Fragile
Dusty often liked to fly out around the fields, practicing aerobatic maneuvers and just enjoying the air running over his hide. Of course, if Skipper knew Sky rode Dusty during his fancy flying, the Corsair would kill him. So Dusty oftentimes asked Sky to stay home, or he would sneak her out at night to do the fancy flying.
But as Dusty finished an inverted loop to put more speed on, he suddenly noticed the bright, sunny day becoming dark. Glancing skyward, he saw thick, black storm clouds brewing with thunder and lightning.
"Better get home." Dusty murmured, turning and heading back towards Propwash Junction. After flying through the storm over the Pacific, Dusty wouldn't be caught dead flying through another one. As he braked to a halt on the runway, he felt the rain begin to come down. He made his way to his hanger, passing the Fill N' Fly on the way. He paused when he spotted Dottie at work inside.
"Hey Dottie!" Dusty called. "You better be getting home soon. Weather's getting bad."
Dottie slowly turned to Dusty, smiling softly and nodding. "Yeah, Dusty. Sure thing."
Dusty frowned when he noticed the redness in Dottie's eyes, and the tear stains on her sides. "You okay?"
Dottie gave a long, drawn-out sigh. "I guess so. You?"
"Uh. Yeah. Yeah, I guess." Dusty said uncertainly. Why is she acting this way?
"Good. Good. Well, see ya." Dottie turned and drove off.
Well that was strange. Dusty shrugged it off and started towards home, hoping he wouldn't get too wet by the time he got there.
Chug passed him on the way. Dusty paused when he noticed Chug's eyes were red too. The fuel truck glanced to Dusty and forced a smile. "Hey Duster. How ya doin'?"
"Uh, pretty good." Dusty said. "You know, just goin' about my business."
Chug nodded aimlessly. "You know, you can talk to any of us, Dusty. You two were really close, so it's okay to feel sad about what happened."
Dusty suddenly felt cold, although he couldn't recall feeling cold when the rain became heavier. "What? What are you talking about?"
"Don't shut anyone out, Dusty." Chug encouraged. "I'll see you later, okay?"
"O-okay." Dusty watched Chug drive away. "But what are you talking about, Chug? What's happened?" Dusty heard Chug mutter something.
"We all miss…" Chug's voice trailed off.
"Miss? Miss who?" Dusty called after Chug. "Chug, what happened?!" Chug didn't answer, and the rain started coming down in sheets to cloud the truck's image from view. Dusty stared at the ground, a wave of panic washing over him. "What's happened? What's going on? Okay, just think, Dusty. What could've happened? What did he mean?" Dusty gave it some thought, not even noticing he couldn't feel the pouring rain. "Miss? Miss who?" A horrible theory formed in his mind. "Someone's dead. Oh Chrysler who died? Who do we know who would—" Dusty gasped softly. "Mayday. Mayday!" He hurriedly drove off, not even feeling the sting of the rain. He saw flashes of lightning, but the thunder sounded muffled. His fear of Mayday's fate caused him to be rather unaware of his surroundings. He skidded across the wet asphalt and halted right outside the firehouse. "Mayday! Mayday, you in there?"
The door opened, and Dusty sighed heavily in relief to see Mayday in the doorway and apparently in very good health. But he looked sorrowful. "Oh, hello Dusty. What can I do for you?"
Dusty swallowed. "Mayday, something's happened but I don't know what."
"Everyone feels like that once in a while in light of…..recent events" Mayday said, his voice rather quiet and forcing Dusty to strain to hear him. "It's all part of the process."
"What process?" Dusty muttered. He groaned. "Mayday, I don't understand!"
"Now, Dusty, just calm down." Mayday said soothingly.
"I can't! I feel like either someone's hiding something from me or I did something wrong and nobody's telling me what I did!" Dusty cried, panting a little at his outburst.
Mayday stared at Dusty, and then sighed. "Dusty, now don't feel that way. Don't ever blame yourself for what happened. There was nothing you could've done."
Thunder echoed around them.
"Nothing I…..n-nothing…what?" Dusty could hardly comprehend it all. "Mayday, who….."
"Why don't you go see Skipper?" Mayday suggested.
"Skipper?" Dusty breathed. He suddenly felt his engine stopped. "Skipper! It's Skipper!" He turned and hurried off towards the Corsair's hanger. "Why did it happen? How did it happen? What could've happened to him?" Dusty tore across the asphalt and grass, his eyes locked on the hanger at the end of the runway. He instantly thought of the worst-case scenario: that somehow Skipper had been killed in a training accident or maybe passed away in his sleep. But he could've sworn he saw Skipper just this morning. Didn't he? Dusty couldn't remember what might've happened. In fact, he couldn't remember anything from the past several days. Was there an accident during training? Did a race go wrong? Did Ripslinger come back for revenge and Skipper died helping Dusty? That last one somehow sounded the most plausible.
Dusty banged hurriedly on the door with his wing, praying for an answer. The door slowly creaked open enough for Sparky to be seen. His eyes were red and old tears dripped to the ground. He seemed to be holding back fresh tears, making his eyes glassy.
"Hey there Dusty." Sparky greeted in a soft voice.
Dusty swallowed, feeling hot tears building up behind his eyes. "Sparky. Sparky, please tell me….."
"Don't blame yourself, Dusty." Sparky said, not even looking at the orange-and-white plane.
Dusty realized he held his breath, and he let it out in a strangled gasp. "Sparky, please."
"Come on in, Dusty." Sparky moved aside, pulling the doors open wider so Dusty could roll inside. But when he finally came in, he looked and discovered Sparky mysteriously disappeared. Dusty looked around for Skipper's corpse, but he jumped when he saw the Corsair parked next to a window and staring out at the storm.
"Skipper!" Dusty sighed in immense relief as he approached his mentor. He's alive. But then why is everyone acting so weird? "Skipper—"
"You didn't protect her." Skipper suddenly said. Dusty paused, staring at Skipper. He noticed the Corsair's faint reflection in the window. Skipper's eyes settled into a furious glare, but they were red and tears ran freely down his sides.
"Skipper?" Dusty breathed.
"You didn't protect her. You promised you would!" Skipper's voice raised in volume and then cracked. He sounded like he desperately tried to not get choked up. "You didn't….protect…you didn't…."
A flash of lightning lit up the room, and suddenly the hanger became plunged into darkness. Dusty couldn't see anything. He couldn't even see Skipper. "Skipper? Sparky? What's going on? Please tell me what happened."
Light caught Dusty's eye, and he turned to see a sort of spotlight seemed to shine down right on a curtained-off area of the hanger: Sky's room. Dusty hesitantly made his way over, but he felt an overwhelming sense of dread and an urge to fly away as fast as he could. Nonetheless, he continued forward until he stopped right in front of the curtain. Slowly, Dusty used his nose and propellers to take the edge of the curtain and pull it open. His eyes widened at what lay on the other side, and he might've screamed if the shock didn't reduce his voice to a high-pitched whimper.
A coffin stood where Sky's bed would be.
The lid was open, and—even though he didn't know why—Dusty rolled up to look inside the coffin. Sky rested inside, donned in only a simple white dress. She looked peaceful, as though she were only sleeping. Voices echoed all around Dusty.
Don't blame yourself.
Nothing you could've done.
You didn't protect her.
Before Dusty's eyes, Sky's skin turned ashen and gray and then flat-out disappeared, turning to dust and blowing away in a nonexistent breeze. Her hair burst into flames and smoldered down to nothingness. Only a skeleton in a white dress remained. The lid suddenly slammed shut, and a ghostly form of Skylar Amelia Riley stood before Dusty. The former crop duster stared in horror at the pure-white figure, panting heavily.
"You didn't protect me." Sky's ghost growled.
"NO!"
Dusty's eyes shot open. He gasped and panted, looking around at where he rested. His breathing calmed when he saw the bed mat, human-sized bed, nightstand, TV, and ugly red carpet of the hotel.
No dark hanger. No storm. No coffin with a skeleton.
It was only a dream. Dusty sighed softly. Just to make sure, he reviewed everything he remembered from the past few days.
Racing season finally started again. They weren't even in Propwash Junction. He, Sky, Skipper, and Sparky flew out to Colorado for a race that was tomorrow afternoon. Dusty glanced at the clock. 3:10 a.m. Make that later today. Skipper and Sparky were in the room next door. Dusty shared a room with Sky. No storm outside. In fact, the night was clear and calm. Something else popped up in Dusty's memory: a talk Sky had with another psyche human racer at the welcome dinner they went to yesterday night. The racer had apparently heard about how she and Dusty crashed in the Pacific Ocean, and he couldn't believe Sky managed to survive the crash.
Maybe that's what caused the nightmare. Dusty mused.
Speaking of Sky, the psyche human suddenly moaned sleepily, and she shifted under the sheet and comforter of the hotel bed. She rubbed her eyes and blearily opened them to stare at Dusty. "Hey Dusty. You okay?"
Dusty cleared his throat softly. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine."
Sky squinted at the digital clock on the nightstand. "It's three in the morning. You sure nothing's wrong?"
"No worries, Sky." Dusty assured.
Sky sighed. She was so tired, but she couldn't stop staring at the orange-and-white plane in concern. "You know I'm there for you when you need it, Dusty. Okay?"
"I'm fine, really." Dusty insisted. "Just…..excited for the race."
"Well you can be excited at a reasonable hour." Sky yawned. "Go back to sleep. We have a busy day ahead of us after breakfast."
Dusty chuckled. "Okay. Goodnight, Sky."
"G'night." Sky's head flopped back down on her pillow, and she instantly fell back asleep.
Dusty watched her sleep for a while, eyeing the steady rise and fall of her back as she breathed. It was comforting knowing she was still alive and not a ghostly image like in his dream. Dusty continued to stare for several minutes, and then he sighed.
Sky was in no way fragile. She was strong, powerful, and never afraid or one to back down from a fight. She'd fight off the worst monsters of the world to protect the people she loved. If someone knocked her down, she'd jump to her feet again and send a fist flying. Of course, under that rough and tough exterior was a girl who simply loved her family. She loved to race with her brother-like friend. Her psyche human abilities generally gave her a faster healing period than normal humans.
But she was still human.
Sky would love to deny it, but humans just couldn't take some of the hits that a vehicle could survive. A car or plane could get spare parts or be patched up with sheets of moldable metal. They didn't bleed as easily. Crashes, with the exception of severe cases, were survivable. But not for humans. They were soft, easily breakable creatures. They had some durability, driven by survival instincts or pure stubbornness to live, but would that always be enough?
Dusty didn't like to think like that. He knew better. Yes, there were some things vehicles could survive that humans couldn't, but that didn't make one species any stronger than the other. It still terrified him, though, to think about the things that could potentially kill Sky. Racing was one of those things. She barely survived the Wings Around the Globe Rally. It was a miracle she didn't drown in the Pacific, and she could've been greatly reinjured by Ripslinger if Skipper hadn't come to help when he did. It was a fear that popped up in the back of Dusty's mind every time he and Sky raced.
What would happen if he lost her?
What would happen if he couldn't protect his sister-like friend?
Dusty silently rolled over to Sky and gave her head the gentlest of nuzzles. "I won't ever let you get hurt, Sky."
Sky, my friend, my sister. I'd do anything to protect you.