Thanks, emeraldonyxdragon and ElTangoDeRoxanne, for your reviews! I won't bore you with a long opening because I have not the time.
Disclaimer: I own naught.
John Connor landed on his behind with a grunt for the fifth time that morning, his fall softened by the wrestling mat beneath them. He was drenched in sweat, his shirt sticking to his skin, and his breath coming in explosive gasps. Balthier smiled, standing over him, not even the slightest drop of perspiration rolling down his face. Meanwhile, John's elite soldiers, who often accompanied him on missions into the hearts of the most dangerous Skynet facilities, clapped, cheered, and whistled.
"Had enough yet, commander?" the sky pirate asked, hands on his hips.
"Never!" John growled playfully, executing a spin that was supposed to sweep the smug pirate off his feet and dump him on the ground beside him. Theoretically. As soon as John's shin connected with the back of Balthier's legs, the sky pirate performed an acrobatic backflip, using the momentum of John's kick to help him gain distance from the fallen man. John lurched to his feet, panting and blowing, while the sky pirate stood stock still, as if turned to stone, regarding him with those alert gold eyes. It seemed so very out of place, that the ever exploding spring of energy and motion that was Balthier had suddenly been shut up. "You're absolutely positive you're not using any of your Terminator destroying skills?" the commander asked, somewhat unnerved. Balthier shook his head, breaking his stony cocoon, flashing a smile.
"You'd know if I were doing anything like that." He purred, as John lunged for him again. The pirate dodged to the side, his hand shooting out and wrapping about the back of his neck, and levering him into a choke. John struggled, but his futile efforts were not enough to break Balthier's grip, and he ended up tapping out.
"How did you get so good?" he gasped, messaging his throat. Balthier shrugged.
"I was a soldier, a long time ago, a member of the elite forces. But, that was almost seventy years ago. I try not to dwell on the past." He said nonchalantly. The commander opened his mouth to ask another question, but they were interrupted by more cheers.
"You get 'im, girl!" the soldiers were hooting as Blair apparently was proceeding to tie Marcus up in knots. The cyborg was struggling madly, but for all the strength he exerted, Blair only levered one of his appendages in such a way that he only ended up in even more of a bind. Marcus finally slammed his head against the ground in defeat.
"I quit!" he yelled, and Blair helped him to his feet, giving him a kiss and a pat on the head.
"It's all right, metal man. I'm sure that you can beat everyone else on this base." She chided him, and Marcus snorted, rotating his arm.
"All right? I think you almost popped my arm off!" he growled, and the pilot laughed.
"At least you don't go easy on me!" she chirped. "Right, who wants a go at this fantastic fellow?" she held her hands out as if Marcus was an object on display in an auction hall.
John and several of his men pushed Balthier from their midst. "Traitor!" the pirate muttered.
"Blackguard." John replied. "Marcus, you wanted to see what kind of man could take on a Terminator. Here you go!"
"All right!" Marcus grinned. Balthier cracked his neck, sliding his vest off and tossing his white shirt aside. A murmur swept through their audience at the sight of his scars, tattoos, and shining piercings, the glitter almost an irresistible target for anyone who wanted a shot at that cold, dead chest.
Marcus shot forward, and Balthier feinted, about to catch the cyborg in the same, fatal crush he had administered to John moments earlier, but Marcus had the advantage of mechanical anticipation. He sweeps Balthier's strike aside, his fist connecting with the sky pirate's gut.
Balthier collapsed to one knee, wheezing, his eyes focusing on the image of Marcus's knee coming for his face. Seconds before impact, he managed to gather his thoughts enough so that he started blocking the blows, passing some of the stronger ones to the side. When the cyborg comes in for a sweep, the pirate dances backward before lunging for Marcus's unprotected sides.
He was almost like a panther, all lithe, sinuous muscle and perfect coordination, but again, Marcus caught him in the midriff, pinning him to the ground.
"You're not giving me anymore of a challenge than John does." Marcus grinned, and Balthier suddenly smiled as well. All Marcus saw was a flash of silver eyes, and the next thing he knew, he was on his back with Balthier's hand around his throat, his other inches away from his face, fingers curled into blunt claws. Marcus gulped, and Balthier slid off his chest, offering him his hand to help him to his feet.
"What was that?" the cyborg asked, and the sky pirate smiled conspiratorially.
"It's a secret."
Marcus shoveled spoonful after spoonful of baked beans into his mouth, while John sat back in his chair, sipping coffee with amusement written on his face. "Don't eat too fast or you'll be sick, Wright." He chided the cyborg, who took a long draught of water out of a canteen.
"Was outta it for three years. The old brain cells need nourishment, see?" Marcus responded. Kyle gnawed a strip of beef jerky that had been brought in by a set of ranchers living a few miles from the city.
"Don't eat too many beans, Marcus, or you'll get gas." He teased, and the other grunted.
"Don't get any gas when you're a machine. Who are all of you, my mom?"
John snorted into his cup. Kate was hovering at his shoulder, her hand like a delicate white butterfly against the black cloth of his jacket. Blair lounged at the other end of the table with a few of her pilot friends, and Balthier, and was currently engaging him in a very animated talk about flying machines. The rest of the mess hall filled with the rest of the elite group that was going to raid the Skynet facility in order to sabotage the time machine. Even Barnes suffered to sit at the table with them, though he spoke rarely to Marcus or Balthier.
"Are your troops usually this animated before a battle?" Balthier asked, polishing the barrel of Fomalhaut with a rag and angling it to catch the light.
John looked up from his mug. "They have cause to be. They are all about to become instrumental pieces in the Resistance. In short, they are about to become famous."
Balthier raised his eyes to gaze at the tables occupied by the twenty men and women who would participate in the assault. How many of them would return alive? How many wives would become widows on tomorrow night?
How many children would be orphans? An image of Vaan and Penelo flashed through his mind, and he shook his head. Penelo had probably passed away by now. When would her funeral be?
"Hey, you still here?" Blair waved a hand in front of his face, and Balthier blinked.
"I'm here. I was just thinking, don't worry." He replied.
"What about?" Kyle scooted his chair closer like a child anticipating a story. Which, considering he was approximately seventy five years older than the soldier, made sense to the sky pirate.
"Nothing. Don't worry about it. Just… homesick.
"We'll get you home with that timey-wimey machine, don't you worry." The young man promised, and John nodded.
"Help us, and we'll help you."
The Skynet facility was easy enough to crack, once Marcus disabled the security system. The cyborg's frame shook, his blue eyes narrowed as he focused on interfacing with the computer. As soon as the doors opened, the team sprinted inside.
Balthier peered around the corner, taking in the appearance of Terminators clanking through the hall, hands on their guns. This way, he signed at the team behind him, padding down the opposite hall with as much noise as a cat on the prowl. The other men followed with slightly less finesse. The lab was easy to find— more and more Terminators guarded every corner. In fact, it was as if they were lined up to go somewhere…
"Let's lay low for a moment." John whispered. "There's too many of 'em to fight."
After a while, the entire column of machines marched through a door at the end of the hall, and the squad tiptoed after them. Balthier quietly pulled Fomalhaut from the straps on his back and peeked into the room. To his horror, the regiment of Terminators was marching into a swirling purple vortex under a white arch.
They had opened a gate, but to where?
"Shit." Blair whispered as the last machine vanished through the portal.
"Hurry, we can still make it through! Follow them into that Gate!" John ordered, racing toward it.
"But we don't even know where it goes!" Marcus objected. "It might not be the right time, and then we're stranded."
"There's no gettin' out now, boys n' girls. We go through, or we try to leave and die." Barnes said from his position by the door. Marcus stuck his head around the door, and pulled back before his head could be blown off his shoulders by a rain of machine gun fire from a troop of T-600's marching down the corridor.
"Damn! Everyone through the portal, now!" John yelled as the first robot rounded the corner. As the team rushed through the gate, the machines began laying into the crowd around the portal.
Screams rang out as burning hot bullets bit into fragile human flesh, blood splashing on the white tiled floor. Marcus flung himself on top of Blair, shielding her from the bullets with his own metal reinforced back. Balthier bent Mist to his will, hopelessly frying the wiring of the foremost T-600's with a Thundaga spell, before he turned and pushed John through the portal.
John's eyes were wide as he fell through the Gate. The sky pirate waved. "I'll catch up to you, just don't leave the Gate area."
With a roar, Marcus charged the nearest T-600, ripping through it with brute strength when it went for Blair, but she easily held her own, slipping under a strike from a machine gun butt to plunge her fist into the base of a Terminator's skull. She ripped out a handful of wiring, and the machine slowed, its arms and legs moving jerkily, before Balthier finished it with a gunshot to the head. He jerked his head to the portal. "You're next." He commanded, and they dashed through the swirling vortex together, the strong-willed military woman in the lead. Kyle slipped after them, lugging a pack of grenades. Now he was the only one left, and he attempted to back toward the portal, but to no avail.
The Terminators descended upon him like flies to a light, identifying him as the one who had felled their mechanical brother earlier, and riddled his body full of holes. Balthier put a hand over his stomach as something surely never meant to see the light of day poked through the numerous gashes he had just acquired.
"Bugger all, this was my favorite shirt," he grumbled as he began to regenerate. He dodged another hail of bullets by ducking behind a computer bay, then cast another Thundaga spell, the bolt of electricity crackling through the room. When a machine got too close, he plunged his Yagyu Darkblade through its face, and the glowing red eyes in the hideous metal skull dimmed as sparks jumped from its circuitry to the ninja sword. He began backing toward the portal, training Fomalhaut on a computer bay that seemed to be controlling the Gate. In his distraction, he did not see the gun barrel trained on his head until a bullet lodged itself firmly in his eye.
He gave a cry of agony, blood pouring down his face like tears. The Terminator that had blinded him came forward, the others parting to let it through. It picked him up by his throat, cranking its jaws open, and once again, Balthier found himself staring down the mouth of a flamethrower for the second time that week. He threw his arm in front of his face, just as a blast of fire that charred his arm to the bone narrowly missed his face. The leading man could never lose his face, Balthier thought dizzily as what remained of his vision threatened to fade to black, but an eye is certainly not off the list. By the gods, he wanted to just go to sleep, using the death trance to regenerate fully, then get up and get away, but if he did that, the machines would take the opportunity to most likely massacre John and his men as they waited on the other side of the portal. Dying would have to wait a few more minutes.
Balthier curled his good hand into a fist and slugged the Terminator in its grinning face. The attack bent its head back at an unnatural angle, and it dropped him to the floor. Finishing his original intentions, he shot the control panel, though his aim was slightly off because he only had one eye to see with, and, sucking bruised knuckles, vanished through the portal before it dissipated.
When the creature came crawling through the vanishing portal, John Connor's first impulse was to shoot it, but he refrained purely out of curiosity. Its skin was an unhealthy pale color; blood poured from its face, black as night. When it heard the click of the guns, it raised its head and hissed, mouth wide and fangs barred, blood dripping from its chin, a single silver eye wide with either fear or warning. It took quite some time for John to realize that this monstrosity was Balthier.
"My God… what happened to you?" he cried. The sky pirate climbed shakily to his feet, but Blair grabbed his shoulders, trying to make him sit again. He knocked her hands aside, the movement fast and somewhat jerky.
"Don't touch me." He rasped. "Don't tempt me with your warmth."
"You're not in any position to be standing, Mister!" she shouted. Balthier shook his head.
"I'll be fine… just give me a moment." he groaned, probing his lost eye with his fingers. "Marcus, I'm going to ask you to do me a favor. Can you get this bullet out of my eye? Your fingers should be small enough. And you're not really human— it's best this way."
"Uh, okay… are you sure you're going to be fine? I mean, you've been shot to pieces. We should be trying to heal you. Your eye is the least of our worries…" the cyborg said, reading the statistics the machine in him were feeding. They were telling him that Balthier was critically injured, and would not survive any kind of medical treatment, but his true eyes were telling him other things.
"Take the bullets out of my body too, if that's what you want to do. Just get this sodding bullet out of my bloody eye!" the sky pirate howled.
"Okay, okay! Sheesh!" Marcus pursed his lips in disgust as he used his mechanical fingers to probe the mass of pulpy, bloody flesh occupying Balthier's left eye socket, eventually encountering an oblong object that the sensors in his fingertips identified as metal. When he pulled, the bullet came out, eye and all, and Balthier gave a muted cry, clenching his fists on the ground to keep from lashing out in his anguish.
"Thank you," he breathed, relaxing somewhat before regaining his businesslike composure and wrapping some bandages over his eye, then used a Cure spell to numb the pain. "So, what happened while I was busy getting killed?" he asked.
"We managed to bring down most of the Terminator regiment that went through the portal before us, though we lost a few good men and women in the process before the last of 'em retreated. One thing's for sure— this ain't LA." Kyle said glumly.
"Then, where are we?" Blair asked, shivering in the cold. "It's like a cave of some sort, and there's all this water everywhere."
Balthier sniffed the air, sifting and categorizing the scents rolling over his tongue. The ugly scent of headless giants assault his senses, and he immediately knew where they were.
"This isn't even Earth. Shall I dare say it? We've returned to where I was Warped away in the first place. This is the Sochen Cave Palace."
Updated!