Feather Flight: They Cannot Stand Their Ground (part 22)
An AU Kuja fic, shonen-ai, language
*****
After that first day of almost surreal silence from the enemy army, the battle resumed full force. Laro found himself deeply grateful for the arrival of his old friend’s troops /and/ the steady presence of his lover at his side as the mayhem rolled from dawn to well past dusk again and again. The aliens even dare to test their perimeters at night, clattering and chirping in the darkness in ways they never had before.
Two days, three days, the fourth dawned as hot and frantic as the others. It was all Ibat and he could do to keep the army on the hill. The Selwe attacked as if obsessed, forgoing any of their new ‘tactics’ in favor of simply pressing ahead in as a never-ending horde to be beaten back wave by wave. Moving along the trail cut high in the hillside, he watched his men grimly pushing the insects away, fighting amidst virtual walls of black shells from the fallen, a macabre sort of palisade made from their enemy’s component parts and any unfortunate human bodies that could not be pulled from the field. After four days of the brutal siege, he couldn’t blame them for looking a little glassy-eyed from shock. He just hoped that they could keep exhaustion from causing any serious accidents. Most of the soldiers were seasoned enough to know to take their opportunities for rest seriously, the younger ones were rapidly learning.
The trail split, dipping downwards towards the battle lines. Laro caught one of his commanders by the shoulder as he met up with the man, leaning close to hear the shouted greeting over the loud thrum of the laser cannons cutting through the air over head and down into the valley below. They left large charred swaths of destruction through the main mass of the drone-army, but the gaps filled in all too soon.
For some reason, after the first day’s skirmishes the pesky stingers had been strangely absent from the air. The flying aliens whom were usually the cannon’s principle prey were all but invisible, making the general wonder just where they had flitted off to. The idea of a mass contingent of the wasp-like creatures cutting off his supply line wasn’t a pleasant one. Realizing he had been too distracted by the thought to catch what his officers were saying, he shook his head.
“Repeat that? I’m sorry.”
“The digger sir! The one we spotted two weeks ago and then lost…”
“Yeah? What about it?”
“It’s back. The hill-top just radioed it in, we can’t see it from here but Ibat-kai has confirmed the sighting… It seems to be making its move.”
“Where?” Laro looked past the men to the line just below. Wading through the trundling mass of drones was an assault-monster, and then another, and another. He swore slightly as he watched the giant spiders daintily pick their way over the smaller aliens. Moving with lethal beauty, they followed one another in single file, a train of them stretching well back into the valley. The dark man lost count after the seventh one, not really caring how many more of them there were. Handling that many of the long legged insects would take a miracle, and time. He didn’t have the men to spare to go hunting down a millipede the size of a freight train.
“Oh shit. How many /are/ there…?” His captain breathed in alarm before moving to alert his squad. Laro waved the others to do the same, grabbing for his radio as he moved to join them.
“General Gerrick, I have a job for you…”
“We
can’t aim the cannons low enough to clip them, if that’s what you’re going to
ask.”
The sour tone came across despite the hissing hash of noise caused by the man’s proximity to the large machines. At first he had found his new subordinate’s borderline-rudeness to be jarring, but he had to admit that at least the man’s attitude didn’t destabilize under pressure. On duty or not, he was equally sharp tongued. The only times Gerrick even pretended to be enjoying himself were when verbally sparing with Kuja, which he couldn’t understand at all. The two of them snipped each other like long lost siblings when they got the chance.
Laro didn’t pretend to understand the soldier, he simply pointed him in the right direction and let him do his job. The young general /did/ know his work, and once he got to it there was nothing to fault him for. Under his command the cannons had been operating with well-oiled precision, lending a hand with the ground fighting now that the skies were relatively clear instead of sitting idly by as the crews awaited orders. Whatever the soldier’s problem was with /him/ it didn’t spill over into his relationship with his men.
// He likes Ibat just fine… so why is he always so irritating when it’s /me/… // He composed himself before telling the younger officer what he wanted.
“Can you see the digger from where you are?”
“/I/
can’t. I’m on #1 right now… the crew on #2 say they
can. I’m actually going over now to take
a look…”
“See if you can get a clear shot at it. It sounds as though the thing is going to try to make a charge at the camp.”
“Well shit.” The impolitic reply was no less than what he expected from Gerrick. He heard nothing but static for a long moment, guessing that the officer needed both hands to quickly navigate the narrow staircases down the sides of the big guns. The radio crackled to life again as Laro turned to measure the progress of his own foes. “I see it. Big fucker. Bad angle for us, but I’ll see what we can do to slow it down. I don’t think Ibat can shift his force in time to get in its way, he looks pretty pinned. How are you doing?”
“Up to my eyeballs in spiders, and you know it.” He growled back. “Just kill that thing before it tears up the hilltop!”
“Understood.”
Hooking his radio back on his belt, the general spun his spear slowly to loosen his arms up for the fight. The first of the spindly Assaults was picking its way over the mass of shattered carcasses and into the clear space his troops had evacuated for its arrival. One of its pole-like legs got caught on a particularly steep pile and the alien jerked free, sending the massive bits of shell cascading down onto the rapidly retreating men.
One of the officers closest to the beast gave the order and teams of soldiers with grappling hooks and chains proceeded to try and bring it down before the next one could interfere. Laro dodged around one of the gangs of men playing a deadly game of tug-of-war with the alien in order to get in position as the next insect picked its way over the bits of broken shell. With luck he’d get a nice clean throw in while it was distracted. There was no time to worry about the digger, about Ibat, or about Kuja still safely ensconced in camp. A ‘master strategist’ wasn’t top on his list of useful things during this kind of free-for-all. What he wanted more than anything was a third army to fill in the gap between his men and Ibat’s.
*****
Clay worried that he was starting to go seriously hoarse as he shouted a new stream of orders to the crews of both of the armored lasers for the fourth day in a row. The view from the top of the hill was excellent, giving his men the chance to pick and choose their targets. He grimly acknowledged that so far it hadn’t really mattered. Enemies were so thick on the ground that so long as the pointed the guns at anything past the make-shift perimeter, they were guaranteed to hit /something/ worth while.
He stared at the digger as it trundled up the side of the hill. Nothing as simple as some men with grenade launchers or landmines was going to be enough to slow the monster down. Now that it had pulled the majority of its armored body free of the soil of the valley floor and was climbing the rock towards camp, it would run over or through anything that stood in its path. He cursed softly, willing the distant men to get out of the way.
// The angle couldn’t be any worse. We only have a few degrees worth of pan at this range or we’ll torch our own tents in trying to target it. //
All things considered, he would do it too; if there was no other choice. Turning to catch one of his officer’s attention he gave the man the unpleasant task of spreading the order to evacuate the south side of the compound in case of that particular eventuality. It struck him as a little funny to realize that Laro’s tent was likely going to be one of the first to go. He was certain he’d get flayed by a particular mage later over it. Thinking about Kuja made him peer down into the camp again, knowing that the silver-haired courtier had been watching the battle from one of the lower lookout positions. If the man didn’t have the good sense to move when obviously in the line of danger, he deserved what he had coming.
// He’s probably already moved… no sense worrying… There’s still time after all… //
“Cannon #2 in position, sir.”
“Well, fire already.” He scolded mildly, “No sense waiting until it starts eating the tents.”
“Yes sir!”
Turning back to his post the man peered into the range-finder and pressed the trigger to start the sweep, electric green light spilled across the air and scorched along the segmented body. Reflective as polished steel the blast scattered on impact, causing a minor mayhem of smaller side beams, luckily few of them as dangerous as the initial blast. The shell directly beneath the impact blackened and cracked a little, but it was only one or two segments out of several hundred, it barely qualified as a nuisance.
“Cannon #1 adjusting for…” The young soldier looked up mid report, and went pale. Clay looked over his shoulder and felt his face do much the same. A black cloud of wings was erupting out of the valley, Stingers hurling themselves aloft in a swarm of unheard of proportion and heading directly for the laser cannons.
“Get #1 re-aligned, Now.” He was moving even before he finished the thought, all but jumping off the top platform to hurry his decent back to ground level. He brought the radio up to his lips to state the obvious. “Crew #2, forget the digger. Swing around seventy-two degrees and prepare for aerial bombardment, I think they’re coming for /us/.”
Grabbing the off-duty team where they waited to relieve the men at the controls, he pointed at the third cannon, kept carefully under wraps. “Get that thing up and running, we’re going to need it.”
“Yes sir.” The thrum of thousands of wings was enough to have them moving at top speed; hastily stripping the canvas back and priming the engines that would make the spare gun come to life.
Out of the corner of his eye, Gerrick caught a glimpse of a smooth black ridge breaking through the retaining wall. He swore and lifted his radio one more time.
“Ibat-kai. The cannons are under attack, I repeat, the cannons are under aerial attack. We cannot assist with the digger or any further ground targets, please adjust your line accordingly.”
“Understood, leave it to me… I’ll figure something out.” The rusty voice came across as calm and unhurried as ever, despite the unpleasant news. General Ibat was a man who knew how to take things in stride. “Just guard the guns well, boy. Dean Finlay will never let us hear the end of it if we scratch the paint on those things…”
“Yessir.”
Cursing his luck, he watched as they sky above grew dark and thick with bodies, aliens preparing to throw themselves physically at the source of their previous days’ carnage.
*****
Laro didn’t have time to do more than listen as the two other generals dealt with the change of situation. There was nothing he could do about the swarm, just like everything else, he’d have to leave it to fate. Cursing his enemies softly, he realized that at this point his army would probably need a miracle just to have someplace to go home to by nightfall.
Another giant spider collapsed under the concentrated effort of two teams of soldiers grappling it to the ground, but not with out cost. He winced as an unfortunate man was caught by the final flailing of the long legs and landed with a crunch a long way down the hill. Several other men with hatchets went to work to see that the beast was done for good. Another of the spindly aliens had escaped its attackers and was briskly attempting to scale the rocky slope, sweeping the scattered support personnel and equipment aside with its legs as it moved. The dark general growled at its presumption, yanking his weapon free of a fallen drone while simultaneously scooping up a spare grapple and chain.
A short sprint and a lucky throw had the barbed metal hooking firmly along the creature’s leg. Another toss had the free end of the chain twining around a second limb. The alien paused, thrown off its pace by the handicap. It was enough to buy his soldiers time to come in and assist, finishing what their general had started.
Laro looked around, and seeing that his men seemed able to hold their own, jogged briskly up the hill. He could just barely see the tail end of the massive black digger as it slid past the first tents. It was even bigger than he remembered. The cannons were busy overhead, fighting back the swirling shapes of hundreds upon hundreds of suicidal stingers. He counted not two but three blasts, and grimaced realizing that even with the spare cannon hard at work they might still be over run.
// If the bugs can kill the crews, the guns will be just so much dead weight… They’ll strip the shards out of them in no time and leave us with nothing but the scraps of metal… //
Then again, all the flying aliens had to do was distract the cannons long enough for the digger to march up and tear them apart. It wasn’t a happy alternative. There was no way they could just let the juggernaut run free in the center of things. If they did they might as well up stakes and retreat since it would leave nothing worth calling a base. Swearing, he motioned to one of his officers to take over, and loped back towards camp. He had taken one of the monstrous millipedes down alone once, he was certain he could remember how to do it again. With Kuja somewhere in its path, possibly not even aware of the danger, he couldn’t simply stand by and watch. Worried, he hoped his wily partner was smart enough to stay out of the creature’s way.
*****
Watching Ibat’s army move briskly through the necessary transitions to adapt to the horde of drones coming up the hill was frankly a delight. The genome could appreciate the smooth and practiced leadership of the company commanders as they followed their orders, supplying men where they were needed, never letting one group get too far ahead or behind the others. They even employed some obviously home-grown techniques, deliberately allowing pockets of the insects to ‘break through’ the front lines in order to trap them in a little personalized killing field. He had read about such things in Terra’s old wars and had read about them in the capitol, but had never thought to see it in person. It was a rare treat.
The officers standing at his side had their eyes everywhere, rattling off trouble spots to each other and through their radios, making sure the generals’ staffs were aware of what was waiting for them around corners and further out into the field. It looked to be another grueling-long day. Kuja shook his head in awe at the Selwe’s stamina, wondering if he had over estimated the Queen’s attachment to her young, or under estimated her ability to produce more of them on demand. Wracking his brain for what he remembered of other insect colonies he realized he may have made a bad mistake.
// These may not be her young after all… not in an exact sense… every type of colony has those members whom are valued… and those that are simply expendable servants to the cause… There may be an entirely different sort of Selwe that is tucked safe from harm somewhere else… or aboard ship… //
He eyed the black tide of drones with a little alarm.
// If these things are simply slaves… then… the only thing holding her back from creating an infinite number of them is her own stamina at egg laying, and the resources at her disposal… //
“What the hell is… oh no… we don’t need this right now…”
“What?”
Turning to see what had gotten his escort so uncharacteristically upset, he turned and hissed in amazement. An alien which looked like nothing so much as a moving swath of highway was emerging from the rear of the army. At first he thought it was a massive black earthworm, then he saw the millions of tiny legs that marched the beast forwards and knew the name for what he was seeing. “… So that’s a digger…”
It seemed impossible to correlate the enormous bulk of the monster to the still substantial but more human-sized mass of a standard drone or stinger. He wondered how long they took to get that big, and if they all came from similar sized eggs.
“Yes Mr.Kuja… and it seems its here on business…”
The digger seemed to grow longer and longer without end. Watching the way the sandy floor of the valley shifted with every segment that emerged, Kuja began to understand the name they gave the beast was literal. It was emerging from a sort of underground burrow.
// It’s almost as large as Leviathan… a sort of insectile equivalent. // The thought made him chuckle.
// Who needs to worship gods when you can just make your own to order? //
The fact that he too was a byproduct of that sort of philosophy only added a sort of irony to it all. Watching the monster creep up the hill, he got a sense for its single-mindedness and strength. The first human soldiers wisely chose to get out of its path, falling back to try long-range weapons as it approached the wall of bodies around the edge of the encampment. Not bothering to see if his companions were watching as well, the genome wondered aloud. “What are its weaknesses?”
“Pretty much the same as all the others, if on a larger scale.” The lieutenant replied softly, “Heat, cold, anything that can pierce its segments… Ibat has a crew trained up just for them that have these hollow tipped harpoons full of dynamite that you plant then detonate… That works like a charm if you have anyone who wants to get in close enough to use one… The eye-things on the front of it are also vulnerable… but in general you just hack it to bits, and hope it dies.”
“Are there very many of them?”
“I don’t think so… Ibat’s army sort of undertook a single-handed extermination campaign a bout seven years ago when he stumbled by accident on where the Selwe seemed to be raising’em. Takes a looooong time to feed something enough to get that big, you know? Don’t think the bugs have had the energy to make any new ones lately. Judging by the size this fellow is probably as old as the war… good thirty years of growth…”
“It’s a titan.” Kuja readily agreed. “… What are we going to do?”
“Hope to hell one of the armies can come to meet it before it pays you a personal call, sir. But the odds don’t look too good.” Worried, the younger man rattled off the creature’s new vector into his radio only to get bad news back. “… shit. Both armies are pretty well pinned… This could get really bad.”
“What? There’s no one coming to deal with… /that/?!” Amusement turning to horror, the pale haired man stared at the slowly approaching millipede, its path unobstructed as it trundled towards camp. “It’ll gut the compound!”
“Yeah.” The officer agreed, looking even more worried than before. His radio crackled again, Gerrick’s terse reply giving them a moment of hope. The cannons had to be able to scratch the beast. Kuja watched them with sharp interest, wanting to see his handiwork tested against a more substantial target than the fragile fliers. The first of the turrets got off one good shot, catching the monster broad-side but seemed to do little more than stun it a moment. It resumed its trundling pace, smoking a little from the damaged section, but otherwise unhindered. A second blast never came, the gunners apparently seeing a new threat over the edge of the hill that they could not.
“Oh shit. They’ve found the swarm…” His escort revealed after listening to another burst of frantic jabber from his ear-piece. “…We’re to evacuate anything in the digger’s path and hold tight until Ibat gets here…”
“When will that be?!”
The man looked scared. “We don’t know. As soon as he can break free of the drones.”
“That could take too long.” The genome countered angrily. “And besides…”
He didn’t get to finish his train of thought, frozen in dismay as a dark cloud of flying aliens spilled over the hillside like a storm, not all of them stopping to clump around the desperately firing cannons. At least half of the buzzing cloud was sweeping straight for the center of camp. “Oh lord… We’re in trouble.”
The officers didn’t have to be told twice. There were no defensive weapons capable of beating back a swarm that size in their rickety tower so they opted for retreat. Kuja followed the men down, scrambling down the last of the steps just as the stingers arrived to swamp the camp. People on the ground stopped whatever they were doing to defend themselves, small arms, spears, even rocks were employed as the troops still in camp did their best to defend their home.
Doing what he could, the mage and his escort claimed a clear area between several of the command tents as he pulled in his waiting powers to give the insects a proper demonstration of his abilities. After three days of watching as others did for him, it was quietly satisfying to be able to make himself useful. Shielding the men in his immediate reach was the first thing. The second was to call up a whirlwind to clear the air. At the mercy of their wings, the fragile looking fliers were caught and tossed in all directions by the random gales, many ending their trip smashed into the ground where the army could finish them. He repeated the process with the next group that came sweeping down on them, and the next, becoming a rallying point for the rest of the soldiers who were unable to reach the bugs so long as they were airborne.
Stranger yet, Kuja blinked and realized that he was a rallying point for the insects as well. The swarm had all but given up on attacking the rest of the compound, seeming to be attracted by his bursts of magic. It made things more convenient since they were tightly packed in the air above, and therefore even more vulnerable than usual to his large-scale magics. Wind was an easy element to manipulate and he was pleased with his results given how little he had to spend per spell. The constant exertion however was starting to take its toll and he worried how much longer he could continue with out a rest.
// Damn blood… damn anemia… damned Garland and his half-assed ‘solutions’… why couldn’t he just have me keel over and be done with it. Why bother with something so crippling as this, and yet not actually fatal? //
It occurred to him that
// Him and his stupid ‘we’re brothers…’ idea… We were grown in test-tubes! There is no family connection there! Just because we’re almost identical genetically doesn’t mean anything! It’s just how things are… If we happen to feel the same about certain things, it’s just because we’re wired similarly, that’s all… //
Thinking of Zidane always made him think of Mikoto too. She was the third variation on their genetic theme that their ‘father’ created. Given intellect but no power, he wondered if she ever felt as jealous as he did over the choices made for her before her birth. He wondered if she was built with a ‘limiter’ as well. The idea made him sick. She may have been a cold, calculating woman, but that was only because that was how she had been told to be. She certainly didn’t deserve to die gasping for breath on an alien world as her own body betrayed her.
Mikoto had to have survived.
Zidane would have seen to
that. She was his ‘sister’ after
all. Maybe he could save her from
Kuja raised his hands again, feeling his muscles shaking with the effort, and went to target his next spell only to find that there was nothing to target. The stingers which had been clogging the air with their noise and wings were suddenly zooming away, moving out of range as fast as they could. He blinked at their retreat, wondering why.
It was only when it grew quiet, his small group of defenders crouching and listening in alarm, that he too felt the shiver of the rocky soil beneath his feet. In all the excitement of the blitzkrieg, they had forgotten that another enemy was almost upon them.
Rising up like a massive python, or really, like a dirt-burrowing Leviathan, the digger lifted the front half of its body high into the air over the camp, holding the pose a moment before deliberately relaxing, crashing down on top of tents, vehicles and people alike with a terrific sound. The noise its destruction made was intense, but the beast itself seemed unharmed by it. Legs moving again, it crawled forwards another few yards only to ‘stand’ a second time. The shadow cast when it lifted itself into the air fell across Kuja and his team. He craned his head back, guessing that the monster’s head had to be easily seventy feet up. One of the men prayed for a miracle.
// It’ll flatten us like… well… bugs… // He smirked at his unimaginative vocabulary, looking up at the titan swayed in the air. The armored plates covering the digger’s underbelly seemed a little less well defined then the ones along its back. He wondered if he couldn’t some how use this to his advantage.
Instead of crushing them immediately, the monster curled forwards, not unlike a serpent, peering down with its awful face and row upon row of unblinking eyes. Kuja froze, knowing somehow that it was looking for him. Yet again he wondered if each of the insects fighting were capable of sharing sensations with their Queen directly, if it was /her/ peering out of the giant’s multi-faceted eyes.
// Probably should have been a little more polite… //
Not able to look away, he reached out and tapped the shoulder of his escort.
“… Run… Run now. It’s me… the things are attracted to my magic… it probably won’t even notice you’re gone.”
“But…” The lieutenant gave him a worried look, even as he shooed his subordinates ahead of him. “… I can’t leave you here, I have orders to keep you safe!”
“… I’ll be fine. I just don’t want you lot getting hurt by standing too close… get back and give me some room to work…”
// Manufactured-gods indeed… come my lady… let us see which of us is stronger… can I crush you before you crush me? //
The beast reared back again, as if responding to his thought. Its cry was a whistling roar as it used its own body as a sort of monstrous whip, arching back to earth to flatten anything beneath. It just so happened that the only thing in its path this time was a single small mage. Kuja smiled against the rushing wind of its approach, egging it onwards even as he readied his spell.
There would be only one chance to get it right, calculations danced in the back of his head. Energy knit and spun itself down his arms, along his fingers, gathering in the space between his palms, spinning brighter and brighter until it was like a tiny star waiting to be released. Completely in the falling digger’s shadow now, he cast the ball of light upwards towards his foe, savagely naming it as he did so.
“Flare.”
A second sun burned brightly in the center of camp, expanding with fiery abandon to envelope the top half of the digger and rapidly burn its way through. The beast screamed again, unable to stop its decent or the fact that it was now cleanly blown into two halves by the sudden attack. The top sixteen feet, including the dying head, landed amidst some abandoned tents, showering everything around it in a sticky gobs of smoldering goo as it went. The rest of the enormous body bent the opposite direction with the force of the blast, actually lifted and rolled back to the edge of the camp and coming to rest; leaking and steaming at the perimeter. The smell of burning chitin and sulfurous-sweet innards filled the air with nauseating intensity.
Kuja stood blinking in stunned amazement as the disgusting aftermath liberally rained over him and everything else in sight. Looking down at his slime-covered hands as they shook with exhaustion, he would have cursed long and loudly if he had any strength left at all.
“… Yuck…” He whispered to himself.
*****
Everything was bedlam. Laro kept his head down, trying to avoid attracting any particular attention from the frantically swarming stingers. The tail end of the dusty black digger was in sight, but where the head was he couldn’t tell. Somewhere in the middle of his poor camp, that much was certain. Swearing, he tried to avoid a falling carcass only to slip on the loose gravel and get a mouthful of dust. It wasn’t the only one, a second stinger crashed in his path as he picked himself up and ran. Glancing at it as he went, he was surprised to see that it wasn’t charred.
// Mid-air collision? God knows they’re not behaving right… like… a frenzy almost… //
There were two distinct clouds of insects overhead. The first swarm continued to torment the cannons. Counting green flares, he hissed at how one cannon seemed dead already. His radio was a continuous hiss of babble, the best that he could make out was that Gerrick was still alive, and sounding pissed as hell. He wished the young man luck, knowing he’d have ample opportunities to vent his anger on living targets. The second cloud of winged insects was not as easy to explain. The aliens were zipping towards the center of camp in growing numbers, drawn to it like moths to a flame. The center of the cloud however seemed even more insane than the rest. Stingers flailed in the air as if completely out of control, occasionally hurled by some unseen force out of the swarm altogether. Another of the aliens spun out of control, tumbling through the air and into a tent. The strangely twisting column of air reminded him of a vortex, but he had no idea what could cause it.
// Maybe that many in such a small location… has caused a problem with the wind…? That makes no sense… //
Ducking between tents, he paused to behead a broken-winged but still violent insect before it could get behind another struggling soldier. “Hey! What’s going on?”
“Hell if I know… The damn things have gone mad.” The frazzled man picked up a spare weapon, jogging ahead of him. “We’re gathering in the southern square by the watch tower… they seem to be lining up for the slaughter…”
“That’s where the digger is headed, you idiot…” Running after him, Laro could only wonder what in the world was going on. His escort had stopped abruptly, met by a group of men running the other direction.
“Digger!” The group commander shouted the obvious at him. Right behind the man, a black tower of segments and hundreds of legs slowly bent into the air.
“Get the hell over here before it drops!” He got their attention, and they smartly resumed their sprint, getting out of the monster’s shadow. It was enormous, as old as any he had ever seen. The digger must have been a grandfather among its kind. It crashed to earth like a whale breaching, sending up a massive gust of dust and splinters and it flattened a wide swath of tents. The general winced, hoping that the area was as evacuated as it seemed. He wasn’t looking forward to the death-counts that would be coming in later that night. “… damn it, this has to stop…”
As if obedient to his wishes, the swarm overhead seemed to thin abruptly, not disappearing, but pulling up into higher air, regrouping. He was torn between watching them to see what they were up to, and wondering what the digger would do next. The huge millipede was turning, bending its tubular body in a new direction, heading towards the distant watchtower. He blinked, remembering that was where the men said they were grouping up. There was nothing to do but follow, catching up with the massive bulk and running along side. The creature’s head was still some distance away.
A wide shadow flowed over him, obscuring a dip in the path, causing him to stumble and fall. Rolling over, he looked up and felt a chill down the length of his spine.
// … Hover-plate… //
The alien technology could only mean one thing. He tried to get up but found he couldn’t, frozen with instinctive terror. Through the dust he could barely make out the retreating form of a heart-shaped head atop a delicate looking multi-segmented body, the largest of the aliens riding the metal platform. Laro felt the sweat forming, making him even colder, and closed his eyes to concentrate on his breathing. Precious seconds passed before he could coordinate his muscles, forcing himself to his feet, eyes still following the floating sled as it hung in the air ahead. Surrounded as it was by a thick mass of stingers, he wondered if he was the only one to notice it. The digger’s tail end slipped past him, the silence left in its wake enough to startle him and bring him back to the task at hand.
// The mentor is the one steering the beast… and the hordes… no wonder things are all coming apart… they’re working in unison to tack down the armies while they destroy everything else… //
More angry than afraid, he picked up his spear and started to run again. He had barely caught up with the tail again when the monstrous digger abruptly halted, rising up, and then pausing. He didn’t have long to speculate on the weird behavior before it moved again, rising up higher, preparing for another destructive smash. Laro winced as it began to curl downwards, lashing the ground. He wasn’t expecting the sudden burst of painfully bright light that ripped upwards to meet the beast.
Squinting against the yellow-red explosion, he watched in silent awe as the segmented alien was /lifted/, blown back, and then impossibly, blown /through/. The black flesh and armor seemed to dissolve midair. A hot wind bent the tents back, making them flap violently on their tethers, almost lifting him off his feet. He was bathed in fiery heat and the smell of burning monster. He grabbed onto a convenient tarp rope for balance, getting his face forwards into the wind just long enough to watch the top half of the monster fall to earth with a dead-sounding ‘thud.’ The rest of it, still propelled through the air seemed to roll back on itself, crashing back towards where it had come from. The smell was incredibly foul, as was the black ash falling all around him on the dying breeze.
// … But we don’t have any weapons that can do that… aside from the cannons… unless Ibat or Gerrick were keeping something in reserve… //
He scrubbed his face, something about ‘in reserve’ tickling his tired memory. Laro ran forwards, gladly using the shattered sort of road that the digger had carved through his camp. // … damn… // He glanced up, noting the hover-plate was still there…
// Bet that was a surprise… yeah? We’re not dead yet, not by a long shot… But why aren’t they firing again…? Unless they haven’t seen it yet? Shit. //
Fumbling for his radio even as he moved, he brought it to his lips. “South-side, report! This is Nazer-kai.”
There was nothing but the hiss of static for a long moment but then random chatter came back, several officers apparently talking over each other to respond. He cursed, waiting for them to be more coherent. They quickly sorted themselves out into a quick echo, and waiting for silence, he found the breath for his news. “Overhead. Plate. Shoot IT.”
“… Um… I don’t think we can sir.”
“Why the hell not! You just took out the digger, this should be cake!”
“… We didn’t…” Another hiss of static heralded what he was afraid of. Hardly without weapons, the hover-plate turned in the air and lobbed a small bomb down at the camp. The officer on the other end of the radio still had his thumb on the switch, the sounds of random chaos coming through despite the explosion’s interference. Laro found the energy to run faster. “… oh shit this isn’t good…”
Before he could tear into the man for his obvious lack of discipline they were interrupted again, this time by a bolt of green tearing through the air overhead. Looking over his shoulder, he almost laughed out loud, counting not two, but three cannons sweeping his direction, sweeping the air clear of everything in their way. The top of the bluff surrounding the guns seemed blanketed in black. He couldn’t even imagine how many aliens had died in the unsuccessful assault.
“Cannon #1 back on
line, Nazer-kai. Our apologies for
the delay. Aerial support commencing. We got a
direct hit on the hover-plate, but what the hell is going on down there? Who took
out the digger?”
If he had thought for a moment that Gerrick would have appreciated the gesture, he would have kissed the man. The young officer still sounded seriously pissed. “Welcome back general, good work. I’m on my way to investigate.”
“I’ve got visual on the south-side…” The sour man’s voice was interrupted by another’s, the company commander he had been talking to a moment ago.
“General Nazer, you’re needed immediately on the south-side…”
“The
His radio hissed in his fist, the officer’s voice coming across as scared despite the interference. “No sir. It’s Mr. Kuja, sir. He’s in a bad way, and is asking for you.”
“What?!” Laro almost dropped the radio in surprise.
His tired brain made the connections almost in time with his footfalls, the
erratic nature of the stingers, the digger’s sudden destruction, the
// … that was magic… Real magic… //
// … Masa… //
“Fuck. That silver-haired
freak was in the middle of the blast, wasn’t he…?”
He didn’t have the breath to scold Gerrick. It was suddenly vital that he get there, now. Charging past a tent he hurdled over a shattered jeep and barely kept his footing as he landed. The stingers still in the air were swarming en masse to where the hover-plate had collapsed. Shielding their leader with their bodies as it clumsily took to the air. Laro blinked, remembering that the elite aliens did have wings after all, even if they seldom seemed to use them. The creature certainly wasn’t as coordinated with them as its protectors, but still able enough to dodge the sweep of the lasers and back out into the valley. He cursed it as it escaped.
“It’s like a total
retreat has been called. What happened? Someone swat their ‘general’ or
something?”
Leaving it up to someone else to explain what had happened to Ibat, he just concentrated on getting over the remaining yards of debris.
“We seem to have lost our mage in exchange for a digger and some random alien-tech. Not exactly a fair deal if you ask me.” Gerrick summed things up nicely. “I’m heading over, I’ll pick up Mr.Kuja’s medic on the way.”
Never one to be thrown by bad news, Ibat’s
voice was calmly composed. “I’ll take
care of the front… Where the hell is Nazer?”
“Competing
to be the world’s fastest man.” The younger man answered dryly. “See if you can’t add the digger’s carcass
to the fortifications. It’s big enough. I need both hands to drive, I’m out.”
“Rodger.”
// At least they’re nice enough not to gossip about my love-life on the radio… // He didn’t spare the energy for politeness as he plowed through the outer groups of soldiers standing around. Most of them seemed to be studying the charred digger’s head with a sort of dead-eyed acceptance. The rest were more irritating, circling in a large group the one place he absolutely wanted to be. “Get the fuck out of my way!”
Startled, the group parted, men scrambling to clear a path for their commander. He ignored the stares, knowing that if even half of what he was feeling was reflected in his face he must look unusual at the least. At the center was a precious amount of clear space, the soldiers obviously trying to give one in particular among the wounded some room. Two officers knelt on either side of a cinder-encrusted man, one quickly cutting his jacket to pieces and offering it to the other as make shift bandages. Well singed and bleeding from a number of ugly looking gashes on his arms and chest, Kuja panted in pain as he was being bound tight.
// … thank god he’s alive… //
Crouching down, he carefully swept the silver hair out of the way before kneeling next to the battered mage’s head. The blue eyes were closed, his entire focus seeming to be turned inwards. “… Masa?”
“… Laro…” The word came out with a fair portion of blood, adding to the fluid already staining his chin. He swallowed his alarm, fumbling inside his jacket for his handkerchief, amazed that it was still clean, considering the mayhem since breakfast.
“Someone give me a canteen.” The general didn’t even bother to look up at his audience, holding out his hand until someone pressed a bottle into it. Unscrewing it, he soaked the small cloth before gently wiping his lover’s face clean. “… god Masa, I told you to stay safe…”
“Where’s… safe?” Dazed, seeming to have a hard time even focusing on him, the solver-haired man responded sluggishly. The officers finished on his left arm, cursing softly as they set the bandaged limb down only to start cutting away the tattered shirt. “… digger died… what happened?”
“A bomb, the
Kuja simply hissed at the treatment, pain clearly showing in his wide eyes. It seemed to shake the worst of his disorientation off however. More aware, if still not entirely coherent, his lover tried to fit his words around his ragged breaths. “… couldn’t. Tired.”
“… You’re tired?” The head shook, giving him an almost imperceptible negation. “… you /were/ tired?”
He blinked, wishing he had thought to ask more questions about how magic worked when they had had the time. A week after the pale scholar had returned to him and set his camp on its ear by causing a small miracle among the wounded, and he still had no idea exactly how the man did what he did. Obviously it had to exhaust him in some way, apparently more than he had thought. Somewhere behind him a jeep’s horn bleated, alerting spectators to get out of its way. A human voice was soon doing much the same.
“Oi. What are you all standing around for? Get to your duties! We have six hours until sunset, and then twelve hours until dawn. There isn’t a minute to spare! If you’re not a medic, get out of here and let them work!”
“Kuja!” Anne’s voice cut through the grumbling, her smaller body able to wedge through the confused bystanders to find her way to his side. She didn’t pause, unwrapping a strange bundle she had clutched to her chest to reveal a familiar lump of cloudy crystal. “Mr.Kuja. I brought the shard.”
“… Shard…?” Confused, the pale man tilted his head to look at her and then down at the stone she was positioning under his fingers. Laro looked at the alien crystal for the first time in days wondering what the connection was. Whatever the doctor was hoping for, it didn’t seem to be happening.
“Mr.Kuja, please… draw from the shard! Heal yourself!”
“… heal…” He frowned, seeming to try and gather his thoughts with little success.
Gerrick seemed to appear out of nowhere, leaning over where the pretty medic sat in despair to take in the scene. “Shit. How much blood has he lost?”
“He’s not stopping.” The older of the two officers now binding the mage’s leg looked up, expression anxious. “We’ve applied pressure, but he’s bleeding right through the bandages… It’s not slowing at all.”
“He can’t. Magic is the only thing that will help…” She waved the two men off, and grabbed the cat-man by the shoulders, shaking him gently. “Kuja! Snap out of it!”
“… tired.”
Laro stared down at the cat-man, realizing that he had gone beyond pale and was now almost grey. He didn’t know what exactly was going on, but the idea that the man was bleeding to death before his eyes was something he could readily understand. “Why can’t he stop bleeding?”
“He didn’t tell you?” The younger general gave him an odd look, and then glared down at Masa’s clouded eyes. “Idiot.”
“… Didn’t tell me /what/?!” Wanting to strangle the insufferable officer, the dark man grimaced. The pale eyes refused to meet his, staring intently downwards instead “… Gerrick!”
“Bastard, don’t you dare give up so easily.” Growling, Gerrick pulled the medic out of the way, moving faster than Laro could block. He administered a sharp slap across the mage’s stunned face, causing another drip of blood from his stunned lips. “Heal yourself, mage, you haven’t finished your work yet.”
It took a special sort of sadist to strike at a man already dying. He didn’t even bother to verbally voice his displeasure with the blunt officer, lunging for the man’s throat instead. For a moment he almost succeeded, his fingers closed over the liberally grime-coated neck, forcing the man off balance and backwards. Somehow his fellow general managed to defend however, catching his wrists and rolling them to avoid an abrupt death and leaving them wrestling like brawlers on the scorched ground.
“Nazer-kai… please…” Physically stronger, he was quickly able to short circuit the smaller man’s attempts to escape, batting the hands aside and driving his fist down into his face.
“My… work.” Kuja’s voice was faint. He looked back at his lover, startled to see he was struggling to move, his fingers tightening against the shard with a purpose. “… We haven’t won yet.”
“Kuja?” Laro held off hitting his captive again, wondering what Masa meant by the comment.
“No, Mr. Kuja. Not by a long shot.” Wiping the blood from his chin, Gerrick agreed with the pale man’s whisper. “So you can’t die yet.”
“Yes.” Flickers of light seemed to flow out of the stone, up the cat-man’s arm, as his lips moved silently. This time his eyes were distant in a preoccupied way. Laro could only breathe a sigh of relief when the light suddenly grew brighter, rings of gold and green sparks blooming to life around the mage’s body. They hung in the air a moment before fading, but they left behind a man who breathed much easier than he had before. “…Anne, if you could get the bandages…”
“Oh. Right. Yes.” She scrambled to aid him.
Gerrick crab-walked backwards until he was out of the dark haired general’s reach and then staggered to his feet, gingerly rubbing his jaw. “If you’re feeling better, be so kind as to tell your lover to stop hitting me.”
“Down, Laro…” The scolding had no real energy behind it. Helped upright, Kuja picked at the bandages on one arm even as his medic worked on the others. The skin under the bloodstained fabric was whole and unblemished. The mage was the only one not fascinated by the marvel, studying the wet fabric in his hand instead before restlessly dropping it. “I feel like shit.”
“No wonder… considering how much blood you’ve lost… do you think you can stand?”
“… possibly.” Letting the dark man gently pull him up, the mage sighed at the tattered condition of his robe. “… Lend me your coat?”
“What? Oh. Of course.” He hastily unbuckled his armor and bracers to strip of the long garment and drape it around his lover’s slim shoulders. It wasn’t exactly as stylish as the delicate scholar was usually dressed, but it concealed the singed looking tail that twitched restlessly beneath the remains of his robe. The general couldn’t help but notice that neither of the other two had batted an eye at the unusual appendage. It left him with another question he wanted answered. They would have to wait. It seemed that the only thing keeping Masa upright was his hand on the mage’s arm.
Glancing back at the truck, wasn’t surprised when the younger general followed his train of thought. “Grab him before he collapses? I’ll drive three of you over to what’s left of west-side before getting back to the cannons.”
The offer sounded practical enough. He didn’t wait to see if Kuja would complain at the presumption. Quickly stooping, he got an arm under the shorter man’s knees and swept him up, cradling him against his chest. The fact that he was able to do it with out even a murmur of annoyance worried him. “Let’s get you cleaned up and tucked into bed.”
“Alright.” The mage turned his face against Laro’s neck, not seeming to care about dirt or anything else. His skin still felt a little clammy, despite the healing magic. He pressed a kiss into the silver hair as he settled into the back seat of the jeep, amazed to find the man was already asleep.
He watched his lover sleeping for a quiet minute as Gerrick carefully drove them across camp. Now that the initial anger had faded, he was left with only with his questions, and a nameless sort of dread. “… Would someone mind telling me what the hell is going on?”
Anne looked back at him, and then over to the man behind the wheel and frowned. The sour-faced officer didn’t bother to answer her unspoken question. “… You’re his doctor. You deal with it.”
“Oh dear.”
*****
Cythen, Changling, Twig… Thanks.
For nagging me about this fic even with Nanomango nipping at my heels. Hey, how else can I celebrate finishing my 16 pages in 16 days, other than by torturing my favorite genome.