"Abraham!" I woke up with a start. Fang was standing over me along with the other members of the Dawn Blades.
"You okay?" Four Eyes asked worriedly.
I stood with some difficulty, and clutched the spot where he had pierced me with his sword. Despite my regenerative abilities, my wound wasn't healing as it should.
"Yeah…I'm fine. Doesn't matter." I answered dismissively and sat back down with a pained groan.
Tweed was standing in the corner smoking when she finally let out an impatient sigh.
"What're we doing next, boss?" She rolled her eyes irritably.
My current options flashed by in my mind. We could stay and continue hunting, or we could try to get Primo out. I already knew what I had to do, though. It was convincing them to help me or let me go.
"…There's no use sugarcoating it. All four of you know who and what I am, where I come from, and why I'm here. The boy I helped the Archadian guards capture is Primo. I'm not sure if it's the Primo I know, or the Primo from this dimension." I began explaining, and my audience exchanged glances between each other.
"So?" Tweed spoke, her voice still impatient.
"I have to save him. The Archadians will never let him go, even if he's just a boy. They'll execute him and his friend as rebels to the Empire. I'm going to help him. I'm not asking you four to come along…I'm asking you not to stop me or stand in my way." I finished with a sigh.
Vanille let out a giggle, and I looked up. Fang, Vanille, Four Eyes, and even Tweed all had supportive smiles on their faces.
"If you think that you're going to get all the damn Archadians to yourself, you're sorely mistaken." Fang told me with a laugh.
"You're our leader. You lead, we follow. Doesn't matter where." Four Eyes rolled her eyes with a smile.
"Besides, possibly failing and getting shot sounds more fun than sitting around here and twiddling our thumbs, boss." Tweed cracked her knuckles in anticipation.
I couldn't stop myself from smiling.
"…Thanks, guys. You're all good friends." I looked up and gave them an encouraging and confident grin before standing up.
"Let's kill some Archadians." Tweed let out a whoop and gestured for us to follow her.
I was increasingly made curious as she led us into the basement of the manor.
"We were going to tell you after the party." Fang whispered in my ear as we walked.
What awaited us was a large-scale hangar, right under the house.
A small cruiser, Archadian style, was waiting.
Like its predecessors, it was dark cobalt with plenty of fins to upgrade the aerodynamics of the ship.
"Spent over six hundred thousand gil for this bastard. Spent over four years upgrading the damn thing further than any moogle ever could. Took me quite a while to move it over to this place." Tweed showed us around the place.
Apparently, the hangar had been built long ago, and the main ship exit led right to a hidden cave entrance in the Dalmasca Westersands.
Tweed opened an entrance into the ship and began describing the entirety of the ship. It was a simple and very effective design due to the fact that despite its size it was incredibly fast and powerful.
"I'm not sure where our journey will lead us, but…it's good to have friends like you around." I turned to face my clan after a few minutes of studying the machine.
"Well, you're our boss, boss. Don't know what else we'd do." Four Eyes responded with a warm smile and nodded to Tweed.
"Are we all ready, then?" Fang questioned us, and everyone nodded.
Tweed disappeared into the bridge, and the ship turned on moments later.
The bridge was small but roomy, having a window that could view almost all the way down, up, left, and right. Not that the pilot would need it, of course, considering the maps lining the terminals.
Four Eyes manned a co-pilot seat, while Tweed motioned for us to sit in the other positions lined with terminals.
"Ladies and gentlemen, fasten your seatbelts…this is gonna be one hell of a ride. It'll take us at least five hours to reach Nalbina Prison, assuming the weather is unchanged." She announced into a communicator that relayed her message throughout the entire ship.
With the familiar rumbling of the power systems turning on the airship, I sat in the remaining cockpit. It was there I realized it was also a turret seat. From there I controlled two large cannons, and had camera views of all directions that the guns could aim at.
"Liftoff!" Tweed whooped as the ship began floating. All systems were completely operational.
It was time.
"How fast should we go?" Four Eyes asked Tweed quickly, her hands typing furiously as she calculated the ship's coordinates and directions.
"Hmm…we'll go about seventy-five percent maximum. Don't want to go too fast and end up passing those wankers at Nalbina." She responded quickly, and gripped the controls tightly.
I gave a quick nod to Fang, who winked at me. Vanille, meanwhile, was already asleep. Big surprise.
"Systems taking off…5…4…3…2…1…Goodbye." A feminine mechanical voice announced just as we burst off through the tunnels at an unimaginable speed.
Before I knew it, we had travelled over three miles of underground passageway and were now in the Westersands.
"Now…we'll need to be accurate. Chart a course for the prison." I reminded our pilot, and she nodded respectfully.
Another step closer, Primo. Another step closer.