Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
Bird thou never wert,
That from Heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.
When he stood amongst the clouds, with only the roar of engines beneath his feet and a poem in his thoughts, for an instant he could have been a bird.
What could wine offer? What fountains, treasure, or ancient tomes were equal to this boundless blue yonder? If he could but eat dew, perhaps he would be, if not god, at least not human.
But he did not rise to these heights for the sake of enlightenment. Indeed, he only needed to glance down to the sand and dust of the Outer Ring to see a brown plume rising from the region's cracked roads, on time and as predicted.
Mochizuki Machinery hired too freely, and it was far too easy to find a temp worker with a wagging tongue or an appetite for a bribe to keep an eye on the airship project. Striking there, dense with desperate workers as it was, would have been more trouble than its worth. But now that it was on the road, it was exposed on all sides.
How much would it cost to lose such an investment?
He flipped the switch on his radio and spoke into it.
"Hear ye, hear ye, all Buzzards, all Vermin…"
Far away, another man heard that rallying cry, and bounded to the top of his truck, helmet under his arm. With a grin and a raised fist, he hollered to the band of men before him.
"Green light, boys! Green light! Start your engines and make some noise! We got a corp to crush!"
Their raucous cry was matched by a deafening eruption of wild revving. If one had not known, it would have sounded like thunder, and the rage of something in the sky.
It was unimaginable. It was heretical. It was a truth too gross to utter, but too real to deny.
The Corley was more comfortable than the company car.
Wherever Mochizuki Machinery had acquired their giant carrier, it was clear they had decided to do some personalized sprucing up. The rectangular cabin had a whole bench seat that let Belle, Wise, and Eous sit side by side without having to fight for room or sit stiffly. Air conditioning also seemed to be a privilege the company had decided to not skimp out on, leaving the place pleasantly cool. There was even a radio providing some pop-based white noise to fill the silence.
With such obscene indulgences, it was almost hard to imagine they were inside an industrial street-eater, hauling a whole aircraft on a river of wheels fuelled by thousands of gallons of gasoline and horsepower.
Of course, it helped that neither Belle nor Wise needed to take up driving duties this time around.
"Y'know, I'm always happy to have to two of you visit this ol' lady, though I didn't think you'd be so desperate that you'd sit in this boring desert bus," Piper drawled. Even now, her nonchalant driving held true, hand on a cheek and a single knee pressed against the bottom of the carrier's steering wheel to give it minute adjustments.
All said, Piper had the right of it. After a few worrisome turns that had Kessler giving evil eyes at the diminutive trucker for her adventurous steering, the path had eventually straightened out, and flattened out, into a wide expanse of outback and sky. The only thing breaking up the monotony was the trails the Sons of Calydon kicked up when they intermittently raced ahead on their small bikes, and the stray gossip that squeaked through a CB radio hooked to the ceiling.
Belle shrugged and began leaning back to rest her hands behind her head. "To be honest, I'm amazed you'd willingly get behind the wheel of this monster."
"It's not everyday you get to drive a Corley," Piper answered. She looked around the cabin, the faintest trace of hushed awe in her eyes despite her nonchalance, "Heck, the company that made it came and went before even li'l ol' me was a twinkle in Ma's eye. That, and Mochizuki really wanted me behind the wheel. I'm sure you know by now how antsy they've been what with… well, everything."
"Heck, I'm antsy about just hauling an airship." Belle looked back through the window, up at the gargantuan vehicle being dragged through the air, cast in its immense shadow. "It's not affecting your driving, is it?"
"Honestly, the Corley handles like a dream," Piper said in reassurance, knee jerking a little to orient their transport. "If I had to guess, it's because the cargo's inflated. We're not carrying the airship so much as we are towing it along with all those cables."
"Is it even safe to do that?" Wise inquired. "Aren't they inflated with some kind of gas?"
Eous quivered and buried itself into the seat, dragging down its ears with its hands to cover its eyes in a hot flash of anxiety.
Piper, as always, didn't care. "Beats me, I'm just carrying it. Mochizuki's the one who flies 'em."
On cue, Kessler walked upwards into view from outside the windshield, fully crazy enough to scale the front stairway of the carrier. Opening a side door, the engineer let the hot air and roar out the outside blow into the cabin before shutting it behind him.
"Just called ahead and told them you two are coming," Kessler reported as he squeezed past Phaethon to sit in the space behind. "For shame, you made Mia cry. Poor girl probably thinks I had to lie about hiring the best the city had to offer. Probably drinking herself to an early heart attack as we speak."
"Then that was your fault," Belle scoffed, holding back the urge to roll her eyes again. "You should be more worried we're not going to go flying thanks to that giant gas bomb we're hitching a ride on."
Kessler smirked as he reclined. "Don't worry your pretty little earthbound head about it. Airships use helium, not hydrogen. It's non-flammable, though if the ride springs a leak, you better hope it's compartmentalized, or it'll drop like a rock."
"I'm more worried about the enemies we'll be facing. You still owe us an explanation." Wise spoke next as he turned to his client, a slightly flinty look of growing impatience in his eyes.
The engineer perked back up. "A while back, the Terminals started hitting our outlying operations. They're a motorized gang who've been real vicious at it."
"Outer Ring's full of biker gangs, what makes them any worse?" Belle asked, and received an eye-roll in return.
"I said they were vicious, didn't I? They're not just some hoodlums swinging chains, they're up-geared like crazy. Some of their stuff could be mil-spec, even. I don't know what they have against us, but they've been going full slash and burn on us. They're not here to rob us, they're here to ruin our business."
"And they've been doing something that requires Proxies," Wise added, knowingly. "What is it?"
Kessler's expression turned truly dark this time, all hints of sarcasm and bite replaced by fury luckily aimed elsewhere.
"I don't know how they're doing it, but they've been fucking with a Hollow something fierce-"
The engineer was cut short by a shrill squawk from the radio, followed by Caesar's stern but eager voice. "Hey, Piper, ready up."
The trucker's posture firmed up immediately, ripping the receiver from the radio unit and bringing it to her mouth, while her other hand gripped the steering wheel. "Hit me with it. They're here?"
"I can hear them coming. Also, Kess, I know you're hearing this, so I don't want you saying the Overlord don't know what truck engines at full rev sound like."
"Got quite the mouth on you, haven't ya?"
"He's flipping you off right now," Piper cheekily reported, peeking back past her seat to watch as Kessler stalked towards a hatch to the rear of the cabin.
"I can do it to her face," Kessler groused as he wrenched the handle. "Don't make me sound like I'm some ten-year-old."
"Hey!" Belle called out, concerned, "our car is in the farthest carriage!"
Kessler waved her off as he stepped beyond the door. "Your stuff won't even get a scratch. I'm looking after the whole thing. Just stay with Piper."
Belle and Wise's worries expressions were the last thing he saw as he shut the hatch again, leaving him out amid the rattling walkways the airship loomed over.
There was a change on the wind. A distant chorus of thundering steel and howling engines surging down the highway to meet them. Kessler looked past the Corley and the bikes escorting it, eyes narrowing.
In the distance, he could see multiple foreign dust trails rising into the sky, chasing after open-air buggies and Humvee-shaped pickups that were approaching, all loaded with whooping and hollering men. Despite the quality of the vehicles and the fully concealing military gear they wore, the olive drab of their machines had been painted and taped over with decals of bird skulls and printed obscenities.
Old news, and old threats. Kessler had already fixed on an earpiece and was effortlessly navigating the vibrating path while speaking into it.
"Yeah, the Terminals are here, as fucking usual. If we can pass the outer marker we'll be home free, but everyone needs to be onboard … yeah, even Stella. We got a whole fucking airship and two Proxies for our Hollow problem, you want all hands on this motherfucker. I gotta go."
Further out in the sands, Caesar King watched her client tread on, and grinned in anticipation.
"Let's do our job! Everyone pick a truck and take 'em out!" She hollered to her team, even as she reached beind her to slip on her spiked shield Vidi.
With no further deliberation, all four bikes peeled off, fanning out as their riders trained themselves on their own opponents.
The Overlord kept her course straight, flanking the Corley even as she heard honking behind, a speeding truck commandeered by a particularly bold group of Terminals attempting to intimidate her. Caesar merely smirked, keeping her speed steady.
"The prize is right there, ya idjit! Just waste her ass!" She heard someone shout as the truck drew alongside, along with the racking of a shotgun that immediately had her twist the brakes. With her bike frozen in place, the truck sped forward, leaving the buckshot to fly past her. At the same time, the Terminal gangster's continued trajectory brought his head slamming into Caesar's raised shield.
"Try again, loser!" Caesar laughed, the gunman cartwheeling blindly end over end to tumble to the road. Her grin became feral, the Overlord almost relishing in the explosion of enraged hollering from the remaining Terminals as the truck braked and swerved to try and follow after the biker – and for a moment, away from the carrier.
The others were managing their respective pickups as best they could – Burnice, tangling with a group of overeager would-be-boarders on a second truck, kept a wide perimeter with arcs of coruscating jets of fire that dappled flashes of flames across the highway.
Lucy's boar Thiren, Grassy, ever faithful, clung to her and her ride, raring to hurl themselves at their foes – and ever resigned they found themselves obliged, as Lucy sped crossways in front of the truck she was tangling with, deftly scooping Grassy up off their perch to toss them skyward and brandishing her bat with a practiced twirl to pelt them directly into the opposing vehicle with a mighty swing that seemed to ring out across the desert. The boar struck the windscreen with such force that it splintered, cracks spider-webbing across its surface, with Grassy bouncing off what remained of the windscreen, and the truck swerved blindly as Lucy snatched her companion out of the air and returned them, dazed, to their seat.
Lighter, for his part, forced his quarry to engage in a game of cat-and-mouse, his gauntlet alight with roaring flame as he closed the gap, contorting himself at seemingly impossible angles around the seat of his motorcycle to strike out at his chosen truck with legs and flame-cloaked fists.
Even with the tools at their disposal, there was only so much that could be done, difficult as it was to duel with a vehicle several times their size and weight – but it had distracted those road-bound boarding parties, with none able to commit when a Son of Calydon was riding on them.
It wasn't to last, though, as Kessler spied the fight, frowned, and spoke into his ear piece as his eyes drifted elsewhere.
"Guys? Second wave, inbound," he said, seeing several smaller dust trails rising from the horizon to join their fellows.
"What, seriously?" Caesar's static voice chirped.
"Yeah, seriously. They really want this zeppelin. I'll look after it as best I can. You do you."
A veritable swarm of bikes with sidecars swooped in while the Sons were occupied, and Kessler grit his teeth through a freshly lit cigarette as he watched a gaggle of Terminals leap from their sidecars to land on the gangway, all dressed in vandalized army gear.
As he began stalking forward, joysticks returning to his hands, one gangster at the very front was busy trying to start up a chainsaw to take to the thick steel cables. When he looked up, he jerked slightly in surprise, before pointing his weapon at Kessler with glee.
"Hey, it's a Mochizuki!" he observed, rather belatedly. "Fuck him up, then cut this blimp loose!"
A few of them cheered, energised with fresh bloodlust. Not long after the Terminal's saw roared to life and, with an attempt at an intimidating flourish, its wielder tried to close in on Kessler. The engineer waited just long enough – enough for the yellow sunlight to reflect off the teeth – before lunging forward.
Chainsaws were inherently terrifying weapons, and by all means it was stupidity to rush towards one, especially when it granted the gangster a range advantage. But even if the Terminal thought that, reality cut him off with a white claw clamp that lanced out from behind Kessler's back and grabbed ahold of the guide bar, letting the saw teeth grind against the metal until the chain snapped.
The gangster looked at his destroyed weapon in disbelief, and thus was completely distracted by the second manipulator that grabbed him by the collar to lift him off his feet and towards Kessler's face, which exhaled smoke.
"Blimps are non-rigid aircraft. This one's got a skeleton, like the one you're about to lose."
Before the gangster could even respond, Kessler's metal assistants became a whipping blur that sent the man hurtling away from the carrier.
One down, and a whole crowd left to go, all of whom were staring at the engineer with a newfound sense of murder.
"Mother-" One of them began cursing, while swinging a machete at Kessler too fast for him to command his arms to respond. On the other hand, the heavy metal covers that were wrapped around the joystick controls were more than sufficient, and Kessler instead punched with his real hand, meeting the blade head on with enough force to send the Terminal's arm back, leaving him open for a cross from his other controller-cum-knuckle duster, knocking him flat.
Like a crumbling dam, the rest of the gangsters surged forth, waving their weapons as they hopped over the fallen body of their fellow despite the constraints of the narrow walkway. Kessler's hands and wrists wrestled with the controls and buttons strapped to his arms, and all four manipulators went to work, one catching weapons, another punching a gangster off the carrier, and the remaining two reaching up to grab a cable and pulling downward with enough force to send Kessler upward. Like a spider, he clambered from one line to the next, just barely out of reach of the gangsters as they tried to reach up for him.
By the time he slammed to the ground behind the crowd, the rearmost thugs were still turning towards him and completely exposed.
It was all downhill from there.
Manipulators punched out, smashing in the faces of the first two Terminals and sending them back into the crowd, who gnashed their teeth and struggled, even throwing their fallen compatriots over the side of the Corley, but even as they attempted to regain their footing, scrambling for their weapons as they tried to get themselves in order, Kessler was already moving forward, six arms boxing, fingers firing commands at a rapid pace. His attack was relentless, an onslaught of steel, bruised flesh and broken bones, and though he was outnumbered, all the aggressive, fight-happy members were now at the very back, trying to jostle their way forward. Those enduring Kessler's tender ministrations were by now too stunned, too off-guard to know what to do than get pushed forward, swing miserably, and take a closed, wedge-shaped clamp to the face and gut.
With the crowd otherwise almost entirely caught up with the brawl on the narrow walkways, the Terminal bikers prowling alongside the hulking hauler had decided to move to another plan. One gangster in a sidecar pulled out a strange gun, which released a burst of compressed air and a wired bundle that glued itself to the coupling of the first flatbed.
Though Lucy suddenly swooped in to slam her bat onto the front wheel, sending the bike and its riders tumbling in a blizzard of scrap metal and spraying fuel, she could see that whatever gift they had left on the vital part of the vehicle was self-evident.
"Kess, they've put a bomb between the flatbeds," Lucy shouted into her respirator, where a microphone had been hidden inside. "Your balloon's gonna get pulled apart if it goes!"
The biker turned to watched the brawl on the carrier, and how a veritable mob was now physically blocking the one man who could have just walked or even climbed back if he hadn't been embroiled in total war.
"Fuck," Kessler's voice radioed back, while the man himself had grabbed hold of two thugs with his manipulators, forcefully pushing them away, while getting into a boxing match with a hulking brute who had forced his way through the crowd, hands-on with the fight. "Can you reach it?"
Lucy peered into the narrow gap, where the gray plastique was lodged far past the carrier's giant wheels. But there was just enough space to perhaps fit a bat through…
"Maybe if I could just-" Lucy strained, before she heard the warning squeals of Grassy, and the roar of an engine that made her instinctively hit the brakes in time to watch a Terminal humvee slam into the carrier where she had just been, sending sparks and ugly noises every which way, not least of which came from the men in it shouting insults at her.
"That's a 'no'," she simply noted with an irate growl.
"Oh! Maybe if I use Mixer and Shaker to-"
"Burnice, what part of 'bomb' do you not get!?"
Piper, Bell, and Wise listened to the play-by-play shouted through the CB radio, and were very still at the talk of the bomb. The one no-one was available to reach.
Except…
"Belle," Wise growled in exasperation, "we're not bomb disposal experts!"
The woman in question raised her hands in disbelief. "So, what, you want to just ride with a bomb? We can't lose the commission or the zeppelin!"
"Belle, the truck is swarming with bandits. If they see you-"
"There's no time! We can't just sit it out like this!" She retorted, already halfway to opening the back hatch.
"Just go with her, Wise," Piper tersely shot back, eyes not leaving the road, even as plucky riders speeding ahead of the main group crossed the path of her steed to throw a smoke bomb down in a futile attempt to panic her. "You can at least fight off one guy together, if nothing else."
"Look, we'll just get rid of the bomb and head right back-" Belle explained, voice disappearing as she slipped out the back, forcing her brother to crawl over the seats after her.
The two siblings grabbed ahold of whatever cable or handhold they could, and as they heard the roar of the engine Piper was gunning, felt the hot blast of wind hit their faces, and saw an incensed crowd facing away from them as they assaulted the back half of the truck, even Belle could feel some of her age-old bravado seep out of her.
But within only so many steps, the two stood on either side of the gap between the vehicle and its payload, and looked down to see the gray bomb lodged onto the metal links, its small blinking LEDs and a cannibalized phone displaying a countdown showing it was well and truly active. Figures, Wise quietly thought, that it fell to the two least qualified people aboard the Corley to resolve this problem before it became literally explosive.
"Aw, crap," Belle succinctly concluded. Crouching down, the Proxy found that her hand free hand could grip the explosive well enough, but from her position, she lacked any leverage to even jiggle the hard-stuck package.
"Belle, let me try," Wise offered from above, after eyeballing the position of the bomb. As soon as she cleared the gap, Wise leveraged his height, stepping down and planting his foot against the IED. Placing all the weight he could manage atop the plastique, he pressed down while balancing as best he could.
With a grunt, the explosive slowly slid downward under the pressure, before a final jerk caused the device to slip loose of the coupling. In a moment, the chirping machine hit the asphalt and disappeared beneath the flatbeds as the Corley drove on.
"We did it-" Wise began to cheer, when the bomb finally reached near the end of the road train and then promptly exploded.
Flame, smoke and sparks flew out in all directions under the fight's collective feet. The force of the shockwave was enough to make the rearmost flatbed skip and hop, its back half lifting into the air on a levered axle before slamming back down, with all the repercussions it entailed.
Everything atop the flatbed slammed back down onto it, scattering walkways, crates, and the gangsters atop it. More than a few spilled over the sides, which would have been relieving for Kessler, had he not been knocked flat on his back. A grunt of pain left him an instant before he saw a hook whip past his face. Above him several of the cables securing the zeppelin ripped loose to sway wildly in the wind, with the back of the airship now starting to drift up and bounce against the cradle. It only needed one bad impact to smash the back half to uselessness.
Another groan of tearing fabric and creaking metal had him crane his head back to look upside down at the tarp flying away from its job of covering Belle's much worried-after company car, which had all the gear needed for the siblings' work – and which was slowly rattling its way to the edge, rear wheels beginning to dip over.
"Sonnvua-" Kessler half-shouted, while his manipulators fired out in all directions. Two lunged past his shoulders, extending to their utmost as they reached under the tipping car to grab its front axles, while the other pair swung up from his hips to grab two loose cables.
The engineer was hauled up into the air as the airship tried to bounce away, and was anchored back downwards by the car trying to slide away, keeping all three trapped in place.
While in no pain himself, his heart stopped at the frightening sound of his backpack assembly straining under the two different forces, and only hoped that, if nothing else-
"Bastard!"
Kessler looked down past his legs to see a Terminal collapse on the floor after climbing back on from the side.
"I got you right where I want you!" The gangster snarled, heaving for air, while several more managed to pull themselves and others back, having survived the explosive catapaulting.
Even Kessler couldn't hide his disbelief at such reckless bravado. "Shut up! You didn't even plan this!"
Phaethon hadn't fared much better with the blast, its shockwave wrenching Wise's grip and sending him falling further into the gap, his fingers digging into the walkway's grate, and his feet kicking desperately for any foothold that wasn't spinning or whirring. Belle was immediately at his side, grabbing his shoulders and trying to pull him up.
Even with every other Son of Calydon knocking aside the smaller bikes, sometimes in quick succession, their attention was too divided on the larger trucks, or just the state of the carrier itself. The bikes not committed to boarding actions harried the Sons' front liners, attempting to turn their foes' tactics against them as Caesar, Lucy and Lighter surged through what appeared to be a veritable sea of machinery. Time and again, a horde of riders would dart past the Sons, harassing and distracting, and when given chase the trucks gunned their own engines, forcing a withdrawal in an effort to prevent them from reaching the carrier. Even Burnice found herself hamstrung and embroiled in the chaos, attempting to spray precise spurts of flame at individual bikes to ward them off though she was too hemmed in – and her allies too close – to force the Terminals to keep a wide berth.
At the front, a jeep swept across the Corley's front grille, its passengers quickly grabbing ahold of the mounted stairwell to climb up, until they were face to face with Piper's mild rise of an eyebrow.
A quick flip of a switch had every door lock shut, to the consternation of a Terminal that futilely jiggled the latch before slamming a fist on the plexiglass. Pointedly, he pressed the barrel of his gun right up against it. "Open up or I'm gonna shoot you right through the door!"
Pipe merely blandly reached for her radio to make a call. "Boss, I'm being held up. Are you okay?"
"Sort of?" Caesar whined. "They keep running away!"
"You'll want to steer clear for a moment. 'Bout to get serpentine here."
With one hand on the wheel, Piper spun the controls as fast as she could, sending the Corely heaving to one side, and then another with enough momentum to send the bandits crawling all over her windows to lose their balance and tumble back down the stairs, buying her a few more precious seconds.
The undulating carriers were of no help to Belle, however, who now had her turn to lose her balance, yelping and rolling out of Wise's reach. Wildly grasping, the Proxy clutched another securing cable, though as she did, its hook snapped loose from the abuse.
She felt her stomach lurch from a momentary weightlessness, before her arms wrenched taut and she found herself dangling in the air on a line, something she realized with a shriek.
Despite his own precarious situation, Wise was quick to react. "Belle! Hang in there!"
"Look after yourself!" Belle screamed back. "You're going to fall under the truck!"
All across the Corley, the Terminals were still holding fast, while another jeep was rolling in towards Belle, men pointing and seeing an opportunity to grab a hostage.
"Get away from her!" Wise shouted into the wind, while a man managed to at least keep a grip on the line to hold it steady as Belle began flailing a leg at another.
There, Kessler lay suspended and ultimately helpless, caught up as he was. All he could do was raise his armored fists in preparation to meet one of the thugs approaching with a hatchet. But then, out of the corner of his eye, Kessler spied something in the distance everyone ignored. It was a small shed, but he knew it by heart. It was a small structure used to house a radio beacon that indicated the outermost perimeter of Mochizuki Machinery.
While the company did not draw lines in the sand, the sudden crackling intrusion in Kessler's ear piece told him everything about where everyone was.
"Kessler, Beef and Basket are airborne. Mark targets."
Needing no further push, the engineer reached for his belt full of gadgets and pried free a flare, and scraped it across the floor to set it aflame before hurling it with all his might at the distant truck. It barely skipped on the back panel before falling in, allowing one confused Terminal to pick it up.
"Beef and Basket see your marker. They're engaging. Stella and Mia are on the way."
"Ah, thank god," Kessler groaned, causing the Terminal above him to pause.
"...Huh?"
A bleat of confusion was all the bandit managed before the truck's engine suddenly exploded into a ball of flame. Belle coughed through the veil of smoke that enveloped her, before seeing the offending vehicle spill away, its hood popped and contents wheezing through the lack of oxygen.
A moment of confusion hit the Proxy, before an alien whirring noise sounded up above, along with a shadow passing her eyes.
Swooping past her was a large paragliding wing, and hanging underneath was a miniscule aircraft, one only large enough to fit the Bangboo piloting it as it sat in front of a large propelling fan. As it passed by a collection of Terminal bikers, a bundle dropped from the Bangboo craft. The moment it hit the ground, the group went flying from the force of a blast, thinning the attackers even further.
Wise, who had also been watching, heard an accompanying blast on the other side of the carrier, and saw a second paragliding Bangbo bomb another Terminal bike.
Friends, then? Around the Proxies, the Terminals had shifted from determined spite to growing panic, as they pointed to the sky.
"It's Queqiao!"
"Eyes up! Watch out for the Bangboos!"
With the crowd now craning their necks skyward, no-one save the dangling Belle saw another white blur on the horizon charging towards them, a steady drumbeat of heavy footsteps following in its wake. Something bounded sinuously, like a living thing and not at all like any sort of car, and for a moment Belle thought some sort of gigantic tiger was coming her way. On its back, she could see someone riding on it, while another stood near majestically, holding a pole with something fluttering at its top.
In a flash, the white thing passed Belle by, and the proverbial standard-bearer – a female figure, looking every bit like an astronaut of old in the light of the sun – leapt from it to land on the carrier's walkway. As the thugs spun away from Kessler to focus on the new arrival, they saw a woman in a concealing white padded bodysuit and an opaque helmet, along with her steel stave.
Immediately the Terminals disengaged from Kessler and charged at her, one lunging with a closed pair of boltcutters. Before he could get close, the helmeted woman swung her staff, and its end exploded in a spray of digital static, an illusory Mochizuki Machinery flag covering the man's vision before the pole slammed into his head and sent him tumbling over the side. Another bore a shield and a baton, and the woman instead spun her weapon around to slam the bottom of the flagstaff into the flat barrier. Whatever satisfaction that Terminal had was short-lived, with a loud bang erupting from the staff, followed by a stake that speared through the metal.
Though the thug narrowly avoided a matching hole in his outfit, the extended stake head found itself jammed under his armpit, the woman hoisting him up and promptly tossing him over the side to follow his other compatriot, and then the next as she batted aside the remaining offenders in a flurry of flowing strikes that saw the man launched over the sides of the hauler in sequence. Those who had boarded from the jeep, still hovering around the front of the Corley, uneasily now, made haste to turn back the way they came as they watched the brawl unfold, piling back in as it peeled away.
Belle watched on, and then heard the rhythmic pounding of metal into ground right before an arm wrapped itself around her waist, and she suddenly felt her legs touch sun-heated steel.
"Miss, hang on!" A frantic voice called out while Belle instinctively let go of the cable, allowing herself to be pulled onto… she still wasn't sure what it was, only that it ran like an animal, while a girl whose features were largely obscured by a rabbit-eared hood pulled the Proxy onto the motorcycle seat she had been sitting on, before gunning the handlebar throttles. "Come on, Arsh! We're nearly through!"
Belle's center of gravity lurched to one side, as Arsh's servos hummed and whined in response to its rider's control, the loping beast angling itself to stop and slide across the gravel until it spun around and charged headlong towards an oncoming truck.
"Wait-wait-wait-" Belle managed to squeak out, before the girl performed some surely arcane magic with the array handlebars and pedals laid out before her that made their ride bound, twirl, and then drop kick the offending vehicle with enough force to send it sliding backwards.
As the thugs fell back, one slammed into the back panel of their flatbed, flipping it downwards. While they recollected themselves and watched the two women ride away on a four legged machine, they heard a roar of fury, and turned to see Caesar speeding towards them. A twist of the throttle made her chariot-like tricycle rise up into a wheelie just in time to ride up the informal ramp and slam headlong into the passengers, the two wheels flattening a pair of gangsters against the back of the driver's cabin. Whoever was still standing was left to the mercy of the Overlord, who leapt off her bike to begin swinging her sword and shield at all aboard.
"Shit! How many trucks do we have left?!" One biker shouted at another above the fracas, but before anyone could answer, Lighter punched clean into them in a trail of fire, scarf ablaze and gauntlet spewing flame, bike sliding sideways to slam into their back wheels and throw as many Terminals as he could into the air.
Wise grunted with effort as he climbed back onto truck with the help of a hand that grabbed his jacket collar to haul him aboard. Panting with effort, he looked up to see the woman with the flagpole walk to the back, loop her tool around around the cables Kessler had been holding onto, and pull back on it until the engineer could finally get back onto his feet and even drag the siblings' car back over the edge.
"Holy shit," Kessler wheezed, gripping his chest. "I forgive you for that thing last week."
Before he could hear any more, Wise jerked at the sound of another explosion, and saw another group of bikers scatter, the paragliding Bangboos continuing their bombardment unabated as a handful of Terminals resorted to throwing their weapons at them directly in a futile effort to strike them down. The Sons of Calydon had regrouped, and with few trucks to distract them, it seemed the roving gang had few ways to fend off the superior fighters – or the superior firepower.
The Bangboo bombers circled back, cutting their way across a crowd of remaining Terminal bikers, explosives hurling them from their mounts. The machine called Arsh circled back to scatter the few that had persisted, trampling atop one more truck as a coup de grace as it span out a guttered wreck from beneath the machine's feet, and by then the nerve of the previously confident bandits seemed to have vanished entirely; a few hurried hand gestures and a green flare hastily shot towards the heavens prompted every roadworthy vehicle to spin away and leave the Corely to nothing but open road.
It was almost alarming how silent it now was, save the grinding of rubber and the groaning of turbines above, and Wise couldn't do much else but stand stunned at surviving. He and Belle were no strangers to combat, but the adrenaline rush – and the subsequent acidic burn out seeping through him – didn't get any easier to feel.
"Hey, are you okay?"
Wise recentered himself with the feel of a heavy glove on his shoulder, and he nodded to the still concealed woman.
"Wait, did you see my sister? The one that was with me…"
On cue, her voice cried out from the desert, and with the steady rhythm of mechanised footfalls Wise watched his sister match pace with the truck from atop her mechanical ride.
"Hey! I guess everything worked out!?"
Wise sighed, awash with fresh relief, a weary yet warm smile on his face. He turned his attention to the honking of a horn, and saw Caesar pull up, confidently hanging out the window of her newly acquired truck she was driving.
"Looks like we're home free!" Caesar hooted, slapping her hand against the outside of the door to the truck. "We'll see you at the destination! Take a breather, for now! Thanks, guys!"
"Don't worry about it," the faceless woman called back, voice garbled by a modulator.
With the expanded escort, the remainder of the trip was finally painless, and before long Belle and Wise saw the telltale signs of an airfield, with long, cracked tarmac baking under the sun next to a series of towers and hangars that the party slowly slowed to a stop next to.
Belle groaned as she hit the ground, an unwelcome combination of nerves and a lack of suspension hitting every bone in her body as she staggered her way to Wise, who all but sprinted to grab her in a hug.
"Are you alright? You're not hurt?"
Belle gave a shaky grin, and for a moment was just satisfied to know the core of her world – she and her brother – was still safe and sound.
"Sorry. I thought… well, it seemed simple."
Wise, on the other hand, couldn't help himself. "It certainly wasn't, but…"
He cast a glance over his shoulder, the mammoth Corley and its cargo intact. Despite complaints otherwise, their interference truly had saved the truck, endangerment aside.
The could-bes were interrupted by a pair of harsh and hearty slaps on the back from Kessler, who sighed through another lit cigarette.
"My friends! You have survived – and I have saved your car." Taking a long and slightly shaky drag of cigarette, all lingering nervousness evaporated in the billowing cloud that he exhaled. "All in all, I consider this an okay trip."
As the Sons parked, the two siblings watched their new clients gather before them.
The helmeted woman pulled off her bubbled protection, and a pale, sweaty face shook free her long blonde hair.
The two Bangboo gliding through the air finally landed, and in moments tumbled out of their small vehicles to run to the feet of a woman emerging from a hangar, festooned with what appeared to be multiple pairs of headsets and radios, tapping her cane and fixing her sunglasses over her face.
And as Kessler breathed out yet another waft of exhausted nicotine, the diminutive girl riding Arsh prowled to the center of the group, before flipping a switch. In moments, the quadrupedal machine reared up and stood upright. The outstretched bike seat and controls flipped upwards, until the girl was sitting on its back. There Arsh stood, its armored and blue mono-eye carefully scanning the horizon for its pilot.
Master of her realm from on high, the girl pulled back her hood and gave a deep sigh of relief, her head now free to raise a pair of brown rabbit ears to point straight to the sky. Brown hair cascaded down the back of her jacket, and eyes of strikingly different shades looked down at her new business partners – and at their saviors.
"Well friends, it's not much, but, uh, welcome!" The rabbit Thiren sheepishly laughed, rubbing the back of her head.
"Welcome to Mochizuki Machinery!"