Thanks to ElTangoDeRoxanne and emeraldonyxdragon, my super faithful reviewers! No long intros because once again, I'm tired.
John desperately pulled at a sheet of metal that had fallen over the entrance to the machine's core, digging his fingers into the rim until they began to bleed. Blair jammed the barrel of her gun into a crack, attempting to lever the sheet off, but it wasn't enough. Finally, Barnes fixed one more rocket into his launcher and aimed at the metal sheet.
"Stand back, ladies n' gents," he warned, before blasting the metal out of the way. Before the smoke had even cleared, Blair and Kyle were already climbing through the hole, yelling Marcus's name.
The cyborg was tangled in a mess of sparking wires, blood dripping from a long gash in his head. A scratched piece of his metal skull glimmered in the poorly lit room, but luckily, it did not appear to be broken. He was unconscious, but breathing.
"Thank God…" Blair breathed, trailing a hand down the side of his warm face. "He's only knocked out. We just need to get him out of those wires." She explained to the others. John easily sawed through the cables with his knife, insulated from shock by the rubber-coated handle, and Marcus dropped to the ground with a crash. It took all four of them to lift Marcus from the ground and drag him out of the machine, but when they finally managed it, they emerged into a hall filled with chaos.
"I think it would be best if we quit this place while we still can." Balthier strode up to them, carrying a beautiful, sleeping woman with coffee colored skin and silvery white hair in his arms. "The emperor is dead, and I don't want to get caught up in the storm that's going to follow." John did not miss the sad look in the sky pirate's eyes as he looked toward the far end of the hall, where several men in extravagant armor stood over a body on the ground.
"We didn't make it in time?" he asked. Balthier shook his head.
"He took five bullets to the chest. Not even Fran's skill can heal something like that." He moved quickly, choosing the halls where the least amount of people milled about. "We just let ten machines into Ivalice, and already, the Archadian Empire, strongest of all the nations in the world, has been brought to its knees. I am amazed how long you've held out. Earth has been overrun, and yet you survive."
"This is how it was when Judgment Day happened. Lucky for you, there's only six Terminators left, and they ain't buildin' any more of 'em." Kyle said.
"If every battle is going to be like this, Judgment Day might as well have happened. The Mist does terrible things to outside technology and magick; you saw what those things became! Six Terminators can become the worst threat Ivalice has ever seen."
"Not as long as we're here. The Resistance fights the machines no matter where we are— if another world needs our help, we will give it." Blair told him, struggling somewhat under Marcus's deadweight.
"You remind me of Queen Ashe, a little bit." The sky pirate glanced back at them, humor dancing under the veil of sadness over his eyes. He just seemed to realize then the burden the four soldiers behind him bore, and stopped. "Would you like some help?"
"Yes!" Kyle heaved Marcus's arm off his shoulder, throwing the insensate man to the ground. "Oh my gawd, he's heavy! I need to lodge a complaint against Skynet. 'Dear Skynet. Please make your Terminator design lighter. Thanks a bunch, Kyle Reese.'"
Barnes snorted. "The only complaints they'll listen to are lead bullets."
At that moment, Marcus, revived by a Raise spell, opened his eyes. "Were you callin' me fat again, Reese?" he asked.
"Go get 'im, metal man!" Blair cheered as Marcus heaved himself to his feet and tackled the young demolitions expert.
"Get off me, get off me!" Kyle screamed. Balthier smiled serenely before continuing his walk out of the palace and toward the Archades Aerodrome.
"What's going to happen now that the Emperor's dead?" John asked when he caught up to the pirate.
"Larsa had two heirs, twin brothers by the name of Hugin Cepherius Solidor and Munin Leonid Solidor. Both are still alive, but unlike their uncle, who was killed in the Nethicite War seventy years ago, they are both very peaceable. This is going to be a very interesting time to live through indeed…" Balthier trailed off meditatively as he stepped into the street. Rain poured down, and once again, he lifted his face to the cold drops, letting them run down his face and become tears he could not shed. The long years were bearing down upon him indeed.
"You expect to live long enough to see all this happen?" John raised his eyebrows.
"Why not?" Balthier's shoes splashed through puddles water sloshing inside of them, and he vaguely wondered why, eighty years ago, he had decided to wear such impractical footwear.
When they reached the Aerodrome, they were soaked. All flights in and out of the city had been stopped, the building mostly abandoned. Balthier paused on the threshold of the building, water pooling on the floor, before turning around and staring back at the city that had reared him.
"What's the matter?" Marcus asked, squinting at the distant Palace tower. Smoke still rose into the dark sky, a reminder of the day's tragic event.
"Ivalice is changing, even though I am not. Fran and I are islands under threat of submersion by the relentless tide. Perhaps… perhaps it was wrong of us to pursue immortality." Balthier whispered.
"You are regretting our choice?" Fran opened her eyes, looking up at him as she voiced her question. Her partner set her back on her feet. "Larsa would want you to move on, too. He told me to tell you this when you got back: make new friends, Ffamran."
"Wow. Thanks, Larsa. I didn't know we meant so little to you."
"Does he mean so little to you? Did you only visit him so you could keep living in the past? We are not islands sinking below the sea— we are ships tossed about on a stormy ocean. With time and care, we can overcome all obstacles. You simply need to lift your anchor." Fran walked toward the hangar, leaving wet footprints in her wake.
Marcus's gaze switched back and forth between the two pirates. "I'm not going to pretend I understood any of that," he said, scratching the back of his head. There was a wrinkled scar there where he had ripped the chip Skynet used to control him, and he winced as his fingers agitated the old wound. "But I'm just gonna say, you've got problems, Balthier."
The Strahl made a graceful lift off into the iron-grey clouds, rising above the cloud layer and into calmer, sunnier skies. Marcus was in the kitchen, eating to regain his lost strength, and Blair was with him, sipping some tea with mint syrup out of a chipped mug to keep out the chill. Barnes lowered himself from his usual machine hating standards to sit with his friend and the cyborg in order to drink some warm coffee. John remained in the cockpit with the two sky pirates, but he was shivering in the Strahl's cold environs.
"You should turn on the heater, Balthier. Not all of us are as resistant to extreme temperatures like you are." Fran nudged him, breaking him out of his almost trance like daze.
"Right." Balthier pressed a few buttons, and the heater turned on with a hum.
"Do you even know where you're going?" John asked.
"Yes. Marcus said that he picked up the signature of two Terminators to the West, and three more to the south. One to the far west vanished recently. We are guessing it was destroyed in the Jagd Yensa." Fran said when Balthier did not answer. His eyes had glazed over again, and she shook her head. "Go to sleep, Balthier. I understand that the last thing you wanted to see when you came back from the war-torn Earth was the death of Larsa, but weren't you just waiting for it all along?"
"Sure." Balthier answered blankly, stumbling to his feet and walking out. They heard the door to the cabin he and Fran shared slam, and then a muted thump, and after that— silence. Fran slid into his seat, shivering slightly as her bare skin met the cold material, and wrapped her hands around the joystick. John took the seat next to her.
"What's wrong with him?"
"He is hungry, tired, injured, and grief-stricken. It strains his mind and body to the limits of his humanity," the Viera replied, realizing that they were slightly off course and correcting their heading to Nabradia. "It makes his personality unstable."
"A little rest ought to do him some good, then." John stared at the controls before him. Blair would most likely go crazy and beg Fran to let her fly the ship, were she here at the moment. In fact, speak of the devil, and he shall arrive, the crazy pilot herself had just come into the cockpit.
"Can I fly her?" Blair asked, just as John predicted. Marcus followed her inside.
"Careful, Fran. Blair might take us crashing down into the swamp below." He laughed. Blair thumped him on the stomach, but he only laughed even more when she cursed, shaking her bruised knuckles.
"Go ahead. You are a pilot, yes?" Fran asked. Blair blinked.
"How did you know?" she asked. The Viera flicked an ear, and the young woman's eyes followed the motion with eager fascination.
"You smell of the clean sky." Fran said simply, rising to her feet and leaving. Blair shared a look with Marcus, who smirked at her before shifting a large trunk filled with vials strange liquids, tufty red and gold feathers, and scummy piles of strange green-grey herbs in order to sit in the seat it was occupying. She took the control stick in her hands, feeling the low jitter of the ship through the mechanism. The pilot could almost sense the ship's frustration, that she was meant to go much faster, but was being held back. There was a glowing green button on the dash. Without thinking, Blair pressed it.
It was just like when she flew her A-10 Warthog, but so much faster. The world whipped by unimaginably quickly as the Strahl boomed over it, speeding faster than sound.
In Balthier's cabin, there was a loud thump and a resounding wail of surprise. "FRAN!" Balthier squalled. "Who the hell is piloting my ship? I thought it was on autopilot!" They could hear Fran giggling, apparently uncharacteristically, for the next thing they heard was, "Fran, I am seriously reconsidering our partnership. I mean it—no! I mean it! By the Gods and the Scions, if there is so much as a scrap on my baby I'll—" Blair took the ship into a sharp corkscrew.
"You'll live." They heard Fran say. "You always do, my little undead child."
"Fran!" There was a loud bang, followed by Balthier scrambling into the cockpit. They noticed that his eyes, which were wide with terror, were back to their remarkable shade of honey brown. The Viera followed him back into the cockpit, lacing her hands across his chest as he hurriedly checked maps, bearings, and statistics, anything he could get his hands on.
A loud beeping went off, and Blair quickly powered the Overdrive down, slowing the ship. Balthier relaxed instantly, staring at the radar under his fingers.
"You're even scarier than Vaan, I swear. We've missed our destination by about twenty leagues. Congratulations, Blair, you've piloted us all the way to the river Nebra." He glared at the readings. Kyle came into the cockpit at that moment, white faced and shaking and covered in water. "Okay, was it Army Girl at the helm? Alright, that explains a few things. Don't do that when I'm in the shower."
"What was that beeping?" Blair asked.
"The alarm telling us we overshot." Balthier replied, sinking into a chair with a sigh, then leaping up again with an explosive swear as it turned out the chair was occupied by a bundle of cactaur needles.
"It's okay. Those Terminators don't seem like they're going anywhere at the moment. We have time to relax." Marcus said.
John nodded. "We might as well. I have a feeling things are about to get a helluva lot harder."
Fran lay with Balthier on the soft sands by the river, staring up at the stars. John, Marcus, Blair, Kyle, and Barnes were attempting to light a fire, but failing with the limited supplies they possessed. In the end, Fran cast a Fire spell, setting the dry wood ablaze.
In the course of half a century, the area around the River Nebra did not seem to have changed a whole lot.
"It seems like only yesterday you were trying to drown Vaan in the Nebra, doesn't it, Balthier?" Fran asked.
"Why would you do that?" Kyle asked, warming his hands over the fire.
"Hm… as I recall, it was in the days when I still turned into a skeleton in the moonlight." Balthier grinned at the memory. "Vaan thought it was really scary at first, but then realized that there were certain… benefits… to having all ones bones exposed."
"He pulled out one of Balthier's ribs and used it to play fetch with a young boy's pet wolf pup." Fran explained.
"Of course, I wasn't happy that my rib was missing, so I chased Vaan down. And then I found out that the wolf ate it." Balthier finished bitterly. John blinked.
"Impossible. When Kate did her physical on you, you had all your ribs."
"I got better." Balthier said wanly.
"We'd best go to sleep soon. Tomorrow, we have to fly back to that Nabreus Deadland place we saw from the air, and I want to be at full strength for the fight." Barnes said.
"Party pooper." Blair stuck her tongue out at him.
As they rolled over to go back to sleep, no one noticed the lights that flashed from Bahamut's spire, like ominous fireflies in the night.
Yay