Wings of Another World II

“You don’t know me?” Anemone said, leaning forward, her golden hair and braids tumbling over her open chest.

Haruki shook his head, trying not to be distracted. “I don’t,” he said. “I don’t even know where I am right now. I’m from Japan, flying in from a place called Hanamigaoka.”

“Ah.” A quiet realization, though she didn’t follow up.

Anemone came up to the KM and ran her soft, supple hands on the red-orange linen of the fuselage. Her eyes drooped in contemplation, then looked up toward the sky. She took a deep breath and smiled.

“Can we fly, Sir Haruki?

Haruki, enamored with the liveliness of her expressions, blushed and looked away. “Well, I guess so? I’ve never tried taxi-ing a plane on soil and dirt before, but if it’s a biplane, I think I can manage.” He glanced back at her, curious. “You’re really enchanted by this thing. Have you never flown in a plane before?”

“I have never flown—by my own or on anything,” she said, eyes affixed on the deep blue sky above. “I have never known the sky. I used magic to fly myself once, but only as high as the highest flight of stairs in the castle.”

“Really now…?” Poor girl. Flying is a wonderful thing,

“Sir Haruki, I want to fly. The ground keeps forcing responsibility on me by birthright—by blood. I want to be free, for even a moment. There,” she said, pointing at the sky. “There, is freedom. I want to run away—for a little bit. We can do that, can’t we… Sir Haruki?”

Her words struck Haruki deep. Freedom. Anemone—she wanted the same thing he did. His heart thumped a beat too many, again and again. All the questions of survival, of existentialism, simply vanished.

To show her the beauty of the sky—at that moment, that was all he desired.

“...Alright.”

Haruki jumped back into the cockpit, and affixed the goggles over his eyes. Before he would sit, he beckoned Anemone into the co-pilot seat, hand outstretched. “Hop in.”

Anemone approached with tender steps, eyes uncertain. When Haruki nudged forward, she tapped his open palm with a finger like a baby holding their mother’s hand for the first time. He beckoned her again. She swallowed a lump in her throat and clutched his arm, pulling herself up into the co-pilot seat.

“Just a few things, mademoiselle,” Haruki said, his voice now booming and full of life. “Keep your arms and legs inside the plane at all times. If we start going up or down really fast, try not to talk—you might bite your tongue.”

A mounted Lewis gun caught Anemone’s eye. “What's this? A ballista?”

Haruki snapped back. “Wait! Don't touch that. It may be dangerous.” Even though the guns here were just airsofts.

“O-Okay!” Anemone straightened, curious hands flying away from the gun's handle.

Allowing himself a laugh, Haruki turned the handle of the magneto. The engine roared to life and the propeller in front began to spin. “Anyway, that aside? Enjoy your flight!”

The KM ran into the flattest open field within sight, the rough terrain shaking the cockpit, but Haruki was too excited to feel it… though he could hear Anemone yelping behind him. Slowly, the plane rose from the ground. Then—freedom.

They flew past the treeline, then further up, until the forest below became nothing more than a thick patch of green. The horizon where the sky and land met stretched further and further.

He steadied the plane, following a distant fortress-like structure in the distance.

Looking down, white, cotton-like clouds rolled over distant plains, touching the ground like mist after rain. It was like a scene out of a storybook, like what a child—or even, what he thought heaven would look like.

He scooped up a cup-like device attached to the controls. “Pilot to mademoiselle. Pick up that cup if you wanna talk to me.”

When he spoke, his voice came through an identical cup at the co-pilot seat. Anemone held the cup close to her face, between mouth and ear. “Speaking. And my name isn’t Madame Mozelle, it’s Anemone!”

He could only laugh. Somehow, his words didn’t translate well to whatever language they were speaking right now—if they were even still speaking in Japan’s vernacular, and not being magically translated or something.

“Okay… Anemone it is,” he said. “How’s your first flight?”

“It’s…” Anemone paused, speechless. “I-I… I love it. Everything looks so tiny from here,” she said, then laughed. “Everyone’s like little ants, like I could pinch them with my fingers. And the wind. It feels so alive.”

Haruki chuckled. “Great, right? How’s it feel to be up here?”

Another pause. Anemone exhaled slowly but loudly, he could hear it from the cup communicator.

“I think I’m in love, Sir Haruki.”

“I-In love?” he stammered out, cheeks flushing red. “With what?”

“In love with the sky. With flying,” she said, her voice raised an octave from excitement. “I have never fallen in love in my life, but I have read about what it feels like. And I think… this is what it feels like—to fall in love.”

Unsure if he was glad or disappointed it wasn’t with him, he chortled.

“Yeah. I think you’re right. I guess… I’ve been in love with the sky for as long as I remember.”

Reading the fuel gauge, Haruki surmised that he probably had around two or three hours of flight to go with it. He glanced back, communicator in hand. “While we’re here. There anywhere you wanna go?”

Anemone paused to think. Grabbing the communicator again, she answered.

“There is,” she said, glancing back and pointing at a spot in the sky that looked like a blue hole in the sea, but up instead of down. Haruki grabbed a pair of binoculars and took a closer look.

Within the heart of the blue hole was a faint but obvious silhouette of a city—is that the Tokyo Skytree? This figure hung upside down at the surface of the reversed blue hole. To be visible this far out—it must have been really close, or really big—most likely the latter.

But most importantly… that was the Tokyo skyline, wasn’t it? What was it doing here?

“What is that?” Haruki asked.

“They call it the Inverse City,” she said. “They said it’s a city from another world, bringing in outworlders into ours from time to time. I didn’t believe that was true until now. All I knew was that I wanted to go there. Always have.”

She must have figured Haruki was this thing called an outworlder by now. So he really was in another world—though even more striking, this implied there was a way back.

“You wanna try going there?”

Anemone’s voice hitched. “W-We can do that?”

“I don’t know, but we can try,” he said. “Hang on tight.”

Turning the KM in the direction of this Inverse Tokyo, the plane climbed altitude and maintained a steady speed towards it. Minutes passed, and the city didn’t grow any smaller, lending to its distance.

When they crossed a mountain shrouded in very low hanging clouds, the warm scent of petrichor filled Haruki’s lungs. He looked up. Rain? —But there were no clouds above.

The sound of raindrops plinked below the plane. From below?

Rain began to fall upward, enshrouding the KM in a downpour coming from below. It wasn’t a downpour—so an ‘uppour’?

“Hey, Anemone, is upward falling rain normal in your kingdom or something?”

Silence. A beat, only filled with the sounds of the plane’s engine and the billow of wind against their ears.

“Uh, Anemone?”

“Sir Haruki… we must leave. Now.”

Her tone dripped with dire urgency.

“What, why—”

“Please! They’re coming!”

The sky darkened in the blink of an eye, as if the deep blue under the Inverted Tokyo suddenly flowed out into the rest of the sky. The sun’s light above them could only barely penetrate the dark. Thunder after thunder boomed distant, only growing closer after every passing moment.

“What’s coming?” Haruki asked before he lowered altitude a hundred meters down.

“It’s them…” Her voice dropped. Haruki didn’t need to turn back to know how horrified she must have looked right now.

An unearthly mix of a roar and high-pitched screech billowed east their direction. Dark, winged shadows flew in from beyond the mountain range—one larger than the rest.

Haruki peered through his binoculars. He lowered them slowly, the sight of something unearthly yet familiar crumbling whatever positive feelings he had filled himself with.

Far and yonder, of red scales and talons as massive as their horns outscaled the Kenichi Modern. Wings large enough to churn wind at its wake, blowing the smaller shadows behind it out of formation—and it was headed straight for them, hostile intent as clear as day.

A dragon.