The Sweetest Thing – Part 8

Sorry about the last two Fridays everyone.  It’s starting to look like a pattern, even though it isn’t one.

If I need to write it a few days ahead of time, I will not cop out on this Friday.

Despite the fact that Path of Exile is releasing a new, major content update.  Or the fact that I’m in the midst of absolute domination with my new Hearthstone deck, and will most likely hit legend this season or next, I WILL WRITE A POST BECAUSE I LOVE ALL OF YOU.

So there.  Take that.  Affection and content, the true double-tap.

As for that content, you’re in for a real treat.  I’ve spent most of Sunday writing it, off and on as time presented itself.  It’s all action baby, and we finally get to see Agnes go to town after so… much… build-up…

It’s worth the wait, I promise.

The Sweetest Thing – Part 8

I swept in past the coastline, anti-air shells bursting around me, smaller fire beginning to wing it’s way towards me.  I heard a hailstorm of pings as the smaller fire registered, but it wasn’t important.  Nothing mattered but landing Agnes as close to the fray as I could.  Our survival was firmly on her shoulders. 

I swept in low, skimming above the treetops in a dangerous weave and bob which included no small amount of branches being smashed as I passed over them.  Only one more mile to go.  The guns loomed large, their fire silenced for fear of setting the forest below me on fire.  The smaller bullets continued the leaden rain, but unless they scored a lucky hit on a load bearing joint, I had made it.

I passed the enormous, twenty-foot long barrels of the anti-aircraft guns, twelve of them in total.  The ground around them was cleared nearly sixty feet in any direction, and past them was the poured concrete of an enormous army and air-force combined base.  Planes were stored, ready to be taxied to the waiting runway and sent airborne within minutes. 

Too many minutes, as it turned out.  We had come in too fast, too low, and with no notice.  The first of the airplanes hadn’t even manged to make it to the runway.  I smiled a tight, fierce smile of triumph.  I hated what I was forced to do, hated that it put me and Agnes directly in harms way, but it felt good to be so talented at something. 

No matter how horrifying it was.

I threw the drop-runner into a nasty spin, the geforces clawing at my insides with the maneuver.  At the same time, I opened the runner’s bay doors, freeing Agnes’s pod to be sent flying from the runner towards the plane nearest the runway. 

The pod slammed into the ground, creating a small crater as it pounded the concrete.  The top blew off, Agnes flying out faster than I could follow cleanly.  She landed twenty feet away, bare inches from the plane making its way towards the runway to take to the skies. 

Agnes grabbed the nearest landing gear, and flung the plane behind her with an ear-shredding shout of angry effort.  It flew, spinning slightly, until it crashed into the plane nearest it in line.  They both exploded, the fireball engulfing pilots, support personnel, and the plane behind the both of them as the throw carried the burning pile backwards.

No more planes would be taking off anytime soon. 

“We have to hit those guns Agnes. If they stay up it doesn’t matter how many of these planes we take out.”

I pushed the drop-runner forward, trying to keep ahead of Agnes as she took a sprinters stance. 

The concrete blasted apart as she shoved off, each step a bounding leap that covered twenty feet.  The crunch of her feet on each impact registered in my cockpit, almost thirty feet in the air. 

The tanks, housed in a line next to the enormous hangar that was the centerpiece of the base began rumbling to life.  They probably wouldn’t manage to hit Agnes, but even a direct shell shot would be a problem she didn’t need to deal with. 

“Oxpecker!”

The shout reached Agnes, and her trajectory changed dramatically.  She stopped moving forward, spewing concrete as she came to a screeching stop.  She gathered her legs beneath her, and shot herself upwards with impossible speed, one fist extended above her.

I watched her intently, my senses allowing me to accurately follow where her leap would take her.  I maneuvered the drop-runner over the jump, turning the ship sideways as Agnes slammed into it. 

The plates held.  Barely.  I could hear the protest of joints strained by the impact, but there wasn’t time for anything graceful.  I had to get Agnes to the tanks before they could join the fray, otherwise we’d never take down those guns. 

Agnes hung on to the hole she had punched into the side of the runner.  I blasted all the engines well past safety limits, and we shot forward in mere seconds to the other side of the base.

Agnes didn’t signal she was dropping, I only knew she had landed by the explosion of the first tank in the line which had begun moving.  There was no grace in how she dealt with the tanks.  It was clinical, efficient, and utterly impassive.  She simply vaulted to the top of each tank, tore the barrel off, and headed to the next.  The first had exploded simply because it had a shot loaded when she ripped its cannon off. 

Seconds ticked by as I circled, looking for other threats.  Kinesiopaths were rare, and in almost six years of conflict, the United European Defense had never once deployed one against us.

When I saw the dusts of tiny explosions that marked one running flat out towards an objective, I almost didn’t understand what I was seeing.

Almost.

“AGNES, COMPANY!”

Agnes whipped around, eyes scanning the approaches behind her, sweat and grime coating her dark skin in gray whorls, and with alarm she spied the incoming kinesiopath.

Then, all was bedlam.

To be continued…

Agnesfully,
Justin