Where No Hunter Has Gone Before

✧₊⁺

I heard the gentle hum of Autumn’s airship as we glided through the sky, fog lights turned to the brightest setting to account for the thick miasma surrounding us. Nary a word was shared between the pilot, Thresh, and I. Nor Archie, who floated close to the back of the vessel.

The flight conditions were sketchy at best, purple lightning threatening to knock us out of the sky at any moment, but my mind was elsewhere.

“If you find Yuna and Shizuka, could you pass on an important message for me?”

I thought back to a brief conversation I had with Kururu before we all went our separate ways at the base of the control tower.

“Sure thing, Cowboy, what is it?”

“Please tell them that I have something to admit when all this is over, something to apologize for. And that I’ll tell them when I see them again.”

Whether I would get the opportunity could very well depend on how we all perform our duties in the coming conflict. We were promised enough power to give us a fighting chance, but Blackheart was no slouch, and she didn’t hesitate to act on her killing instincts.

“How are you doing back there, Nagai-san?” Thresh looked away from the flight panel for a moment to address me. “Autumn-san says you’re the star of this show, so you better have your head screwed on straight. There’s no telling what we’ll be up against.”

“I know, and I appreciate the concern. I reckon I’m just a bit worried about how the other two are getting on, is all.” I admitted.

“Kururu-chan and Tǒng are readying their positions as we speak,” Archie said, bringing up a holoprojection with a map of the city. “Enemy forces remain outside presently, but their numbers have increased. We must take care of our end of business as soon as time permits.”

Two signatures, in the form of blue dots, approached the residential quarter on the holomap where the Songbird recommended they stage themselves before the barrier goes down. I would just have to put my worries to rest for now and hope they could handle themselves when the fighting starts.

“By the way, Thresh, how’d you learn to fly one of these things?” I asked.

“In truth, I helped your ex-wife come up with the model for the aircraft and how it operates.” Thresh tapped the dashboard like a proud father patting his child’s head. “Between you and me, I took heavy inspiration for the ship from an old space western I saw as a young boy, but I didn’t tell Ueda-san that.”

“Hmph.” I scoffed, remembering a light disagreement Aki and an assistant of hers had once about making every asset original when coding for her projects. “She would probably have called you out for being deriv—“

There was a sharp thud against the side of the ship that sent me crashing to the floor. There was no boom afterward, so it wasn’t a rogue lightning strike. No, whatever it was was more solid.

“What the hell was that!?”

“I’m getting hits on our radar. Take a look out one of the portholes and tell me what you see, Nagai-san, I think we’ve got company!”

I walked over to the window, pressing my hands and eyes against the glass in an attempt to see through the fog. Several sets of red, blinking eyes greeted me.

The creatures, one by one, torpedoed into the side of the ship trying to knock us off course. After getting thrown off-balance once again, I scrambled back to the window to see if I could get a better look at our assailants.

Lightning flashed, revealing what must have been dozens of polymorphic flying scorpions.

“Monsters, and they’re everywhere!” I exclaimed. “What are we gonna do? We can’t afford to let them take us down.”

They had white wings and glowing eyes, and I could hear the collective screeching from their flock as they formed a circle around our ship.

“I know! Hold onto something, it’s about to get bumpy.” Thresh gripped the steering wheel, knuckles turning white.

I followed his suggestion and buckled into one of the bench seats. The ship dove immediately, pirouetting in an attempt to shake our pursuers. Things in the cabin flew in every direction, but Thresh somehow kept us on course. However, his slick maneuvering wasn’t enough.

“Persistent little buggers, aren’t they? I can’t seem to get rid of them.”

But maybe I can.

Thresh steadied the ship, trying to speed through the onslaught instead of twisting out of it. It did little good, however, as blinking warning lights began to flash on the flight panel with each impact by the creatures.

Meanwhile, I came up with a plan to take out the flying arachnids the only way I knew how. Unbuckling my seat, I jogged over to the metal ladder at the back of the ship that led up through a hatch exit and began climbing.

“Nagai-san, where are you going?” Thresh glanced over his shoulder. “I told you to hold onto something!”

“How fast can you fly, Archie?” I asked my partner as I ignored Thresh’s warning. “Can you catch me if I lose my grip?”

“I am quite confident in my flying skills, Jiro,” Archie replied. “The question is, have you learned how to properly hit a target?”

I smirked.

“Those critters ain’t got a chance, my friend.”

I managed to twist the metal ring and pry the hatch open, the cabin depressurizing a bit as I did. The adrenaline rush hit me all at once as I realized how crazy what I was doing was.

“Don’t go out there, you’ll fly off, you idiot!” Thresh called out as I poked my head out into the roaring wind.

I could see my stress meter slowly climbing from the miasma filling my lungs, but I was past the point of turning back. The force tried to take me for a ride, and I slowly crawled along the roof of the ship on my hands and knees until I reached something I could securely hold on to, a safety bar of some sort.

Archie sped behind us, meanwhile, preparing to catch me with his tractor beam in case I fell.

“Here they come, Jiro!” Archie called out.

With one hand gripping the safety bar with all the strength I could afford, I pulled out a revolver with my free hand and aimed at any sets of red eyes that threatened to ram the ship. I fired a shot, bullseye. This trend continued and the creatures wailed as they fell from the sky, promptly dispatched with one shot each.

I thought myself quite the marksman for a few moments until the creatures got the bright idea to also attack me, in addition to the ship. Visibility was frighteningly low, giving me just a split second to hit them when they emerged from the mist before they could barrel into me.

I managed to shoot one of the kamikaze scorpions before it could get a piece of me, but—as I feared—I didn’t see another making its dive at the same time. The impact was rib-crushing, and I immediately lost my grip, getting tossed off the side of the ship like a rag doll.

I could imagine the conflicting thoughts of concern vs. “I told you so” welling up in Thresh as he saw me zoom past the windshield like a bird who had forgotten how to fly.

“A…little…help…please!”

I tumbled through the air, feeling nauseous, until I felt Archie’s tractor beam locate and pluck me out of the air. After a few more harrowing seconds, I was back and gripping the safety bar shakily. I kept firing shots until I felt like we were in the clear, seeing the remaining enemies lose interest, and returned to the cabin.

“That was reckless!” Thresh accosted me as soon as I got the hatch closed with a deep sigh of relief. “You could have been killed out there, and respawned god knows where!”

“But those scorpions gave up, didn’t they??” I put my hands in the air, not wanting to argue. “Archie caught me, and I’m not feeling any worse for wear. I’d say we came out of it just fine.”

“If you say so, Nagai-san.” Thresh sighed, exasperated. “But I’ll admit, that was some fine shooting. We can’t expect that’ll be the last of them. We’re almost at the heart of darkness. One wrong move, and we’ll—“

As if he were tempting fate, a huge purple beam of energy came bursting through the haze in the direction we were headed and obliterated the right side of the ship where one of the primary engines was housed.

“The vessel is quickly losing altitude,” Archie warned.

I jumped up in the front seat next to Thresh, farthest from the bulk of the damage, and strapped in. The airship began to fall at a forty-five-degree angle into the clouds.

“Land!?” Expecting our descent to be long, we were shocked when the ground suddenly appeared in a few seconds flat. “Get ready for a crash landing!!”

Thresh pulled up on the steering wheel hard enough for the vein in his neck to bulge, and we braced ourselves for impact. The sound of scraping metal filled the air as the ship lost velocity and parts of its underbelly in the skid. Miraculously, despite the damages, we eventually came to a stop with our lives intact.

“Autumn-san, come in Autumn-san...” Voice shaking, Thresh made a call out over the ship’s radio. “We’ve crashlanded on some sort of floating cobblestone island, far above sea level. All heads accounted for.”

But not for lack of trying to kill us. I’ve taken Sprite Airline flights that were less dodgy.

There was some static hissing for a time before we finally heard a voice.

“…..the gods, you’re safe…approaching the heart…proceed north on foot…stall Blackheart…barrier going down…”

“Were you able to catch most of that?” I asked Thresh.

“Not all, but enough to have a general idea,” Thresh replied. “Let’s hop out and see what there is to see, and try not to get ambushed in the process.”

“Considering our track records so far, that might be wishful thinking, partner...”

We got out of the ship and began walking north on foot with a bit of navigational support from Archie. As we did, the miasma which had been thick as thistles before, began to thin out as we approached something huge.

“That’s it… the heart of darkness.”

Thresh and I approached a circle arena with a giant pulsing thing in the middle. It was egg-shaped and emitted a rhythmic wave that gave me a splitting headache.

“What is it?” I asked.

“That’s right, you wouldn't know since you were fighting the abnormal, but if you remember, the rest of the raid team went opposite of the cave-in to destroy the heart of darkness in the ByteCoin mine,” Thresh explained. “Enemies spawn from these things that Blackheart plants all over Memoria, like a cyst that spreads her virus, but I’ve never seen one this large before. There’s something almost… alive about it.”

“Then we shouldn’t waste any time in destroying it to stop the waves, especially since we still don’t know where—“

“—Blackheart is?”

A voice cut through the darkness that made me grit my teeth. There was a swirl of black morpho butterflies some distance in front of us, and in the center of the vortex, the woman we sought finally appeared.

“Blackheart!”

“Why, all you had to do was ask to see me, Jiro. You’ll find I’m quite accommodating when I want to be.” She said, “But how rude of you to step into my house, slaughter more of my pets, and to bring an uninvited guest with you. Not a good start if you want to grovel at someone’s feet for mercy if you ask me.”

“We’re not here to grovel, Blackheart. Don’t get your facts twisted” Thresh spat.

“Oho! And what are you here to do? To delay the inevitable at the risk of billions of innocent lives? How very heroic.” Blackheart jabbed, her tone dripping with sarcasm. “I know your precious Songbird told you to come appeal to my humanity, did she not?”

“How did you know that?” I narrowed my gaze.

“Autumn is so very cliché, always trying to find the most logical way forward, while sacrificing the least she can. But she doesn’t know pain and suffering like I do!” Blackheart sneered. “She may not care that we’re soulless husks, built to flounder about in ignorance, but I do! I just want to end it all… This place, the people, including myself, before anyone can be forced to have the same epiphany… that nothing truly matters!”

“That nihilism doesn’t suit you, and when you say those kinds of things with Aki’s voice, it kind of pisses me off,” I said. “You’re wrong about the Eternals, and I stand by what I said back on the road. They’re as real as anyone, and their lives DO matter, Blackheart. As does yours.”

“I must say, I thought you would turn tail and run when I confronted you before, and revealed the true nature of your little friends, but I was wrong. So so wrong. Turns out, you’re an even bigger fool than I thought.” She pulled off her hood. Like the Songbird she had snow-white hair, but her eyes were violet instead of blue. “Do you think you have the will to match mine? To defeat me?”

“I know I do,” I said, sure of my words. My stalling had paid off as I felt the power within me surging. “Because by the end of this, you’ll be walking out of here with us to stop that madman Barnes. Whether you come willingly, or I have to drag you out here by the scruff of your neck.”

A whole swarm of blue morpho butterflies emerged from the void and surrounded both Thresh and me, showering us in a powerful blue aura. I felt like I could take on an army in my current state, but Blackheart might have been just as formidable on her own.

“Borrowed power from that wench cannot save you, but as you wish…” Blackheart threw her hands out wide, purple lightning sparking at her fingertips. “Come, and show me you’re not all talk! Show me your potential!”

I drew my revolvers and Thresh, his scythe. With much at stake, a battle of wills began.