the time."

Glimmer frowned, trying to remember what happened that night. It turned out she couldn't remember much, her strongest recollections being of what happened after, when she arrived at the Fright Zone. "I do remember a lot of screaming and yelling on the trip out," she said.

"She nearly crashed the ship. Three times. Catra and Lonnie were so pissed, and I was sick about four times during the journey and then another three times after we arrived. I promised myself that I'd never let her pilot a ship again if I could help it, so I started signing up for all the flight sims in the Fright Zone."

"And you just, what? Tapped into something you didn't know you had?"

It was Kyle's turn to snort. "No, I was terrible. For a long time. It took so much practice to not just crash on every landing approach, even the easy ones. Lonnie and Rogelio were so nervous the first few times I took them out on a real flight."

Kyle smiled as he reminisced, and the mood had relaxed enough between them Glimmer couldn't help but smile too. She had gone from fearing that this person hated her guts to being grateful he was there sitting next to her. She hadn't realized how lonely she had been, even after only a handful of days away from Phoenix Station.

"Sorry if you really didn't want to be bothered up here," Kyle said, breaking the silence that had stretched between them. "Like I said, I was more worried than upset hearing you wouldn't take us on, and seeing you up here by yourself only made me more worried."

"It's okay," Glimmer said, waving him off. "I just like to find quiet spots sometimes to get away. I found this place the first day we hit the surface."

"Do you ever come here because you feel overwhelmed with everything, or is it really just a break spot?"

Glimmer gave him a sidelong glance. "Both," she said. "Usually the former." She didn't tell him a panic attack was what brought her out there that day to begin with.

"I saw Catra do the same thing when she'd get overwhelmed," Kyle said, nodding. "Heck, I do it too sometimes, when it all gets too much." He tilted his head and gave her a thoughtful look. "How are you feeling right now, with everything?"

"Maybe I am feeling a bit overwhelmed," Glimmer said, leaning back on her hands. She hadn't planned on volunteering that information on her own, but after he had asked, and in such a relaxed way too, she found she actually wanted to answer. A question played at the back of her mind then, something she was desperate to know but wasn't brave enough to ask outright. She decided to skirt around the topic instead. "What do you think of Catra?"

"What do I think?"

"Well, what do you and Rogelio and Lonnie think of her, I suppose."

"Lonnie can't stand her," Kyle said. "I wouldn't put either of those two in a room together—they're both incredibly hot-headed and emotional people. Rogelio likes to pretend he's indifferent about her but I know he misses Catra from time to time too. They actually got along somewhat before Adora left and Catra…well, yeah."

"And you?"

Kyle sighed. "My feelings are a little more complicated, I guess. She used to scare the crap out of me when we were younger. I kinda got the feeling Shadow Weaver was doing some shady stuff to her behind closed doors too, but…" He trailed off and shrugged, not able to find the words. Glimmer didn't blame him.

"'Shady' is an understatement if I've ever heard one," Glimmer said, remembering the first time Catra fully opened up to her about her relationship to Shadow Weaver.

"I probably don't know the half of it then," Kyle said. "But to me, I guess I just didn't know how to be or act around her. Catra was so swayed by her emotions, all the time. I still remember when I first tried to talk to her after she came back from a private meeting with Shadow Weaver. I wanted to do something to help because she seemed so on edge, but it was like I poked a sleeping bear. She snapped at me and"—he whistled and made an 'exploding' gesture with his hands—"it just didn't end well."

"That's Catra for you," Glimmer said, looking away with a sad smile. "Textbook definition of a ticking time bomb. Or at least, she was. She's gotten better now. A lot better."

"I believe it," Kyle said. "She was terrifying, you know, but she also inspired me quite a bit. Especially after Adora left."

Now that was surprising. "Catra went off the deep end after Adora left," Glimmer said, raising both eyebrows at Kyle. "You do realize that, right?"

"Yeah, of course I do," he said. "She opened a portal that nearly swallowed the world, she was so far gone. I remember."

"Okay, then what about all that was inspiring to you?"

"Definitely not the portal opening part," Kyle said with a chuckle. "Like I said, it's complicated…but if I had to put words to it, I would say it was inspiring to me how she took such huge blows to her pride, to her plans, to her relationships, and instead of crumbling under the stress, she doubled down on herself and worked harder the next time around."

Glimmer furrowed her brow and considered that.

"She was pretty lazy growing up you know," Kyle said. "She always showed up late to everything, always did the bare minimum, always gave everyone lip. I'm not saying it was justified, because it wasn't, but she didn't exactly make it hard for Shadow Weaver to find things to thrash her for. A lot of the other cadets started taking bets behind her back on how long it'd take her to crack when Adora defected."

"That's terrible," Glimmer said, fixing him with an acid glare.

Kyle frowned and nodded. "It was," he said, not looking her in the eye and instead staring out at the view. "That was one of the only times I stood up for someone before I became a pilot. I got my ass beat for it and felt good about it, strangely enough."

"You…stood up for her?"

"I was the only one who stood up for her at the time. I was the only one who said she wouldn't crack when everyone was taking those bets."

Glimmer tried to wrap her head around everything Kyle said. Adora had shared bits and pieces of what life in the Horde was like for her, but Glimmer had never thought too deeply into it. In fact, apart from that one conversation about Shadow Weaver, Catra hadn't delved too deep into her childhood either, and Glimmer hadn't pushed.

Kyle shifted next to her. "I guess what I'm trying to say is, when she felt at her lowest point, instead of giving in and giving up, Catra chose to work her ass off instead. She wanted to prove to everyone she was somebody worth paying attention to." He took a deep breath and Glimmer could tell he was working through some deep emotions to get his words out.

"I admired her for that…her drive to prove herself in the face of all those setbacks. I guess seeing her do that inspired me to do the same. Not that it excuses some of the crazy shit she did and the horrible things she put us through when she was second in command, but I know I wouldn't be half the pilot I am today if I didn't see her work so hard back then. Whenever I felt like giving up on my own training, I'd just think about what I saw her put herself through, and suddenly all my problems seemed trivial by comparison."

"I didn't consider it like that," Glimmer said. "Her and I didn't start getting close until we were stuck in a room together on the emperor's citadel."

"We've all had our different interactions with her," Kyle shrugged. "Like I said, if you ask Lonnie, you'd get a different response. Why did you want to know, anyway?"

"Why did I want to know what?"

"Why did you ask me what I thought about Catra?"

"Ah." Glimmer fidgeted, suddenly feeling exposed. "Well, as much as I love her, I know that she's a master at having burned her bridges in the past. She's changed and we have a good relationship now, but I guess I was just curious how you and the others saw her after everything."

"I haven't heard of you burning any bridges though," Kyle said. "If anything, I've heard some very interesting and inspiring things. All the refugees Rogelio and I passed out there in the compound were whispering about how they saw 'The Angel of Archanas' earlier."

"Ugh." Glimmer slapped her hand to her forehead and dragged it down her face.

"Not a fan of the nickname? I know you've never actually been to Archanas before."

"It's not the nickname itself really," Glimmer said. "Some marketing nerd thought it'd be poetic to call me that because of what Taline did. It's just…complicated, I guess, if I'm allowed to steal your own words from earlier."

"Totally allowed to steal," Kyle said. "And it's no biggie. I won't ask if you don't want to explain it. But my point was, if anyone has public image issues, it's not you."

"That's not really what I was trying to get at," Glimmer admitted.

"Then what are you trying to get at?"

Glimmer realized then that the conversation would die of its own accord if she'd just let it, and she wondered why she kept poking at it. Then, staring out at Tir in the distance, she got an idea: the sun in the sky had set low enough that it cast a peculiar light on the spires and towers of the cityscape, and that contrasted with the orange-grey and orange-white of the mountains behind. She pointed it out to Kyle as a way to segue into her point.

"Have you heard what natives have said about how the city looks against the mountains like that?" she asked.

Kyle narrowed his eyes, studying the view. "Not really. Was I supposed to have heard something?"

"All the Enclave and Imperial soldiers I've heard talk about it say the city looks beautiful, especially when the sun hits the skyline like that. But the locals all look at that and think it's ugly."

"What?" Kyle looked closer. "How does that make any sense?"

"The Scavrians all revere the mountain range behind it," she said. "It's holy land to them, although they aren't as fanatical about it as some members of the Vestamid are about their own beliefs. The city, though, is new, relatively speaking—only a few hundred years old, and it was built purposefully in front of the mountains as a tribute to their majesty. But the natives, especially the older, more conservative ones, think it's the height of hubris and pride to try and make the city just as magnificent as the mountains behind it."

"It's their capital city," Kyle said, frowning. "Why would they build it that way if they didn't like it?"

"It was a mandate from some Regional Governor to build a metropolis here and make it Scavria's capital," Glimmer said. "Or maybe even a mandate from the Heartlands itself, who knows. I guess whoever was in charge of the project thought naming it like that would help them build support from the locals, but it wasn't the locals themselves that did it. They just went along with what the Empire demanded."

"All the outsiders see a beautiful sprawling city with towers that reflect the sunlight and cast pretty colors," Kyle said, "but the natives look at it like someone just took a spray can and drew graffiti before their ancient mountain."

"Exactly."

"I'm still not seeing how this has anything to do with Catra and bridges," Kyle said.

"I'm the daughter of an immortal fairy queen and one of the most brilliant sorcerers in Etheria's history," Glimmer said. "And I left home to train under one of the Enclave's most accomplished Battlemages. I've made Battlemage myself in less time than it takes most people to become citizens of the Empire, and I've even made a name for myself, what with all that 'Angel of Archanas' crap."

Glimmer picked at a thread dangling from her uniform as she spoke. Taline had tried so hard to erase that nervous habit of hers, but it had stuck. "Despite all of that, I still can't even think of leading a team without descending into panic attacks. Taline has tried to talk me through it, and I know she's not ecstatic about me staying behind at the evacuation centers. I should be deep in the city, fighting with you guys. Bow is…okay, when he remembers to talk to me. None of us have seen anyone back home face to face in years, but…"

"You're worried about whether the people who matter most to you see a beautiful city or some pale imitation when they think about you," Kyle said, voicing aloud what Glimmer couldn't.

Glimmer nodded, and Kyle took a deep breath.

"I see now," he said. Another long silence stretched between them, this one much less comfortable than the others, before he finally spoke again. "Lonnie is mad, but then again Lonnie gets mad at everything. She'll come around. I think once she calms enough to listen to your reasoning, she'll understand. Rogelio feels the same way as me."

"Which is?"

"That whatever you're going through, you need to make decisions that are best for you. Everyone has expectations, especially for prodigy Battlemages during a time when people are looking for miracles."

Glimmer smiled, and Kyle continued.

"As for Bow and everyone else? I have no idea what's going on back home. I'm not allowed to know. But I know they miss you, just like how I know you don't have anything to worry about with them. Bow misses you the hardest, which is probably why he's distant."

"You don't know that."

"I don't, but also, I do," Kyle said, grinning. "I have the gut instincts of a Vanguard pilot, and those instincts are telling me you have nothing to worry about. As for leading? Only you can say whether or not you are ready for it. It's in the best interest of the squad that their leader be someone who feels fully confident in their ability…so, thank you for not putting us out in the field with you prematurely if you don't feel ready."

Glimmer felt like a weight had been lifted from her. She even believed him about Bow, oddly enough, and that was wonderful. She released her knees and stretched them out again. "Thanks Kyle…I think I needed to hear that."

"No problem," he said, glancing over the edge of the rock toward the ground. "Happy to help."

"What do they have you and Lonnie and Rogelio doing since I turned down my original assignment?"

"Aratoth has taken us on and rotates us with some of his other soldiers," Kyle said. "We still get field experience, not that we lack that in the first place, mind you, but he's making sure we aren't just sitting on the benches while everyone else tries to retake Tir. It's risky, since he's technically overstretched when we do go out with his group, but it's worked out so far."

Glimmer nodded, but didn't say anything further. Things had worked out despite the fact she had refused to step up to the plate. So why did she still feel uneasy about everything?

Kyle nudged her gently with his shoulder, drawing her attention. "You don't think you can set me back down on the ground, do you? I've really enjoyed catching up, but I'm technically still supposed to be on duty and I don't think I can be missing for much longer before someone comes looking for me."

Glimmer nodded again and floated both of them back down.

"There's one thing I should say before I go, though," Kyle said, turning to her when their feet touched the ground.

"What's that?"

"I never had a moment where I felt ready to be a pilot," he said. "And I never stopped worrying about whether or not I'd be able carry my team through danger before doing my first real field assignment. Simulations are one thing, but I always worried I'd just up and choke when the time came to perform with actual lives in my hands."

"Do you still worry about that now?"

"Sometimes," Kyle said. "But I mostly feel fine, aside from the typical adrenaline everyone gets."

Glimmer balked as despair started to claw at her. "What was it that changed you?"

"One day it just so happened that I was the person most prepared to handle a mission. I had to go through training in the 'real' Horde after leaving Etheria, on top of all the training I did in Etheria's Horde. About six months into my new training simulations, we were out on a campaign. They needed someone to fly out and extract a team that got pinned down, but all the other experienced pilots were tied up. Out of all the trainees there, I was the one with the best scores and most time in the simulator. It would have been irresponsible for me to let one of the younger guys fly in my place, even if I didn't feel confident in myself, so I stepped up."

Glimmer bit at her lip while she considered what he had said.

"I meant what I said before," Kyle said. "You should only take command when you feel ready. But in times like now, where war and death are coming in faster than our veterans can handle, you might not get the luxury to stick to doing only things you 'should' do. You might just have to step up one day when no one else can, and hope for the best."

Kyle's pocket vibrated. He pulled out a thin electronic device and glanced at the screen.

"I have to go," he said. "I asked Rogelio to warn me if Lonnie started going on the war path looking for me, and he just pinged me. I should get out of here before she finds us." He flashed her another quick smile and ran off.

Glimmer gave him a halfhearted wave goodbye and watched him go. Her mind was a mess—Kyle's words somehow helped and hurt at the same time, and as much as she tried, she couldn't figure out what she should do about it.

An explosion and a low moan sounded off in the distance, carried to her by the winds of a rapidly approaching Scavrian night. When she stilled and concentrated, Glimmer could hear the sounds of battle ringing out to her as well.

She stood there for a long moment, looking at Tir on the horizon. If one didn't know any better, it almost looked as if the city weren't besieged by a deadly spreading enemy.