Love Her and Despair Remaster [37]

[auronlu]

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The Story So Far: Sin is down but not out. Friction between Auron's allies may prove almost as great a threat as Sin.


"Titanomamachy" by author

"You're kidding, right?" Gippal said. "You know damn well what Nooj is trying to do."

"Yes." She glanced at Auron, who was setting Baralai on the floor. "Hold him." Taking Gippal's seat, she threw the flyer into reverse. There was an instant of freefall before the craft stabilized. Vegnagun wheeled up and away from them, heading back towards Sin.

Gippal grabbed onto the guardrail. "Paine, have you lost your freakin' mind?"

"If Nooj intended suicide, Vegnagun wouldn't obey him." She tried an experimental turn. "How's Baralai?"

"Burns, erratic heartbeat," Auron said. "He needs a healer."

"Okay, great." Gippal hung on as the flyer tipped and straightened. "So now you're suicidal. Look, you've flown this thing exactly twice—"

"Plus two years piloting Vegnagun in simulation, two more working unloaders at Moonflow Port," she said. "Now shut up and let me concentrate."

"No offense, but this is a stupid time for a joyride. And it's my flyer."

"Get a phoenix down on Baralai. If there's an Al Bhed treatment for this kind of injury, do it. Help him." The flyer wobbled again. "We're not losing either of them."

"Here we go again," Rikku said, eyes fixed on the ominous whirlpool of fog and pyreflies shrouding Sin's bulk. "Hey, Isaaru, ya think Lu's still in there?"

"Very likely," he said. "But I fear the absorption of Farplane energies may further dilute whatever is left of your friend's spirit."

"Sin's moving," Shinra said.

A dark shadow began to emerge from the fog. Spines rose up like the spires of St. Bevelle. They jutted from a sloping mountain that was and yet was not the Sin they knew. Its upper hide bristled with enormous spikes, as did the bony tail. A fan of gills or fins spread out from behind its head, encircling its body. Purple sparks skipped along the vanes' edges. Chunks of exoskeleton sloughed off, crashing down as Sin ascended. Pyreflies dripped from its sides. Its eyes—

"Oh, gross," Rikku said.

Some eyes were as before, goggling inhuman orbs in bulbous sockets. Those damaged by Vegnagun had been replaced by eyes that looked almost human, with irises the color of blood.

"Yuck," Elma said. "I didn't think it could get any uglier."

A spear of red light pierced the fog, drilling into spongy gray flesh. More fragments dropped from Sin's hide. Bellowing, it swiveled towards its assailant. Vegnagun retreated, drifting back into the Thunder Plains.

"I've found Sir Auron," Shinra said. "He's with G-team, but they're not responding. They've encountered sincscales."

"'Encountered'?" Elma said. "Ya think?"

Shinra's magnified display showed the little craft lying at a precarious angle on the trailing creepers of Guadosalam's borders. The Thunder Plains' cloud cover shrouded the area in twilight, but red outlines on the scanner indicated a mass of fiends swarming the flyer like ants to sugar.

"How does he always manage to find trouble?" Rikku said. "Pops, can we get down there? Maybe Auron's figured out a way t'be a human lightning rod without getting zorched, but that's an awful lotta fiends even for him."

"I can reach 'em, kiddo, but it means going closer to Sin."

"I would prefer not to lose our captain of the guard and Maester Baralai," Lucil said. "How close?"

"Out of range for everything but Sin's new mana beam," Shinra said.

"Mana...beam?" said Isaaru.

Shinra pointed. "That."

A crackling cone of energy had coalesced around Sin. The fan it had sprouted was focusing the power like a lens. A thick, corded beam of energy burst from the focal point and rammed into Vegnagun. The machina swerved, staggered. A leg and a half were sheared away.

"Ouch," Elma said.

"Ah, what the heck," Cid said. "That bastard saved my life. Guess I owe 'im one."

"Gippal, too!" said Rikku.

"Perhaps we can assist the legend for a change," Isaaru said.

Pacce's face lit up. "Yeah! Let's go rescue Sir Auron!"

Isaaru and his guardians waited in the cargo bay, fighting nausea during descent. The empty hold was a drum for the din of battle between clashing giants. The clamor grew louder and nearer. Isaaru began to worry that Cid had gotten the mad idea to fly into Sin's open jaws. At last, the ship slowed to a stop, and the loading ramp started to deploy.

"Okay. Isaaru, wait here," Pacce said, prompting a smile from Elma. He sounded like Maroda.

The two fighters pelted down the ramp, swords drawn. They turned to see the flyer lying under the Avenger's bridge. With a yell, they charged into the seething pack of sincscales. A bolt of green energy whizzed past them, cutting down one of the fiends.

"Nice of you guys to join us!" Gippal called. He was crouched under the front of the flyer, banging on the forward rotor with a wrench. Auron was planted in front of him, fending off sinscales. Juno was beating back those trying to overrun the rear of the craft. Baralai, propped against one of the center seats, had a gun braced between his knees, and was firing into the swarm.

"Stay close to the flyer!" Elma called, carving a path towards them. "As close as you can!"

Gippal swore as the craft teetered, knocking him in the head. "Yo! Quit hopping on the bed, Bar!"

"Maesters of Yevon... don't… hop."

"Or use machina?"

Pacce and Elma positioned themselves in front of the stubby wings. A deafening crackle of gunfire erupted directly overhead. Bullets swept around the flyer in a curtain like a clock-hand. Most of the fiends in the area were mowed down. Auron glanced up to see Rikku grinning and waving madly in the gunner's bubble. The fighters easily dispatched the remaining stragglers.

"You guys okay?" Pacce said. "What happened?"

"Miss I-wanna-be-a-pilot crashed my ship," Gippal said.

"We hit a piece of Sin coming down," Juno said. "Fetch Isaaru. Baralai's hurt."

"I'm fine," Baralai protested. Willing hands carried him to the foot of the airship's ramp. Baralai's face was nearly as pale as his hair. Juno embraced him, then headed back to the flyer.

"How is it, my lord?" Isaaru said, placing his fingers on Baralai's hands, where traces of half-healed burns disappeared into his sleeves.

"I'm not sure whether to court martial or kiss her," Baralai muttered. "Vegnagun?"

Elma glanced up. "Giving Sin a hell of a beating, sir."

The Avenger's hull blocked their view of the sky, but Sin's ghastly wails and the crash of energy discharges gave some clue what was happening. Flashes of red, green and purple were interspersed with the stark white of natural lightning. Luminous blue coronas glowed on the flyer's railings and windscreen.

Its engines coughed to life. Gippal dropped his tools and jogged towards the group under the cargo bay. "You okay, Bar?"

"Captain!" Pacce shouted.

There was a rising whine behind Gippal. He spun, waving his arms. "No, waaaaait!"

They had a glimpse of Juno in the pilot's chair, head craned towards the sky. The flyer lifted and zoomed away.

"Paine!" Baralai lurched to his feet, pushing Isaaru aside and stumbling out from under the airship to get an unobstructed view.

"So help me, if she puts another dent in my baby..." Gippal said.

They lost sight of her in the rain, but her destination was clear. Over the heart of the Thunder Plains, Sin and Vegnagun were circling each other like titanic coeurls. The machina was trailing smoke. Sin had surrounded itself again with a bubble of light. The thunderheads over them were churning, sending down forks of lightning that skittered over the skin of one or the other before leaping to the tops of the nearest towers. Vegnagun fired, bathing Sin in an ominous black and red miasma, but it splashed harmlessly off Sin's shield. The machina banked sharply, barely avoiding a point-blank hit by Sin's mana beam.

There was a patter of feet down the ramp. Rikku darted towards Auron, flinging her arms around him as he swung his sword out of the way. "Hey, you," she said. "So, what's going on? Thought you were gonna use the flyer to get over there once Sin's down."

"We've failed," Baralai said, bitter and dazed. "It's Operation Mi'ihen all over again."

Vegnagun was dropping fast, transforming in midair. The main gun burst from its chest and telescoped outward. The barrel nearly scraped the ground as Vegnagun swooped low, clipping one of the lightning rod towers before slingshotting back into the sky. Another bolt of lightning jumped from Sin to Vegnagun to the ground, branding their silhouettes against the clouds for a blinding instant. Then Vegnagun drove straight into Sin's belly, bayoneting it with the cannon.

Rikku gave a little scream and shrank against Auron. "Oh, Lulu."

Rigid, Auron laid an arm behind her shoulders.

"In Yevon's name," Isaaru said, cupping his hands in prayer.

"Not any more," Baralai said.

Sin's energy shield fizzled out. Machina and monster began to fall.

Juno was flying directly into the storm. Spatial orientation was scrambled by the dark wall of Vegnagun's wings dropping before her eyes like a clipped sail. Bewildering blue patterns on their surface writhed like tormented pyreflies. One thing was clear: Sin was coming down on top of Vegnagun, the latter almost perpendicular to the ground.

A stray sinscale banked off the flyer's windshield, sending it careening. Juno fought for control. When she leveled out, Vegnagun's head was right above her.

A quick glance upwards showed a patch of red and brown, Nooj's hair streaming. He was hanging on, barely, spread-eagled in the cockpit. Juno killed the flyer's forward momentum, struggling not to collide with Vegnagun or stop too soon. She tried to pretend she was aiming a sphere camera, zeroing in on a fast-moving target.

Nooj pushed off. There was a panicky moment of flailing limbs.

He hit the deck with a bang. The flyer sagged. Juno gunned the engine in reverse.

A few seconds later, Sin's head roared past, so near she could see every vein in its eyes. The stench wafting from its maw was appalling. Once it had fallen past them, she kicked the parking brake and turned. "Nooj?"

He was lying flat on his back, gasping for air. She dropped to the floor and crawled towards him, falling across him in relief.

"The High Summoner," he rasped, "made that maneuver look easy."

"Aeons don't have rivets."

Nooj's breathless laughter rolled out across the sky. Below, a thousand tons of machina and fiend plowed into solid rock. Vegnagun, crushed beneath Sin's mass, exploded in a fireball whose heat they could feel a mile above.

"Let's move," he said. "I'd hate for us to get struck by lightning after surviving that."

"Are you hurt?"

"Does it matter?" He smiled. "I'm alive."

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Next Chapter: "Sea of Sorrow"

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Author's Notes



Chapter renumbering: Chapter 40, "Titanomachy," originally posted March 2010, but it was so long I've split it. This is the second half.