His arm hurts, throbs in pain, ruby red blood seeping into his clothes and his hair and the dusty black dirt of the vacant lot. All he can see for a second is razorsharp white juxtaposed against the cage of pale sky and ratty city-scape. He collapses on the ground, gasping, and his master scoffs in disgust.
"Stupid apprentice," he kicks Allen in the chest, lightly, "is that the best you can do? Fuck, I got stuck with a sissy. One more time."
Still dizzy, Allen shakes his head, cradling his left arm to his chest, "it hurts."
His master sighs, snubs out his cigarrete on the arid ground with one pointed boot, "well, of course it hurts. What? Think it wouldn't? Now, one more time."
Allen shakes his head again, more adamently, pushing his body farther off the ground with his one good arm. "I can't."
A hand reaches out, flicking him on the forehead, then his master stands up, dusts off his black coat, "do what you want, you idiot. How are you going to keep your promise like this?"
Promise. Oh. He remembers now. Mana. I promised Mana.
Not more than five steps out of the empty lot, (a stray patch of dusty nothings, hunched between the black houses like a child, a lost orphan with nowhere to go) Allen calls out. "Wait!"
General Cross turns around; the scrawny brat was standing again, hand clutching at his arm, knees caved so close they were almost touching. Teetering, unstable. But standing.
"I'm ready." He says, his gray eyes sharper now, a cloudless silver sky.
Cross smirks. "Alright. Took you fucking long enough."
Allen takes a deep breath, digs his feet into the dusty, cracked earth, feels the hum of beginnings and endless sky thumpthumping against the soles of his feet, thudding in his bones.
"Is there a blue sky where we're going, too?"