Chapter 2
The path to the jumpship was short, the majority of the resistance having been turned into a paint job by Horus. Short as it was, though, the walk was full of bloated silence. Horus felt tremendous guilt weighing upon him. The fact that Bracken had chosen to trust him regardless of his behavior made him feel somewhat better, though the slaughter he'd enacted was heavy.
The sight of endless death around him flashed across his mind, though he did his best to pay it no mind. Funst bled support across their link, something he did his best to return. It was strained and fragile, but he did manage to respond in kind. She would only respond with renewed confidence in him every time he faltered.
The quartet of assorted beings arrived at the location that Funst had provided to Ghost, a jumpship hanging precariously from myriad wires locked onto different hooks across its body. Horus sighed as he looked across its body.
"I will not fit in that." He remarked. "Bracken may, but I will not."
"It'll be a tight squeeze for me anyways." The Exo replied. Horus found it interesting for his species to possess such a name. Exo-what? It was an idle musing he didn't understand, but enjoyed entertaining nonetheless. "I can head to the city then come back with a bigger ship." Horus stared at it, sighing in resignation as he realized he'd just have to wait.
"Do as you will, Bracken. I shall remain here." He said. He held out his hands for both of the weapons he'd revived with, Encarmine and Telesto both compiling into his hands. He turned about face to stare out of the exit into the building, though thankfully no sounds approached.
"Actually," Bracken said, tapping Horus on the shoulder. The giant turned again, raising an eyebrow in curiosity. "I have a better idea."
A better idea this was most certainly not. He'd been expecting something rather crazy, as Bracken's eyes had lit up with a strange, primal glee when Horus had admitted to hear him out. He'd never complain about this arrangement, though. He'd be able to survive if it went wrong.
The jumpship, Arcadia-class, screamed through the sky. Its tremendous engines rumbled as they burned through what little fuel they possessed, Bracken pushing them as hard as he could. Horus noted idly that the exo was probably enjoying his first flight. Horus wasn't sure if he himself could fly this fast, though.
He stood on top of the jumpship, wind whipping and tearing at him while they soared through the sky. Telesto was buried in the hull of the spacecraft, holding the light bearing giant fast to its hull. He also focused on that strange power which had flowed through him when he flew, the force he exerted on himself keeping him rooted to the spot.
Perhaps he could fly this quickly. He thought to Funst to open a channel to Ghost, a spark of glee quickly growing in his chest. After all, if he didn't actually use his wings to fly but rather some power they granted him, maybe he could push this power to grant him…what had she called it?
'Hypersonic flight.' she replied in a clipped, but gentle tone. He blazed with thanks to her.
"What's the matter, Horus?" Ghost suddenly asked. "We can slow down if you need us to." Horus laughed heartily, though he couldn't even hear himself over the roaring wind.
'Please tell Ghost I am going to dismount the craft.' Funst relayed the message giddily. It seemed his excitement to test himself was infectious. The craft slowed slightly, the wind only barely slowing about him. He thanked Funst immensely, flooding their bond with the joy that the open air brought him. The craft continued to slow until he could actually hear the engines over the roar of the wind around him. Sub-sonic, Funst explained.
Horus prepared himself, taking deep breaths as he prepared to push himself as hard as he could. He could not, though, use his Light. His…episode had made that abundantly clear. Perhaps this was a common condition?
'It's not.' Funst replied with more comfort. That seemed to be her default emotion, something for which Horus was eternally grateful. Eventually the jumpship stopped slowing down, giving him the chance to dismount. He held out his hand for Funst to materialize, immediately grabbing her to prevent her from flying away.
"Please repair the hole I have made in the ship." He asked. The words were again ripped away, but he knelt down and removed Telesto from the hull of the jumpship, bringing Funst near to it. She flashed a beam of light, and the hole was repaired. He looked around him, the engines now audibly thrumming as they waited to be unleashed once more. He closed his eyes and listened to the currents of wind around him, taking a final breath. Standing to his full height, he allowed the rushing air to pull him away from the jumpship.
Suddenly caught in freefall, he grinned widely as the ground slowly came up to greet him. It was here that he noted several things. First, if he focused, he could easily pick out single blades of grass several miles below him. He could see the insects crawling across them if he tried harder. Second, when he flared his wings to catch himself he came to an immediate stop. There was no slowing of the descent, just a full stop.
He twisted midair, his wings flapping to compensate and rotate him. He could see Bracken bringing the jumpship around, a wide contrail following the craft. Horus's wings pushed strongly, the onyx pinions creating only a small gust of wind below him.
"Well?" Bracken said through Funst. "You coming?" Horus remained stationary in the air for a few moments, appreciating the cool night air. Even up this high, he still felt unbelievably warm.
"Yes, I simply need a moment to prepare." Horus replied. He closed his eyes once more, taking in the sounds of everything around him. The distant roar of Bracken's ship, the sound of the high-altitude wind in his ears. He could feel his own body eagerly awaiting the chance to use its full power, the thrum of his rushing blood like music in his ears.
He opened his eyes again, and pushed.
He exploded away from his stationary position in the air, a thunderclap briefly filling his ears before all he could perceive was the loud, angry cry of whistling air. The distance between him and Bracken closed rapidly, the pilot of the jumpship swinging his ship away from the black-winged angel and feeding the engines' voracious hunger for fuel.
The ground below them disappeared, miles devoured in moments as Horus pushed his flight as hard as he could. The strange not-wings force that propelled him forward surged through his veins, gleefully fulfilling his desire to move.
"Holy— I'm pushing the jumpship as fast as I can!" Bracken yelled. Horus roared with pride, soaring up and down as he kept pace.
"Truly!" Horus cried. It was of course lost in the wind, but Funst transmitted the message. "This is incredible!"
Incredible it most certainly was. Perhaps Bracken had been right all along, flying on the outside of the ship had been a spectacular idea. Horus weaved around the ship, finding that it was somewhat easier to keep pace with the vessel when he was behind it.
"Are you slipstreaming?" Ghost asked. Funst tried her best to explain with images, but the message that Horus received was garbled. He couldn't blame her, she'd done plenty of talking as it was.
"If you recognized it, them I most likely am." Horus replied, pushing himself to coast just above the top surface of the jumpship. He examined the dusty, aged surface. Reaching out, he ran his hand along the surface while gliding over it. Despite the fact that he'd been standing there only minutes before, it somehow seemed so much exotic now that he was instead gliding above it. "How fast are we going, Ghost?" There was a moments silence as the little orb inside the ship ran the number.
"Uhh….hypersonic." He replied. Horus suppressed a chuckle. Was he really? That would certainly explain why he couldn't hear anything besides rushing wind. Funst was beaming Ghost's voice directly into his mind, after all.
If one were looking up from the ground, they would see the jumpship soaring across the sky, a small bird flying side-by-side with it as they devoured the miles.
Horus looked down, seeing small packs of animals walking over the endless plains of grass. The moon above them glowed with argent light, painting the clouds into a mosaic of silvery curves and sweeps.
They weren't flying for too long before Ghost and Funst both patched through a message.
"Unidentified aircraft, you have entered City airspace. Identify yourselves immediately." A militaristic voice grunted. Low-pitched and sounding somewhat angry, Horus pulled himself closer to Bracken's craft. A slight lean to the right placed him above the craft yet again.
"This is Ghost. I'm requesting permission to land in the tower hangar." Ghost said in a staticky voice. The communication line crackled for a moment. A small emotional nudge of apprehension from Funst motivated Horus into action.
"This is…" he trailed off. Horus wasn't right. He didn't like that. He and Bracken hadn't taken the time to find a new one. The line crackled again.
"Unidentified aircraft, say again." The voice replied. The pair continued to rapidly close the distance between themselves and the City as Horus continued to remain silent.
"Unidentified aircraft, say again or you will be treated as hostile." Funst's emotional nudge turned into a shove, Horus freezing in fear as he continued to be unable to say his name.
"Uh, City…I think," he began. "This is….Valtira. This is Valtira currently, uh, requesting permission to land in the…"
"Tower hangar." Ghost supplied nervously.
"The tower hangar." He completed. He nodded to himself, even if nobody besides Funst cold see it.
"Patching you through to Tower ATC. Maintain current bearing." The voice completed. "Welcome home, guardians." There was a snap, and the communication with the City closed off. Funst flowed with gratefulness, and he sighed in relief as they waited for whatever the 'Tower ATC' was to contact them.
"Well, that was certainly something." Bracken began, chuckling deeply. Valtira, as he had instinctually named himself, laughed mildly as well. They both enjoyed the momentary humor of Valtira's inability to respond properly to communications, with the winged man relying on Funst to carry out the conversation for him. It was only a moment's peace in what had so far been the insanity of their new lives. Well, the insanity of Valitra's life, mostly.
"I think it was more than something," Valtira replied. "Several things, even."
"You're one of the types to always have the last word, aren't you?" Bracken pouted over their ghosts' communication lines.
"I suppose in this case I am. Though I will hardly commit to that."
"Hey there, new lights!" A new voice sparkled to life on the radio. Bright and jovial, the woman seemed far more pleased to interact with them than the previous man. "Name's Amanda Holliday. Get a lock on the hangar beacon and autopilot will guide you for the landing procedure." There were a few moments' silence as Bracken likely fiddled with the controls to lock onto the 'hangar beacon.'
"Amanda, this is Bracken. My ship doesn't seem to have a nav-beacon. My ghost, Ghost, just confirmed this with a systems scan." Amanda swore over the radio, barking several orders quickly to other people likely in the hangar with her.
"Alright. Well, assuming you're able to control your arrival, take bearing four-seven-zero and decrease your speed. Even our dampening equipment can't handle a hypersonic approach. That and it scares the citizens."
"Roger, Amanda." Bracken's craft immediately veered to the right, the nose dipping down towards the ground. Both he and Valtira were still in the clouds, which were thick and heavy near the city. As such, the winged man was forced to remain within arm's reach of the jumpship to maintain his course to the city. Once Bracken finished changing his course, the radio line opened up again. "Bearing four-seven-zero, decelerating to subsonic speeds."
From here, they remained silent as the approach to the city was filled with excitement. Valtira and Bracken could both feeling it spilling over from their ghosts, the mood so infectious they couldn't help but smile. They were home. The mood only brightened further when they broke the cloud cover and were greeted with the sight of The Last City.
Looming above them even at their altitude was a massive white sphere, glistening in the sunlight. Its smooth surface hovered above a colossal city surrounded by a wall so high that it made the Cosmodrome wall look like a child's palisade.
"Oh…wow." Valtira whispered. Funst swelled with pride, their bond flowing with the brilliant emotion.
The City was surrounded by clouds, though the metropolis itself was bathed in sunlight. Several dozen miles across, the massive settlement was abuzz with life and activity. Small transport ships shuttled people across its vast distances, and jumpships were constantly moving in and out of hangars all throughout it. What took Valtira's notice the most, though, was a massive spire reaching into the sky on one end of the wall.
"That must be the tower." He remarked into the roaring wind. Able to see now, he distanced himself from Bracken's craft and prepared to make his own approach. Off to the side of it he could see a massive square opening in the wall, dozens of ships sitting stationary within it.
Both he and Bracken made a beeline for the opening, slowing down tremendously until they were moving at a snail's pace compared to earlier. As they approached, Valtira noted that the hangar was even larger that it'd seemed to be from afar. A colossal metal maw, it loomed in the distance as they began their final descent.
Massive docking claws hung from its ceiling, many of them occupied by some craft or another. They all shone with a metallic gloss, brilliant paint jobs of varying shapes decorating their surface.
Bracken's craft was quickly grabbed by these docking clamps, and he materialized on the ground underneath it. Valtira landed with a soft whump next to him, large groups of people milling about, their various duties occupying their time.
Well, they were milling about. Anyone who could see them had come to a stop, staring with wide eyes as the pair. Both guardians met various people's gaze, their physical or metaphorical hair standing on end.
"Does anyone know where Amanda Holliday is?" Valtira asked somewhat nervously. The number of eyes on him was unnerving, though he did his best to portray confidence. Several people immediately pointed further into the hangar silently, their jaws hanging slack. Valtira looked down at Bracken, who shrugged and gestured for his friend to go first. They quickly moved further into the hangar, drawing eyes the entire time.
Amanda quickly finished up what she was doing, having received word that the pair of new lights had docked. She felt kind of bad, they'd only had one jumpship to make the flight to the city with. They'd probably been packed like sardines. It was rather odd, though, that one of their signals had registered outside the jumpship.
With the chain harness secured around the sparrow engine she'd been working on, she wiped her hands on her canvas work pants and prepared to introduce the pair of them. Zavala knew she was always dirty, but it couldn't hurt to be a bit more presentable than she normally was.
"Hey, uh, Amanda." One of her fellow mechanics, Armani, said. He held up a data pad for her to look at, his Van-net account pulled up. "You might wanna see this." She scanned the screen, her eyes widening dramatically. Some of the other hangar techs had posted a series of images to the general discussion board used by the hangar staff for information dissemination when walking across the entire blasted thing was too much of a problem.
Pictures of the largest human and exo she'd ever seen dominated the board. Several techs had already put various forms of text over the pictures they took, most of them involving their fellow staff's jaws hanging wide enough to catch birds. She couldn't blame them, especially when it came to one of them having wings.
Before she could stare even more at the pictures, she heard a pair of heavy footsteps approaching, and she turned about to see the new lights in question.
Even over twenty feet away they were huge. The exo stood at a good seven feet tall, towering over everyone in the hangar. Deep blue eyes felt like they bored into her soul as his heavily-armored body moved slowly with artificial breathing. His human companion stood over three feet above even him, his wings folded up behind him and still visible.
"Woah." She whispered. Her fellow techs that were standing nearby were just as awestruck, taking pictures like everyone else in the hangar. She was tempted to take some herself, but odds were good there'd be thousands of them before the end of the day.
"Greetings!" The colossal human boomed. His voice was as deep as she'd have expected, reverberating off the walls like a gong as it rattled around her brain. "You must be Amanda Holliday." It took a moment for her to get her brain back into working order and realize she was staring. He smirked at her, and she jumped into action.
"Nice to meet ya." She replied as nonchalantly as she could. Part of her brain was still struggling to process that humans even came in his size. Or exos, for that matter. Regardless, she managed to calm her brain by recalling the practiced greeting she gave all new lights. "Welcome to the tower. We got some folks waiting for ya upstairs."
"Truly?" He extended a hand in greeting, though she realized she'd probably be better off receiving a hug from the man than a handshake. "By the way, I am Valtira. My friend is Bracken." She shook his hand the size of her torso anyways, smiling the widest she had all day. She'd have to make sure to remember their names.
Not that it would be particularly hard.
