Apriltober 2022 27 View (Lin, Tatsu, Cross)

a/n: Set after Ch. 9, Lin is not feeling it. Cross tries to cheer her up.

All the good things belong to Monolith Soft.

The droplets smacking Lin on the nose were doing nothing to improve her mood. Normally, she found the patter of rain on the leafy ceiling of Noctilum soothing. Today, her face became more gloomy with every drip.

"Linly look lemony," Tatsu cheered. The rain had made his hat even more lumpish.

"Shut up, nerd," she snapped.

"Hey, Lin, what's up?" her teammate asked.

"Nothing. I'm fine."

"Linly sad all day," Tatsu informed the other BLADE.

"Shut up! I said I was fine."

"Linly wiping eyes and sniffing and ... ow!"

She wasn't sorry that she had kicked him. She wasn't going to be sorry. She wasn't going to cry in front of Cross and she wasn't going to sniffle either.

"Hey, hey," Cross said. Something eased in her throat, because Cross always had a way of saying the right thing, cheerful or honest or bold, whatever she needed. Unfortunately, the lump in her throat had been helping to hold back the tears. Hopefully it would just look like rain.

Cross wasn't fooled at all. "Fine, huh? Hey, I know something that will cheer you up. Come on." And with that, they were already halfway toward the skells.

Lin didn't follow. "We can't go running after one of your spectacular views. We're supposed to guard the path so the merchants won't be harassed by Ganglion," she pointed out. Even to her own ears she sounded snippy.

"It won't take a minute." Cross' skell was warming up, but they hadn't climbed in.

"No. We're supposed to stay." Refusing to get into a skell was close to a physical pain.

Cross stopped and looked at Lin, clutching her shield and dripping in the bad weather. "We need to take shifts with this weather. You go first. You don't need to go anywhere, just head straight up."

"Tatsu soggy," complained her sidekick. This was enough of an excuse for Lin to get into the skell. She wasn't abandoning anyone. She was caring for a teammate. (That he was more useless than day-old-rice was beside the point. He was still part of the team.)

She did the flight checklist, engaged the engines, and lifted off. The fact that she had developed those engines didn't thrill her today. The skell pushed its way through the huge leaves that shadowed Noctilium. The open air wasn't much of a relief. The sky was streaked with grey and black clouds. Gusts of wind pushed the skell so that it creaked. The windscreen was bleary with dribbles of water. Tatsu radiated a damp warmth but was otherwise easy to ignore.

The comm device buzzed to life. "Okay, are you through?"

"Yup. I'm coming down now. Thanks for trying."

"Wait up. I need you to turn and face exactly south-east. You should be high enough."

She did as she was told. More clouds, an endless stretch of them, with sheets of rain pouring onto the edge of the Primordia plains. "Done. I'm coming down."

"But do you see it?"

"What?"

"The tower. The light. You can see it from anywhere on Mira, if you fly high enough. Anywhere. Trust me, I've tested that."

Lin peered through the gloom and spotted it, a winking flicker of red. She couldn't see the crash ring or the construction cranes or the roads that led into the gates or anything about the city, but she could see that light.

"I see it."

"That's home. It's there, Lin, and we're part of it. We haven't given up. Okay?"

"Okay." She adjusted the skell after a particularly strong gust and looked hard at that one spot of hope. The skell hummed and Tatsu gave the smallest snore. Lin tried to memorize that little flicker.

"You good up there?"

"I'm fine. Gimme one more second and I'll come back down."

a/n: Three more days to give me suggestions, any whatsoever.

Next up: Suggestions? Otherwise: Cape Town. (Yes, my prompt list is from a fabulous South African website, Writer's Write.)