Kickstart My Sky V

Machine gun fire, front and back, mowed down creature after creature. Magical bolts of all colors obliterated those that managed to avoid the Kenichi Modern’s onslaught. Fire and axe cleaved battalion after battalion, the dwarves of the Redwing Pirates cutting through the chaff like a hot knife through butter. Rock kept Haruki’s heart alive.

She probably didn’t understand it at first, but Haruki found Anemone vibing to the song not long after. He knew she’d like it. She was just that kind of experimental girl. He allowed himself a chuckle.

Haruki dueled the Dragon Lord in a never-ending dogfight, putting all that he learned in this world to the test. The two disappeared in a whirlwind of swipes and pass-throughs, drawing infinity symbols with their maneuvers.

He had no idea how he’d stand up in a real aircraft-to-aircraft fight, but the vulnerabilities of a flying lizard played perfectly well to his somewhat-amateur flight skills.

Waves of water rose from the sea, gathering at a flying whirlpool floating above the bow of the Isolde. Marina stood under it, eyes closed and energy surging through her fingertips.

The scene attracted the attention of the Dragon Lord, but Haruki’s gunfire made certain he couldn’t lay a single hair on her or the Isolde. If him, then Flare’s meteoric axe strikes and punches did the work just as well.

The KM’s engine coughed. Sputtered. Haruki’s heart jumped.

“How much longer?” he asked Marina over the wind tunnels.

She didn’t answer, but the growing bubble over the Isolde told him what he needed to know. It was still getting larger with each passing second. He knew not why it had to get so big, or how much more he had to wait, but he’d keep the Dragon Lord at bay until his death—if that’s what it takes.

“Enough!” the Dragon Lord roared. His rage shook the air, throwing the KM and the griffons off course.

A great wind sucked all the remaining granfalloons from above Bellfry, and into the Dragon Lord’s constitution. Their approach dragged gargoyles along with them, and into the beast’s mass. The compromised creatures formed a silver, fleshy decayed mass that looked more like hardened bone armor than living tissue.

Recovering from the overwhelming force, Haruki forced the KM back at the Dragon Lord and opened fire. His bullets bounced off the armor. When he passed the Dragon Lord, Anemone inspected the creature for weaknesses. “There,” she shouted. “Just below his chest… open flesh!”

Haruki banked the KM and aimed at the weakspot. He fired. Then, the armor which had enveloped its upper body, crept towards the chest, deflecting the bullets.

“What?”

The Dragon Lord laughed as his reptilian eyes traced the KM’s flight path. “Get yourself a new trick.”

The armor reformed at his mouth, forming a spout-like structure. The Dragon Lord breathed flames, and the spout funneled it into a high-velocity fireball. The fireball scraped the KM’s side, setting its left flank on fire. Neither Anemone nor Haruki could react in time.

“Shit!” Haruki cursed as he watched the KM’s tail catch embers. Anemone conjured a vacuum to extinguish the flame, but the damage had already been done. The wireframe had ruptured in extreme heat, the machine’s tail damaged.

The KM’s steering had become off-balance, difficult. He could manage, but with each performance drop, direct hits became likelier and likelier. A death spiral that, once started, was hard to stop.

Seemingly sensing the plane’s newfound impotence, the Dragon Lord turned to the Isolde, smoke and flames spilling forth from its spouted mouth. The ship’s cannons and crossbows bounced off its abominable silver armor.

“Haruki! Anemone!” Flare called out from afar through their echo tunnel. “Mind if I borrow some of that Divine strength?”

“What?” Anemone asked, wondering. “What are you planning to do?”

“I’m planning to put my faith in you.”

Flare dove below the Dragon Lord’s body. Then, with a hurricane-speed upward draft, jumped from the griffon, arm pulled back, and the other held out like a measuring tool. She slammed into the dragon’s underside, fist ignited with comet-like fire, and dragged the dragon high into the sky. The dragon cried out, coughing paper-like blood and innards as its trails went up.

Every single injury exploded open on Flare’s body, bathing her in her own red, bloody gore. She fell from the sky, her own ichor accentuating her fall.

Warren swooped in and caught the barely conscious Flare on his griffon.

Anemone coughed and wheezed. Her own strength was draining fast.

“Marina! Are you done yet?” Haruki yelled out, desperation oozing from every syllable.

“I’m just about—”

The Dragon Lord cocked his head back, poised to burn the Isolde with a shooting flame. “You will not!”

Haruki concentrated. His gaze locked into that of the dragon’s eyes. With gritted teeth, he cast a watery mirror over the beast’s eyes. The beast, with no regard for its surroundings, fired down at the Isolde.

A miss.

The fireball plunged into the sea, away from the Isolde, exploding into a pillar of water. The surface sizzled as molten heat evaporated liquid.

A shooting pain rushed from his neck down to his right side. A bloody gash burst from Haruki’s arm, visible through his burnt, ruined sleeve. When it did, the mirror-like haze vanished from the dragon’s eyes.

“What…!” The Dragon Lord panted. “I missed? How did I—” He turned to Haruki with indignant rage. “You!”

Haruki laughed through the pain, hands too busy to hold his injury. “I said… I’m your target!”

A massive ball of water shot out from the Isolde’s bow, channeled from Marina’s fingertips. The titanic orb raced towards the Inverted City above, where it struck an invisible watery surface embracing its perimeter. The orb shattered into millions of droplets, bathing everything underneath it in a five-second long storm.

Haruki gasped. “Did… that do it?”

Lightning struck once, then another on the same spot. Thunder rumbled. The battlefield became still. Then, the portal’s edges began receding. It shrunk, the circle retreating into itself slowly.

Slowly.

The image of Tokyo—of home—faded with every centimeter it shrunk. Haruki’s home, waving a figurative goodbye. He wouldn’t be home tonight, nor this weekend. He didn’t know if he’d be home—ever.

The portal vanished in a puff of smoke, and so did the stream of paper cranes fueling the Dragon Lord’s power.

The winds wafting through, above, and under the Kenichi Modern ceased. His speeds normalized. It was as if it had become a normal Bristol F.2 biplane again. Anemone spoke weakly. “That did it alright…” She was trembling. Exhausted. After that explosion of energy Marina had borrowed, she could no longer maintain the magical enhancements she had bestowed on the plane.

He flew, circling the Dragon Lord, staring him a tired yet determined leer. The Dragon Lord returned the same. No gloating, no taunts. Nothing.

Nothing but the final desire to kill each other.

####

Several beats passed. The cannonfire continued below the skies, at the seas where the rest of the Sky Legion carried on with their purposeless invasion.

Above low-hanging clouds, only Haruki, Anemone, the Dragon Lord, and the Kenichi Modern remained.

A hole, unhealed from Flare’s final strike, gaped below the dragon’s abdomen. Shreds of paper flew from the rest of its half-constructed wounds, and silver, rotten flesh peeled from its armor of the dead.

“Artificer,” the Dragon Lord called out cold. “So you’ve cut me off from Lacrimosa. Am I supposed to be impressed?”

“Oh no, I don’t want you impressed.” Haruki chuckled, bravado filling his throbbing, burning chest. “I want you scared.”

“Me? Scared?” the beast retorted. “My body lives on will. An immortal will.”

“You eat Lias and suddenly you inherited half his ego and doubled it with your own? You should watch what you eat, you scaly glutton.”

“You’ll rue the day you insulted me.”

Haruki lifted the cup to communicate with Anemone. No magic, no tricks. Just a simple radio.

“How much more do you have in you?”

Anemone winced, her voice faltering. “I don’t know, but I think I can manage one last burst of strength. Marina drained everything I have.”

“And that’s all I need.”

“What do you mean?”

He focused on the hole on the dragon’s underside. What would it take to get him there? If Haruki just approached it, the Dragon Lord would just reinforce it with his armor. But if he were to catch the bastard by surprise, then—

“I’ll let him chase us. Accelerate us at the same pace we did the last time. Then, keep firing with the ballista-thing.”

“He’ll catch us. And he’ll reinforce himself with that armor of the dead!”

“I know,” Haruki said with solid intent. “When I call your name, push the wind trail we’re leaving forward—right back to the plane. Then, keep lifting. Push us up and backward. The rest, you can leave to me.”

Anemone exhaled sharply. “I don’t understand, but…”

“You can trust me.”

She nodded.

“I will.”

The Dragon Lord’s eyes sharpened, then without a word, lunged at the Kenichi Modern.

“Let’s go!”

Haruki turned and raced away from the dragon. Anemone opened fire, and when she did, hardened flesh concentrated at the creature’s frontside, absorbing round after round. The dragon’s breath rushed forth, cinders grasping at the plane. Claws forward, it scratched away linen and iron alike. Anemone kept firing.

Winds pushed the plane forward, only outpacing the dragon by mere microns of a second. If they stopped now, they’d be torn apart and devoured alive.

As gunfire plinked off its hardened, concentrated armor, the Dragon Lord taunted, “You cannot defeat me with the same trick twice!”

Of course I know that.

The KM reached the edge of a cloud. And when they passed it—

“Anemone!”

A ferocious draft tilted the propwash of the plane, and opposing winds pushed the Kenichi Modern back. Haruki pitched the plane up, sharp enough to strip the breath from his lungs. For a heartbeat, he and Anemone hung in the air, the prop a blur, wind screaming past the lower wing.

An invisible hand shoved through the air behind them; The nose folded over like a snapped hinge. The world went sideways.

The biplane turned inside itself, wings against the sea. For three impossible seconds, the Kenichi Modern spun as if around a pin, sideways around itself. The engine cried, and damaged parts creaked at the immense force pushing against it.

When the wind ceased, the sea was back down below them, and the engine sputtered back to life as if given new purpose.

The Dragon Lord passed them in a flash. And the dragon’s backside—and open wound—right in front of them.

Haruki grinned through trembling hands; The Kenichi Modern, a biplane, had done something he had never thought a wood-and-wire machine could do.

His own flavor of the Kvocher’s Bell.

“What the—” the Dragon Lord cursed out, flummoxed. “What kind of magic is this?”

“It’s not magic, it’s a scam!” It was magic-empowered, yes, but something perfectly doable in his world, given better resources. But for someone like the Dragon Lord?

It was nothing short of a miracle. A trick. Magic.

All guns pointed and nose aimed at the gaping hole. He smiled, knowing that this dumb lizard couldn’t turn in time. Too slow, too late. Fingers dancing at the trigger, his eyes shone like diamonds in the sunrise.

“In the words of someone else’s generation…”

Haruki pulled the trigger.

“Up yours!”

A storm of bullets assailed the Dragon Lord in its gaping backside hole. Six-hundred rounds per minute of pain, lead, and gunpowder. All up its—in everything but name—ass hole.

And to finish it off—one final fireball, shooting forth like a missile into its viscera.

Machine gun fire tore through its body, some ricocheting off its armor from the inside for maximum internal damage. When the fireball entered its hole, Haruki pitched down.

The Dragon Lord exploded into a shower of paper gore, all drained of blood and color. Fireworks. Confetti. An explosion that rivaled the sun, but not as blinding. Pleasant. Celebratory, even.

Haruki laughed. Holy shit. I—

The engine sputtered. Then, the KM’s tail—snapped.

What the fire had damaged, the final daring maneuver finished off. Slowly, gravity took them. Altitude dropped.

Anemone’s breath escaped her. “Sir Haruki, the plane…!”

He pressed on pedals. He tilted the levers. Nothing.

They were falling.

The engine had failed, and the Titanseye fuel had all but run out. There wasn’t enough lift to save them from a catastrophic crash. If he didn’t know any better, the Titanseye might have reacted to all the magic they were throwing around, depleting it faster than he anticipated.

Or maybe he just miscalculated.

Or maybe it was just time.

“I can’t… dammit—!”

The Kenichi Modern plunged towards the sea. And when they struck the surface, darkness greeted him.

Water filled Haruki’s lungs. Not even moments had passed, and the cold took his consciousness. He thought his final thoughts would be about him and the life he had lived. But no.

They drifted to Flare. To Ako. To Marina. To Anemone.

Please be safe.