The wind died down atop the Polyphemus. Babs stumbled backwards, staring at her collapsed chest in disbelief, then fell onto her back. Her breathing came out labored, in wheezes and in fits, as the red lights disappeared from her body, slowly, one by one. The final attack had undone her ponytail; her auburn hair now spilled down to her shoulders, her face now looking smoother and younger.
“Why…would you do this?” she asked weakly.
Isaac stood over her. “You know why.”
She gave a slow nod. “Yeah…yeah, I do.”
Isaac caught his own breath, which also came out with a slight wheeze due to his collapsed lung. Sharp stings of pain ran through him wherever her wind had lacerated him earlier, most of it right around his ribs. But he remained standing, looking down at his fallen former friend.
Reed herself made it back to her feet. She limped over to the two members of Squad 3, her bandaged face now soaked with blood, mixing with the color of headband proclaiming VICTORY. Clouds drifted by; everything possessed an odd sort of stillness to it. Under different circumstances, it would’ve been a serene sight, gazing down upon the world on the hinge of autumn and winter. But large parts of the capital were now on fire, and smoke drifted from the top of the devastated Bank of Arcadia skyscraper.
Squad 3 convened for the last time. Reed gazed down at Babs, her face taking on a exhausted, stoic look. “When we first met, you said that by the end of this, we’d be calling it Squad Babs. Guess it didn’t work out like that.”
Babs tilted her head towards her. “I guess it didn’t.”
Reed sighed. “I won’t forgive you for betraying us. But...thank you for what you said to me on the balcony after the Machigonne raid. About not being able to control everything, but being able to control my reactions to them. It really helped.”
A pained smile appeared on Babs’ face. “Well, that’s what friends are for, right?”
Reed could only nod.
Babs now looked back up Isaac. “You remember our promise, right? That the survivor needs to carry on the other’s dream of changing this country. If I die, don’t give up.” She choked out another breath, then found the strength to continue. “Things can’t continue like this. I’ll take the freedom you desire over the status quo, even if I don’t agree with it. But promise me one more thing.”
Clouds rolled by. “If I achieved Kallipolis and united the world, I would be firmly in place to hold those strings. I would just have to keep my position at the top. But you. If you sever those strings, you’ll have to compete with those with conflicting viewpoints on an equal level. You’ll just be another component of the system, rather than running it from above. You will truly have to keep fighting your battles forever. That’s the cost of freedom. If you continue to follow your path, then promise me you’ll bear that cost. The job won’t ever end. So don’t just achieve your freedom and then walk away from it.”
The Rddhi circulating up her damaged throat enabling her to speak was dying down. Isaac gave her a nod. “I won’t. I won't stop until the end and then some. Not just for change. But for the right kind of change.”
“For the right kind of change,” she repeated. Babs then studied his face while her eyelids drooped. “I wish I could take you dancing at Old Bob’s one last time. In another life. But this is the only one we get.”
The red lights disappeared from her throat. All went quiet aboard the airship as Babs Morang passed. Isaac wished he could say she died peacefully, but her face was slightly contorted, as if she had unfinished business and went into that endless night too soon.
“But that’s just how it is,” he mumbled.
“Just how it is,” Reed repeated. She closed her eyes for a moment, letting out a deep breath. The world had never felt so still. But then she opened her eyes. "Now, let’s get the hell out of here.”
And not a moment too soon. Another missile barrage rocketed toward the armada, with two other remaining airships groaning as they went down in a ball of fire and steel, their remnants and innards raining down onto the city below. The fighters must’ve recognized the end of the mission, since they all peeled away, flying off into the clouds away from the city. Polyphemus groaned as another missile struck its bottom, nearly knocking Isaac and Reed off their feet. It began to list toward one side as fire streamed upwards from the point of contact.
“I don’t suppose you got parachutes?” Isaac muttered as he realized he was now stuck on a burning airship thousands of feet in the air with no way off.
“Where we’re going, we don’t need parachutes,” Reed answered. She had her eyes on the buildings below them. The highest one was still too low for them to jump down - far too low. But a plan formulated as her eyes narrowed. She twirled the sword in her hand and took a deep breath. “I got an idea.”
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Before he could answer, she gripped his sleeve and dashed off, taking him towards the edge of the hull. Isaac’s stomach churned as they got closer and closer to the edge, and then, as his whole body lurched and he cried out, Reed took a big leap off the blimp, Isaac in tow. He glanced back, taking one last look at Babs and her auburn hair, before he tumbled through the sky.
“We do need parachutes!” he yelled. Falling off the giant had been enough free-falls for a lifetime, and now he had jumped off a point even higher. He planned on sticking to the ground from now on, thank you very much, but he had to survive this first. Reed wrapped one arm around him to keep him close while wielding her sword in the other.
“This whole time, I’ve been using my magnetic waves to attract things,” Reed explained with gritted teeth. “But I can repel things, too. So, when we get close to something, I’ll just repel us away from it, and if I do that enough times, that should slow us down enough so maybe we only break every bone in our body instead of dying.”
Isaac gave her an incredulous look. “That’s your plan?!”
He had no further time to protest. They were about to clip the edge of a high-rise, but then Reed swung her sword in the unusual pattern that emitted a magnetic wave. Isaac felt something inside him shift, and, every so slightly, their descent slowed as they were now repelled from the building. They were still going to die, of course, but Reed didn’t let that bother her. She repelled them off another high-rise and Isaac decided he would never ride a rollercoaster as long he lived.
They bounced along the high-rises, their fall now taking on a sort of diagonal, even horizontal, quality to it. Isaac could see the people on the avenues now, yet they were still so small, so far away. After repelling themselves away from another building, Reed angled them towards a set of power lines stretching across a major avenue.
With deft fingers, she undid her red headband and spread it wide. Isaac’s stomach dropped.
Is she going to use that like a zipline? If we do, we’ll be flattened against the side of the building. Wait, no - we’ll crash through the window! Maybe, just maybe, we can survive this after all-
The second the headband made contact against the power line, the thin fabric simply snapped in two. Reed had a dumbfounded look on her face as she stared at the two halves of torn cloth.
“Hmm…well, that worked a lot better in my head-”
“Are you fucking kidding me?!” Isaac screamed.
"We'll go the bay!" Reed decided with another swing of her sword. They had leapt from the airship right over the downtown area, which was right next to the ocean. If they could just make it a little more, they could land in the sea, and perhaps Reed’s prediction of only breaking every bone in their body instead of dying would come true.
Reed did as instructed, bouncing them off buildings, one by one, until they reached the edge of the city. They were dangerously close to the ground now, nearly smacking into the side of a building lining the bay, but they barely made it over with room to spare. They were now over open ocean; Reed swung her sword with all her might, emitting the strongest magnetic wave yet, enough to actually make ripples in the water, enough to slow them down even more.
I see. It’s just like during her fight with Panama. The waves are stronger in water.
Despite it all - or perhaps because of it all - Isaac couldn’t help but think, at this very last moment: I really am a brain expert.
The second after hitting the water, Isaac realized he hadn’t died. It felt like a freight train had hit him, though, completely taking his breath away. Both he and Reed angled themselves to hit the water feet first, making themselves thin like pencils, so that way only their legs got torn to shreds rather than their whole bodies. He put every ounce of Rddhi he could into his legs before impact, and perhaps that saved him from losing them entirely.
His entire vision went dark for a second. When he came to, he felt the water blanketing him, submerging him, calling him to the depths, but he answered by kicking his legs towards the surface. Well, he would’ve, but they were broken, so he paddled his hands with what little remaining strength he could muster. Reed was still unconscious, so he grabbed her by collars and hauled her back to the surface with her. The darkness returned to his vision; he was being choked again, yet the light called him upwards, until finally, finally, he broke through to open air.
Isaac gasped and gasped and hoisted Reed up so she wouldn’t drown. His muscles screamed as he paddled towards the shore while dragging Reed along with him. But the shore was so far off, even if it really wasn’t, and his strength drained from him rapidly, no matter how much Rddhi he supplemented with it.
A hand grasped his back. Reed awoke and took huge breaths as she collected herself. She swung her sword towards the water, repelling them towards the shore. Since this was a city, though, there were no beaches to land on. They found themselves at a pedestrian walkway lining the edge of the water. With the last of their strength, they hoisted themselves onto dry land.
They immediately collapsed on their backs. Like fish gasping for water, Isaac could only try to calm himself down from all the exertion. And yet, despite it all, they had made it.
The Polyphemus wasn’t so lucky. One last missile barrage flew towards it, the only remaining target in the sky. The entire thing went up in a fireball, its large skeleton plummeting towards the earth. The airship, the weapon, the Heart, and Babs’ body all disappeared in a cloud of smoke and haze as a terrible grinding sound resounded through the city as it collided with the ground. Embers drifted through the air, but then, at long last, the guns of the city finally fell silent for the first time in three days.
At that moment, autumn ended. Isaac knew it instinctively. The seasons had turned, something had shifted. Despite the winter chill, the perpetual, endless blanket of gray in the sky finally gave way, revealing the winter sun in all its glory. Isaac felt grateful when it landed upon his battered face.
All went quiet, except for their ragged breathing. Isaac wanted to just lay on that walkway by the sea forever, but the job wasn’t done yet.
Still though - maybe he could relax for just five more minutes.