Floor 27 – Boss – The Crossgigas
Since getting back from… wherever the hell they had actually been, some questions had had to be asked, as uncomfortable as those questions were, such as "what do you mean we were only gone ten minutes?!" despite having been there for almost an entire day, "Whose sword is that?", referring to Eydis' blade that Sanya had picked up, reckoning that the would-be member of the Concord would have wanted it to go to a good home, even if she hadn't said as much, and "why have you got a random child with you?".
That one had been a little harder to explain, even if Mary had taken to life with them like a duck took to water most of the time. He was glad though, and it was nice to see her making friends her own age, especially as she hung around Seven and Silica. Honestly, he wasn't sure about how terrified he should be on that front, but he really hoped Mary would act as a voice of common sense for Seven…
Still, Jet had found it oddly comforting to be back on home turf, even if Aincrad wasn't their home. Hopefully, there were fewer unwelcome surprises at least…
All of that though had been two weeks ago. In those two weeks, the clearing force had finally found the Floor Quest, and a mysterious hint that "no blade of the earth will suffice to fight the Crossgigas.". Despite spending hours in the Tavern discussing this with Lisbeth and Argo, the Concord were still no closer to working out what it meant.
Koharu had the thought that maybe it meant the blade couldn't be made of anything naturally occurring; hence "of the earth", until Liz had pointed out that meant they had literally nothing they could fight it with, short of a meteorite anyway, and sent them back to square one.
The rest of the evening had passed relatively uneventfully, with little progress made on working out the riddle they found themselves tasked with unravelling, and by around 10:30, the group had made their way back to Harley and began to settle down for the night.
"So what do you think that meant?" Koharu asked as they got ready for bed, himself settling onto the bedsheets with the flop of someone genuinely exhausted by the day before...
"What meant what?" He asked.
On the other hand, Koharu settled herself into the bed with poise and grace by comparison. "The boss. No blade of the earth, what do you think that meant?"
"In all honesty, I haven't got a clue. I think we're all missing an obvious angle here, but I'll be damned if I know what it is."
"Are you okay? I mean, you did literally have someone die in your arms less than a day ago, and you seem… a little distant."
"It's just… I know I shouldn't, but…" He rubbed his eyes.
Koharu drew him into a hug and tried to comfort him. "It wasn't your fault. You couldn't have guessed Albion would get loose from all that rubble, and I don't think Eydis would've blamed you for that either."
"I know, and I keep telling myself that. Maybe one day I'll believe it, I guess. Just… it's hard to not relive how that felt. When Strea died, I wasn't there. When Mito died, I wasn't there. Even when I've seen people die, I've never been close to them, never had to feel as they pass on, and even if I had, they would've just become pixels. You saw it yourself, that didn't happen with Eydis. It felt… I hate to admit it, but too real. Almost like every rule in the game was rewritten at that moment…" Koharu paused, clearly thinking about what he had said.
"I guess I didn't think of it that way. That whole thing feels like one long, bad dream though…" Koharu sighed, clearly downbeat from that whole endeavour.
"It certainly feels like we ended up as Alice and found Wonderland. Made as much sense as that too." He admitted to her, and a little bit of that was aimed at the logical part of his mind too. No matter what he thought of, it wasn't enough to make any of that day make sense – a strange new world, actual flesh and blood humans in VR and actual magic…
None of which should have been possible in Aincrad by the rules they'd already long since established.
The long conversation that would normally have entailed from thinking about Wonderland, as he had now (somewhat ironically) christened it, was interrupted by a faint knock at the door, before the door opened to a very tired looking Mary, who seemed unusually wary to enter.
"Could I ask a question?" She asked quietly.
"Sure." Koharu smiled towards her.
"Umm, Eydis used to tell me a story before bed, and I'm struggling to sleep without it." Mary admitted, looking away with guilt written all over her face at interrupting them.
He supposed that happened when you were stopping with people you didn't really know and hadn't had time to gauge their reaction on things, and especially so for a child. Mary might not have been an infant anymore, but he certainly knew that he was still anxious around people at her age.
Without thinking about it, he found himself compelled to repeat a routine he had regularly done for his youngest sisters, to try and get them to calm down a bit… "Come on, I'll tell you a story."
Hopefully, this would be a lot more successful than those times though.
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After a little bit, he found himself sat at the end of the bed; a bed that seemed far too big for the younger girl as she settled down. "Okay, so I call this one The Majestic Tale of a Madman in a Box…"
He settled into what he called his storytelling voice as he remembered the story. "Once upon a time, on a world across the universe, there was this civilisation – the Time Lords. Their world was one of politics, one of bureaucracy, and eventually, this one Time Lord had had enough. So they stole a time machine and took off across the cosmos. They saw magnificent sights, unbelievable creatures… and a lot of Welsh quarries." He joked to himself.
"Through their lives, they travelled into the distant past and the far-flung future, they saw the creation of worlds and the end of them too. They battled unspeakable creatures, the gods of their own universe and some of another too, they fought tyranny and evil wherever they went… and they helped so many people that their name became the word for healer of people, for giver of medicine across the peoples of the universe – Doctor. If someone needed help somewhere, anywhere, they would help those in need. In their own words, "the universe shows its true face when asks for help, we show ours with how we respond"."
Far from his attempt to lull Mary off to sleep, she was now sat bolt upright, engrossed in the story but with a small tear in her eye. "They sound like Eydis…" She said, an obvious twang of sadness in her voice as she remembered her lost sister.
"Yeah, they do." He smiled, reminding himself of their conversation on the doorstep before Albion had arrived. The woman who would've seen the world with them, had circumstances been different. The woman that saved his life and left him with a debt he could never repay… again.
"But the Doctor had one trick; they could regenerate. When they died, their body died but they lived on. A new body, but the same person."
"You said they called themselves the Doctor. What was their name though?" Mary asked.
"No one knows. Only children can hear it, and only if their hearts and the stars are both in the right place…" He explained as Mary looked out of the window intently, as if listening for the name, and he found himself smiling. "Now, it's getting late. I think it's time for bed, don't you?"
"Is there a happy ending?" She asked, and he felt a rising sadness in his heart at the question. He knew the answer was probably no. Heroes didn't tend to get the happy ending, not usually…
"Someday. I never liked endings though, they're always a bit sad. But still, everything ends and that's always sad, but then, everything begins again and that's always happy." He stood up and watched as Mary began to drop off to sleep. "Be happy, and we'll look after the rest. Night, Mary"
He hadn't noticed Koharu stood at the door smiling at him whilst he'd been telling the story. "I guess you read your sisters stories?"
"Sometimes, yeah." He admitted. "When Mom left us alone, I'd always read stories of these heroes and-"
"Sit and watch TV." Koharu teasingly pointed out.
"Ah, you recognised that then…" He rubbed his neck sheepishly.
"Never seen it myself, but all of that stuff you said… that's you in a tee." She smiled. "Never sit still, help wherever you can, no care for your own safety…"
"In fairness, I'm getting better on the last one." He defended.
"You jumped over a cliff edge to save Rain." Koharu reminded him. "That was two days ago-err, six hours ago, err… this really is confusing, isn't it?" She rubbed her temple in frustration.
"You're telling me." He laughed. Time dilation really was a pain, he'd soon realised… "Besides, we've got an early start tomorrow, so we should take our own advice, eh?"
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The next morning arrived uneventfully, and after breakfast and setting up the plan for the day, the two groups split off. For the time being, Seven would look after Mary in Harley to get her acclimatised with the new world she found herself in, whilst the rest of the Concord headed back to the Twenty-Seventh Floor to continue their investigations.
As it was, the Concord split into smaller groups again to make life a little easier, which meant that Jet and Koharu had gone looking for a quest that had been given to them in the aftermath of the past few days. It was a relatively simple fetch quest, to retrieve a set number of an item that dropped from the Rock Monsters that populated the floor. Honestly, Jet wondered what it said about the creativity of the Cardinal System that it had actually named creatures as "Rock Monsters", but as the tempo and frequency of the combat became more intensive, he focused his mind on that instead.
"That's ten of them down. Should be enough, right?" He asked, looking in his inventory to find ten of the required crystals.
"Mine are down too, so that makes twenty."
"Unhand me, cretin!" A distinctly shrill (and agitated) voice echoed through the caves, the sudden noise causing the Rock Monsters to scarper underground again…
"Well, even if it didn't, guess we should go and see what's happening back there."
As they approached the source of the shouting, it became apparent what the issue was. "You talk a lot for someone who willingly followed us…"
Oh for-Rapist and Humpty-Dumpty again?!
This was just getting embarrassing now – at least Morte had an aura of fear around him, the man was insane, after all, and Albion was… well, he wouldn't hesitate to cut him down next time he saw him…
These two though? If Morte and Albion were the Bane and Joker to his Batman, then these two were bloody Condiment King!
"It's them again." Koharu looked just as done as he was by that revelation.
Closing the distance to the shouting, Jet thought of a plan in his head – that plan being to defeat them completely unarmed this time… assuming the two pillocks didn't just scarper when they saw him, anyway.
That plan became redundant when they saw him anyway… "You again!"
"The feeling's mutual, trust me."
"We owe you for last time…" He simply rolled his eyes. He'd beaten them with an umbrella, for the love of all that was holy. Surely, they knew of the phrase "know when you're beaten", at least…
"Leave the lady alone!" Koharu shouted at them.
"Oh, how about we fight you then… sweetheart?" The blonde one said with a leering grin on his face.
"Word of advice, harm her in any way, and I will ensure your deaths are worse than any torture in existence." He said coldly, and for once, he meant it.
"Now, that is interesting. She matters to you then, not just some bimbo you picked up." The blonde one answered, giving possibly the worst answer he could ever have made.
"Excuse me!?" Koharu shouted, and between clutching at his ears and watching the pair back off slightly, he looked up at the ceiling. The cave ceiling was starting to shift slightly, as small rocks and dirt fell in front and behind of them.
"Uhh, Ko? I think we should be going. Same to you, all of you… you might want to run. Like, run for your lives!"
"And why would we do that?" The grey haired one sneered, just as a rock hit him on the head in such a way as to prove his point.
"That's why!" He answered, and the girl they were hassling pushed past them both as she started to run. "She's got the right idea… leg it!" He shouted, before both he and Koharu broke into a sprint, back in the direction they came…
With little warning, the ground behind them gave way and separated them from the two stooges… "You'll have to jump for it!" He shouted back, wondering why he was even helping them to survive in the first place…
Oh right, because it was the right thing to do, even if he didn't like it.
"No chance! We'll die!" One of them said pitiably.
"And you'll die like that too!" He answered back. "Oh, suit yourselves!" He rolled his eyes and began to sprint as fast as his legs would carry him. Hopefully, it would be enough to get him out before the roof caved in entirely, because he did not want to experience being trapped in a cave…
As luck would have it, he had just enough time to get out of the first chamber, before some kind of heavy-duty door sealed behind them – a safety feature, he guessed, though he couldn't say he'd seen it on their way in…
"That was too close." He admitted. Any closer, and he would've been doing the whole Indiana Jones retrieving his hat routine with the door…
"What about those two?" Koharu asked.
"Probably fell deeper into the mine, if I had to guess."
"Well, I suppose I owe you some thanks for helping me out there." The girl said, though it looked as if it pained her to say that. Now with some actual lighting, he could tell a bit more about the girl they'd stumbled across – she was probably about their age, with hair that was somewhere between red and pink, a sort of pinkish-crimson colour, with almost sky-blue eyes. Her outfit was quite strange too, with a short skirt and thigh-high boots, alongside a shirt that Jet wondered how practical it was, given how much of her cleavage it showed off…
Strangely, it looked almost regal in a way with how much detail was on the outfit, as if she was acting the part of nobility, though there was no nobility that he knew of here.
"No thanks necessary, we just wandered across those two berks out there. Ran into them yesterday too." He explained, reminding himself that despite everything that had happened in Remembrance, it had only taken place over 15 minutes here.
The longest 15 minutes of his life, quite literally…
"Well, I deem it necessary, so you will have my thanks regardless." The girl snapped back. "I suppose I should explain what I found there that attracted those cretins. Information on the boss; that it was once the leader of a warring faction that hid down here when their war turned against them. It has rather since mutated since then, according to the miner I followed."
"So, mutated warlord that can't be killed by anything of the earth. Marvellous." Jet replied sarcastically. "Still doesn't give us an answer of what we need to kill it though…"
The girl rolled her eyes in frustration. "Typical man, only thinks of how to kill or how to get his pe-"
"Yeah, we get the picture thanks!" Jet interrupted, whilst Koharu was snickering to herself.
"So, are you thinking of either of those things, Jet?" Koharu asked sweetly, whilst he rolled his eyes and did his best not to go bright red at the obvious implications. Thankfully, the subject was soon changed… "Sorry, we didn't introduce ourselves. I'm Koharu, that's Jet."
"Medina."
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After the trio – though calling them that was probably a bit of an overstatement, Medina rarely talking and taking point for the majority of the way – had returned from the caves into Ham's Stead, they parted ways, leaving Jet and Koharu to head over to the temporary field HQ for the Assault Team…
The tavern.
Because of course all would come back down to the pub, Jet supposed…
"So, we believe this thing to be impenetrable to weapons made of the earth?" Lind thought aloud. "Forgive me for sounding a bit dense, but doesn't that mean every weapon…"
"Not quite. There are some weapons that we know that are made of unconventional materials. Bone and the like." Heathcliff answered, and Jet thought of the reward he'd gotten as the Last Attack Bonus last floor: George's Hilt. A sword fashioned from the actual Last Attack Bonus, which was a large dragon bone that Liz had fashioned into a blade for him when he'd read the flavour text telling them that any blade born of dragon bone would possess superior qualities to its metal counterparts.
Honestly, he'd never really expected it to be anything other than a few little buffs here and there, and he'd mostly kept to using Caledfwlch, given it felt more comfortable for him on the whole…
"So… we need a blade made of dragon bone." Lind continued.
"Forgive the interruption, but did it not say immune to all blades of the earth, not all weapons of the earth?" They heard someone ask, and Jet gave a look to Koharu as they both recognised the tone of mild arrogant superiority in her voice… Medina.
"Yes, a good point. Perhaps an exceptionally large hammer would do the job as well…"
"With the one problem that we do not have anyone on the assault team who wields such a hammer." Heathcliff pointed out incorrectly. Liten used a hammer, and as far as he knew, she was still on the Assault Team, but taking a rest after ten days straight of fighting and dealing with the fallout of the self-destruction of the ALS, and the disappearance of Kibaou.
If he didn't know any better though, he would've almost thought Heathcliff was deliberately excluding her for some reason. What reason though, he didn't know…
"It doesn't need to be a hammer though. If we're right, and it is just a blunt object that's needed to bring it down to size, then even a cannonball would do the trick."
"Ah yes, and what cannons do you see here?"
"Not yet there isn't, but we do have all the resident parts to build a cannon, do we not?" Seven pointed out, and he thought about it briefly. The gunpowder that the Fallen had planned to use was still sealed on the Fifth Floor, but he imagined that if they were to ask Idrehendis nicely, she would allow them to transport enough of it to create the cannon back to the Twenty-Seventh Floor, and Liz was almost certainly skilled enough at blacksmithing to create a barrel for a one-time use…
"I must protest this idea!" Heathcliff seemed aghast at the idea, whilst Lind looked deep in thought. "It would make a mockery of everything this game stands for…"
If anyone was going to listen to his argument before, they weren't now, Jet reckoned. Just why was Heathcliff so interested in "fair play" anyway? It wasn't like being trapped in here was fair in the first place!
To give him his credit, even Lind recognised that, and sided with them. "I agree with young Seven. It may be an option, but we would be remiss to assume it's the only option. Jet, you still have that dragon bone that Wirrn dropped, don't you?"
"Kind of, I had it fashioned into a sword. Still getting used to it though." He admitted. "So I wouldn't rely on it as an ace in the hole."
"I would rather have it as a back-up option, nonetheless." Lind answered, before reiterating the plan. "So, that answers the question of how we plan to defeat this creature, leaving us with simply the question of the formations we should use."
It was at that moment that Jet found himself tuning out from the discussion…
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The discussion had lasted the rest of the afternoon, as it turned out, and once Koharu had gotten his attention back on the room, they had all agreed to use the evening and tomorrow to prepare for the coming boss fight – a consequence of needing to traipse down to the Fifth Floor to recover a load of gunpowder, and get Liz to build a cannon… something she had voiced quite an objection to, namely that she was a blacksmith, not a gunsmith.
He pointed out that they were the same skill, and after a bit more back-and-forth, she had made a start on the cannon, whilst they retrieved the gunpowder.
In the end though, Liz had managed to produce the first working, player-operated cannon in Aincrad… even if it was a little rough around the edges, and the same could be said for its ammunition.
A test shot had revealed that it had an accuracy that could be summarised as "wishful thinking", and a tendency to pour out thick black smoke, suggesting hadn't quite combusted the gunpowder properly, but those were both improvements that could be put on hold till after the battle, they had all agreed.
Which all led to the group waiting outside the boss chamber, lugging a 2-tonne gun around on a dolly behind them, an act that had made climbing the stairs leading up to the boss fight, more than a little bit of a challenge…
"Well, we made it…" Jet leant against the gun for support after having to heft the thing up the stairs, somewhat thankful that the game didn't simulate slipped discs as an injury…
"Remember the plan! Onwards!" Heathcliff shouted, and the group entered the chamber, and came face to face with their foe:
The Crossgigas.
"That is a big monster…" He wasn't wrong – at nearly fifteen foot tall, it towered over them all by a massive margin. The monster's arms were nearly as long as he was tall, and in each of the four hands were weapons that had to have been stolen from previous challengers; they were far too small for it otherwise.
Huge for a normal person – the axe was easily bigger than Agil's was – but tiny in comparison to the rest of the creature.
Most notably though were its two heads coming from its shoulders…
"I've heard of having a wise head on your shoulders, but that's ridiculous!" Jet joked to little recognition, as he pulled the cannon round for its first shot. Mostly due to their inventory size, and the simple fact that carrying four or five 50-pound balls of steel around with him would mean he had a walking pace only marginally faster than the Rock of Gibraltar, it had been decided to split the cannonballs around the Concord, meaning that each member would need to pass him the ball in order to fire the gun at the creature… and hope that his aim was still as good as it had been in the olden days.
Especially as this thing was no Hispano Mk.V.
"Begin!" Heathcliff shouted, as the Crossgigas roared. Without a moment's hesitation, he loaded the first shot into the muzzle of the cannon, and pointed the cannon at the boss, calculating the lead for the shot in his head.
A calculation that was constantly changing as the boss moved, much to his annoyance. "Got it!" He shouted, lighting the wick at the end of the barrel… and getting out of the way, in case of an unplanned disassembly of the cannon.
BOOM.
The noise of the cannon firing crackled throughout the room, and the shockwave wasn't far off either. Luckily for him, his leading had proved broadly correct, the shell clobbering the Crossgigas' right head, before the ball fell back to Earth onto its foot… "Ouch." He muttered.
Except it fall at a rather higher pace than could have been expected for an object of its size – it looked like it weighed almost ten times more…
"What the…" Without thinking, he took the second round off Koharu, and loaded it. Another calculation of the lead needed, and he was ready to fire again. "Fire in the hole!"
BOOM.
Only this time, something unexpected happened – the shot entered a much steeper parabolic arc than it should have, falling well short of the boss. They hadn't run out of gunpowder already, had they?
No, that wasn't it, all of himself, Liz and Seven had worked out there was enough for ten shots there. If that wasn't it, then what was it?
As the boss began to move around the room, he spotted the lead team struggling to move, and concluded something he wished he'd known earlier.
The boss was controlling the magnetic field of the room somehow, and-
"Urgh!" Jet groaned, pulling himself against the magnetic field dragging him to the floor. "The place is magnetised!"
"Tell me something I don't know!" Agil shouted, having been pulled straight to the floor with the combined weight of armour and his axe. Liten had found herself in a similar situation, her suit of armour rendering her functionally paralysed in the strong magnetic field…
Of the group, only a few had found themselves still able to keep moving to any real degree – Sanya, Philia and Yuuki having kept their mobility due to the lack of armour they both wore, and all three were now the main targets for the Crossgigas...
"Got… to… get… up." He strained, attempting to fight physics itself before a thought crossed his mind. If he shed his armour, then maybe he would be able to get up, and back into the fight. Of course, it carried a major risk factor; lacking armour, he would be forced onto the evasive for the entire fight, and with little chance to defend should an attack come their way, but it was a risk worth taking.
The cannon was completely out of the question now, that much he knew for nothing.
Fighting the laws of magnetism themselves, he moved his hand with great difficulty and deselected his armour. With the sudden loss of magnetism combining with the effort he'd put into trying to get up almost rolling him onto his back, he quickly recovered and got up onto his feet again, looking for George's Hilt in his inventory as he did.
Well, if ever there was a time to test how conductive dragon bone was, now would be it, he reckoned!
"Well, this is a bit fairer! Four versus one!" Sanya shouted, narrowly evading a swing of the Crossgigas' axe that completely destroyed Liz's cannon. "I spoke too soon, I think!"
"We need a way to kill that thing. It keeps regenerating its health…"
"Guys, that gem!" Yuuki, having gotten closer in one of her earlier attacks must've seen something about it. "I think that's its weak spot! It keeps glowing when it's regenerating!"
"What I wouldn't give for a sniper rifle about now!" Philia groaned, and he agreed. That gem was about thirteen foot up, well out of the reach of even the best of their sword skills. To hit it, they'd need some kind of projectile, and it wasn't like they had anything to launch at it either…
"What if we drop something on it?"
"Like what, a pillar?" He asked, looking around the arena.
"How about a person?" Sanya smirked.
"That would require finding someone mad enough to be used as a projectile, with no guarantee they wouldn't just get swatted aside like a bug…" Jet told her, before realising Sanya wasn't asking, she was implying that they were going to use him as said projectile. "Oh you can't be serious…"
"You do have the most experience in the air out of us, and that magnetic field should pull you straight back down before it can react…" Philia admitted, even though he could tell she had reservations about the idea.
"One problem though." Yuuki pointed out. "How do we- I have it!"
"Ay?" He asked in confusion, before realising exactly what she was looking at. The chains below each arm… "Oh. This is not gonna be much fun for me, is it?"
"Nope, but it'll be even less fun for him though!" Yuuki beamed, and he found himself trying very hard to psyche himself up for the experience of becoming a human cannonball.
"Just remember, you need to get off at the peak of the parabolic arc, to do the most damage to it." Sanya explained as he charged towards the chain closest to him. Getting on the chain proved to be the easy part - just like climbing a rope ladder in the playground, he thought, if the rope ladder was swinging violently and trying very hard to throw him off into the walls of the arena, anyway – staying on it, though, was proving a much greater problem. Hold on with every bit of force he could muster, he watched as the chain flew skywards and as it passed the 90-degree mark, he felt as if time was slowing down…
In reality, it wasn't, but he managed to time his launch almost perfectly, coming off just before the chain started to descend and he found himself immediately above the slightly confused Crossgigas, reaching the apex of his ascent…
Well, it was now or never, he supposed as he equipped Strea's old sword for the descent. It was enough to knock him to the floor whenever he tried to wield it normally, so it should be perfect for the divebombing role he now found himself pressganged into…
He'd heard the saying "putting warheads on foreheads" used to describe more precision guided weaponry dropped from aircraft, but he'd never once imagined that he would be the ordnance!
"Mind if I drop in!" Crashing down onto the Crossgigas, sword first, he quickly recovered from the minor daze of the impact – more than can be said for the giant, which was now staggering around as if someone has slapped it around all four ears simultaneously – and ripped at the gemstone with his dragon bone sword, tearing it out of the creature in three pieces. "Oh, this is going to hurt you a lot more than it'll hurt me."
The creature groaned, before it felt a sharp stabbing sensation in its chest – his blade being used as an impromptu descender – and he dropped back to the ground with a rather undignified clattering. "Ow…" He groaned, as he extricated himself from the crumpled heap he had landed in…
"It's not healing anymore!" Yuuki shouted. "Jet, give me a boost up!" Without much warning, he found himself faced with a charging Yuuki, and did what he hoped the younger girl wanted: he put his hands out to form a step, and with a lot more grace than he'd ever have managed, he gave her a boost up as she stepped onto his hands. Unlike his "rod from god" impression, Yuuki was able to get just high enough to launch into a sword skill that gave her an altitude boost, as well as a rather fast rotation…
Fast enough that he no longer saw Yuuki, but a spinning purple blur that moved fast enough that it decapitated both heads of the Crossgigas in a single pass before she found herself falling back to earth. Evidently taking a note from him, she lunged her sword into the boss as she descended and used its dying moments of dropping to the floor to slow herself down, landing with far more finesse than he had – mind you, most crashing planes landed with more finesse than he had, so it wasn't a particularly high bar to clear.
"That was so awesome!" Yuuki almost bounced about, ecstatic at the brief moment of becoming a helicopter. "I so want to do that again!"
"Whereas I never want to do that again."
"You looked awesome! Like a bolt of lightning hitting it!"
"Well, that was certainly… a finish. A remarkable one at that." Despite his dislike of the man, he couldn't bring himself to argue with Heathcliff there. Turning himself into a rod from god, before Yuuki had decapitated the boss whilst spinning like a buzzsaw, was certainly remarkable in his eyes. "Truly, you deserve the name Jet." He narrowed his eyes in annoyance and let out the fakest laugh he could. The man's sense of humour needed some serious work…
"I told you it would work, did I not?" Sanya stood there, an air of smugness around her. Was it bad that he wished he had been killed in the attempt, purely to avoid the insufferable arrogance he would now have to put it with from the "Silver Witch", as he'd heard someone call her…
"No, you just looked at me and decided I was the right shape for a projectile." He reminded her. "I will get my own back for that one, trust me."
"I look forward to your opening salvo then." Sanya smirked, as he walked back over to Koharu, rolling his eyes as he did.
"Need a hand up?" He offered his hand in assistance.
"I should be fine." She accepted his hand though, regardless of her need for it. "I think the cannon's gone though…" They both looked over at where the cannon had ended up: the metal gun wedged awkwardly in the floor; the magnetic field having pulled the debris down to earth almost like a shower of shrapnel…
"Liz is gonna kill us, isn't she?" He asked, already aware of the answer. Yes, yes she was.
"I mean, we didn't destroy it so…" Koharu thought of an excuse, though he really wasn't sure the blacksmith with anger issues… and a big hammer, would be quite so receptive to the answer. "Yeah, she's going to kill us. Think we should head on up before she catches up to us?"
"Read my mind!" He laughed.
{Author's Comments}
Not really a two-parter, but this will be a double bill, so the comments are on the next chapter to save me repeating myself.