Kickstart My Sky I

Anemone remained half awake all throughout, painfully aware of every event from when Lias shot her mother, up to the time they boarded the heavily-armed airship Isolde. She had witnessed strangers attempt to attack the ship, and Lias cackling in half-panic and half-pride as he fought them off with a slew of magical artillery.

Even through sedation via mana-induced migraine, her anger and indignation crept through, manifesting as pockets of physical struggle and weak punches.

When the pain finally left her, it was as if a fog had lifted from her eyes, freeing her mind and body from invisible bondage.

Above her, the violet sky, darkness slowly being pierced by hiding sunlight from the east horizon. Peering over the nearest railing of the airship deck, below her: the city of Bellfry.

Though conscious all the way, she had lost track of time. And now, she realized she had lost track of elevation.

The Isolde had already taken off. When? And where were they going?

“She’s awake!” An unfamiliar man’s voice blurted out.

Out of reflex, she swept her feet behind her. Her legs caught the heel of another, knocking the unseen man on their feet. In one crescent motion, she flipped backwards and landed on her feet, a magical arrow formed between her fingers—but no bow at her back when she reached for it.

Three soldiers stood a distance away, Lias between them. His palm was raised, which seemed to stop the soldiers from impaling her with spears and crossbows.

“Now, now, princess.” Lias smirked, holding a vial of red liquid on hand. “I’ve already gotten what I needed from you. I’d rather not end your life, considering how cooperative you’ve been.”

Is that…

She glanced over to her left wrist. A bandage with a speck of blood was taped over it.

“I see.” Anemone bit her lip. “So you do. Why don’t you just kill me then?”

“Wouldn’t want to start a bloody war with Ka-Ilyah now, would we? If I kill you, any attempts at future diplomacy will disappear with you.”

“Do you seriously think anything you’ve done would earn you any favors? Not while I’m alive.”

“On the contrary.” Lias swished the liquid in the bottle, and stepped to the side, glancing at the Inverted City in the distance. “Once I obtain the power of the world beyond Lacrimosa, I will be able to ascend the Federacy’s dominion to new heights. Then with that power, I will unite the world’s armies under a single banner. Only then will we find a way to permanently defeat the Sky Legion. But…” He grimaced. “If you die, Ka-Ilyah’s king will fight me to his death—when in the end, I want him on my side. And your being alive will be my leverage for it.”

“You’ve really thought this through.” What kind of things would Haruki say in this situation, if he were here? Right… “But I know you can’t use your crystal in this airship. It would damage the engine. So I suppose you either kill me now, or I do to you. What will it be?”

Lias cackled. “Hah! An empty threat.”

Anemone concentrated. She envisioned the wind behind her back; Gentle flows of wind. Turn to blades. No, spears will do. She closed her eyes, then after a second, blinked open.

A gale blew forth, stumbling the three soldiers in front of her.

But no blades came.

“What?”

Lias surged forward, wind behind his back. He thrust a palm into her abdomen.

Seeing the attack coming, she blocked the blow with an elbow. Lias palm struck solid bone, but the force knocked her to the wall of the upper deck. Her back slammed against it, blazing pain scattering all over. No broken bones—yes—but unspeakable pain nonetheless.

She fell to the floor on a knee. Anemone refused to back down, fighting through an anguish.

Lias approached slowly, the vial of blood glowing in his hand.

“I have made contingencies for every single thing you may throw at me,” he said. “Just having your blood in my hands grants me the same abilities you do.”

Ah. My blood… of course.

Of course someone with my blood can do the things I do.

It’s the same with Haruki, isn't it?

“So it does.”

Lias clicked his tongue.

“Upstarts like you and the de Alfonses… you think you can outsmart me. You’re all the same. You underestimate me, and overestimate your strength. Listen, you fools. I do not stand where I do because of privilege. I stand here because of my strength! My resolve! My prowess!” He held Anemone’s arm up in a vicegrip, like he could shatter her bones at any moment. “My genius! I will be the one to save the world! Not the weak Federacy! Not the divided Federacy! Me!”

Despite the shooting torment, Anemone held a firm, unflinching gaze.

“You say that, but you devalue the same of my blood mother. Ako de Alfons. She was a commoner, an otherworlder with no magic to her name. And yet, she worked her way up society, with her own strength. You and her are not so different, and yet you hold your lineage over hers. That makes you a hypocrite.”

Lias knit his brows and his arm trembled. “And what of it? Hypocrisy is an inherent flaw of all humanity. Hypocrisy exists where sapience does. You cannot cast stones on me, girl, for you should be aware of your own.”

“Of course I know. I want to be responsible despite my desire to be not so. But hypocrisy is where our similarities end. I know what you are: Jealous. Jealous that a commoner was chosen as the carrier of the Divine’s child. You thought, with all your genius, the Divine would choose you for some holy mission.” Anemone laughed. “But They didn’t. Silly, if you ask me. Were you asking to become pregnant with child?”

Lias, in fury, threw her up in the air and tossed her behind him. She landed on her side, wood scraping her pristine skin as she skidded on the floor.

“Nonsense!” he shouted. “The Divine is impotent if They let the Sky Legion run rampant in this world. Technology will replace the Divine soon—and Lacrimosa is the door. And I will be the one to open it!”

Anemone realized—Lias was so close to his goal. Every restraint, every compunction, every formality he had—all meaningless, evaporated in the face of the promise of power.

As Lias walked up Anemone, a distant buzzing sound began to approach. A small object caught their periphery.

“Ah.” Lias grinned, wrongful fury suddenly leaving his twisted face. “And here comes the unwanted guest.”

A familiar machine—a plane, the Kenichi Modern—approached.

She squinted, watching the machine come closer. Something else trailed behind it.

A waterspout. A small tornado of water, slanted and horizontal, as if it was being left behind in the KM’s flight path.

“What’s that!” A soldier from atop the observation pole shouted.

“Haruki!” Anemone stood up and smiled, eyes gleaming. She didn’t know nor care what the thing behind him was. All she had to know—and knew deep in her heart, was that he was finally here.

Her hero.

####

Haruki pitched the plane up and down, side-to-side as if he were evading a vicious beast on his tail. Actually, for all intents and purposes, a beast was trailing the Kenichi Modern.

A beast of pure crystalline water, formed into a serpent made from the freshwater pond within Bellfry City.

“Please hold the machine together!” Marina pleaded, shouting from the co–pilot seat.

“I’m trying!”

The waterspout serpent roared behind them, water leaking from its gaping maw as if it were a starving beast. Turbulent winds funneled it into an air-pocket, and such effort was giving Haruki what felt like a magic-induced stroke.

Several bolts of magic began to shoot from the airship Isolde. A shocking amount—dozens, at least—from an airship barely a third the size of the Cronqvist. “We got a problem!”

Haruki weaved the KM between the shots, but many bolts struck the KM. But when they did, a glass-like barrier caught the impact, cracking a little with each successive hit.

“I got you covered!” Marina said with pride, though her breath heaved right after.

When the KM neared the Isolde, he forced the plane upward. “Anemone, dodge!” he shouted, using wind to carry the voice to her—and only her.

The waterspout serpent slammed into the Isolde, half its mass striking its portside, rupturing the turrets sticking out of it. The other half washed through the deck, the deluge throwing half the armed forces on it overboard. Anemone jumped onto a high pole just in time, while Lias and some others evaded into a blind spot of the tidal wave.

“Marina! The men!”

“Of course.”

The spilling deluge caught the falling soldiers, encasing them into a slow-descending bubble as they plunged into the sea far below them.

Flying to the other side of the airship, a second wave of magical barrages fired from the starboard side, though their rate of fire was slow, and left a lot to be desired—at least for the enemy. They were clearly in disarray below deck. It was perfect for Haruki, who evaded the bolts with now practised ease.

He turned the KM around, going for another pass-through.

With his mounted guns, a hail of bullets pelted the ship’s turrets, ripping them to shreds with heavy machine gun fire. He flew under the Isolde’s hull to a defenseless portside.

“How do you like them apples!” Haruki laughed.

“We got them good,” said Marina, mirroring a giggle. “But what do apples have to do with what we’re doing?”

“Ah.” Idiom fail. Again. “Let’s just say it’s a good thing.”

“Is it…? Alright,” she said. “Take them apples, Lias!”

“Eh. Good enough.”

Flying far and circling the Isolde, Haruki tilted his head and spoke to Marina. “Are you sure you’re gonna do that?”

“Yes. You saw me do it to those soldiers. Surely you don’t think I can catch my own fall?”

“I’m just asking!”

“Thank you for your concern, but I’ll be fine.”

Haruki thought it crazy at first, but seeing her water magic at work just now, perhaps it wasn’t so absurd after all. No, Haruki. Focus. The more he would think what Marina intended to do was dangerous, the more he faltered. Have faith in her.

With wind magic, he threw his voice at Anemone again, and said:

“Anemone, next time I pass… jump off the right side.”

####

Anemone watched Lias stagger back to the center of the deck, making sure not to trip over the now smooth, crystalized floor of the Isolde.

“Accursed del Alfons. This is her doing. And she is now working with that otherworlder?” He shook with indignation. “Preposterous!”

Anemone crept to the right side of the ship, leaning on the railing. The sea was a long, long way down. It was an abyss she’d fall into if she made the slightest error.

But it was also the abyss she knew she had to plunge to.

In her weakened state, she didn’t know if she had enough magic to glide down. What if the blood Lias had taken was enough to deprive her of the magic she knew she could do? What if, right now, she was just a normal girl?

What if she slipped, or jumped too early? Jumped too late?

She watched the Kenichi Modern circle the airship. Eventually, it slowly made its approach, its angle odd in her eyes. Feeling the call of the sea below, she inched closer to the edge.

“You…” Lias leaned on a pole, trying to keep his balance as he floundered toward the ship’s bow. “What are you trying to do?”

“And what are you doing yourself? It’s over.”

Lias chuckled. “No. It isn’t. I have the means to open the door, and you can stand there and watch.”

“I’m not going to. I am going to stop all this.” Her heel touched the ship’s edge.

“Stop me when you’re dead, having fallen into the sea, the surface of it breaking every bone in your body? You don’t have enough magic to catch your own fall, princess.”

“Maybe so. But I have faith. Faith in others. Something you don’t have a shred of for anyone but yourself.”

“Then jump. If you’ll be a thorn in my side, then take your own life.”

“Are you sure about that?”

A tinny, distant voice echoed. “Anemone!”

She hopped off the Isolde, eyes fully open, unafraid of what comes after. She fell deep, the wind pushing her up and gravity down. She concentrated to cast a spell to slow her descent, but there was not enough energy in her to do it.

In her freefall, the scenery this high up dizzied her. She remembered her droll, boring days in castle Ka-Ilyah. Boring, boring, boring.

Even in the cusp of death, the scenery enchanted her.

The sun rose beyond the horizon, bathing the sea and clouds in warm sunrise. How timely, she thought, that her favorite time of day would come to greet her at the edge of life and death.

Bellfry below, the sea embracing it—the clouds, dancing in the sky and ground alike. They glowed in radiant sunlight, like a child’s storybook come to life.

Beautiful. All of it.

If this was her final sight, she wouldn’t mind. She didn’t want to trade it for anything else.

She couldn’t feel magic in her. Not yet, at least. No safeguards, no weapons, no miracles. But she did have one thing:

Faith.

The sound of a familiar engine called to her. She turned, there it was:

The Kenichi Modern.

Haruki.

An empty co-pilot seat.

The KM flew up, and spun down, plunging towards the sea at her speed. It raced past her until Haruki was at level with her.

“Anemone! Come on!”

“Haruki!” she cried out, tears streaming from her face. She reached out with an open hand.

He responded in kind, reaching with an outstretched hand, as he, her, and the KM plunged downward.

First, she felt his fingers touching hers. His hands grasped hers tightly. Rugged. Firm. Warm. Hands molded by experience—but most of all, by hope.

She wondered.

I wonder what my hands feel like to him?

Haruki grabbed her by the arm, and pulled her into his seat, and into his embrace.

Before hitting the water, he pitched the plane back upright. The water parted as the force under and behind the Kenichi Modern pushed wind in its wake.

“Haruki…” She gazed at him, his eyes forward—focused on the goal. On what must be done.

“Anemone,” he said, sparing her a single warm smile.

She blinked, and beamed back with the sweetness of the sweetest sweet roll in the world. “Yes?”

“We have work to do.”