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endangered-liaison · 6 years ago

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Prompt #15: Snowbird

There are many discreet, quiet houses in Ala Mhigo.

Many places for people to hide away when they don't want to be found, especially after the wars.

This particular quiet, discreet house...rattles a little.

There's a yell from within, and one of the window shutters shakes. Another yell, and the sound of a spell being cast.

A muffled "Fuck you, fuck you, fuck y--"

The front door of the building shatters apart, and a hooded, cloaked woman crashes through it. She slides across the stone pavement of Ala Mhigo like a ragroll, groaning and muttering curse words.

A highlander arcanist steps out of the building, a book in one hand and a knuckle duster in the other.

"Nobody fuckin' told me Boartusk was a fuckin' fighter."

She staggers her way to her feet, one fist raised to fight while the other clutches her stomach. Behind her mask, she smirks.

"Let's fuckin' go, yeah?"

Another doorway opens, and half a dozen assorted Ala Mhigan goons wander their way out. A rifle, a sword. One of them has an honest-to-fuck spiked bat.

"Oh, come the fuck on."

Her vocabulary is getting more limited than usual. In her defence, this situation is fuckin' bullshit.

"Who the hells sent you?" Boartusk asks. His Mhigan brutes close in just a little more.

"See..." Maxima raises one of her hands slowly, as if to surrender. The other stays holding her side. "About that..."

Max seems to recover from her 'injury' remarkably quickly. She draws a revolver from her waistband, firing two rounds towards Boartusk.

His magicked barrier absorbs the first one, and the second is deflected, leaving a long gash across his arm. Fucking mages.

The one with the spiked bat swings for her, and she shoots him in the leg before shoving her way past him.

She'd love to stay and chat, really.

Nothing personal, yeah?

She's just got places to be.

She sprints out of the quiet alleyway and into the main street of Ala Mhigo.

It's at that point that she realises that she just sprinted into the main street of Ala Mhigo while holding a gun, right after three gunshots went off.

A Resistance... wait, Ala Mhigan Army soldier spots her, and yells something.

A rifle shot blasts over her shoulder, and she she shoves her way past the guard. No time to explain the situation right now this moment.

Which would be great, if not for the fact that everyone is running and screaming, and an alarum just sounded.

Fuck.

She really stirred up the wespe's nest, didn't she?

She's got about a minute until the whole fuckin' Resist-- Ala Mhig-- it's the fucking Resistance, okay?! - comes down on her head.

Right. Great.

She reaches the entrance to another alleyway and stops. Turns, raising her revolver. The first of Boartusk's enforcers rounds the corner from the alley she came from. A shot to the chest, and he drops. She hits the second in the leg, and he goes sprawling.

The man with the rifle rounds the corner, and Max aims towards him. She fires her last round.

The bullet skitters against a barrier.

Fucking mages!

She ducks around the corner as the enforcer retaliates, running again.

The corridor is long, and narrow, and an exceedingly straight shot for anyone who wants to shoot her in the back.

Max dives into cover behind a pillar as a Ruin spell almost blasts her head (or at least her hood) off. She fumbles a little then clicks the side of her mask, switching on the overly-expensive thing's vox unit. "III to Snowbird, that name's still stupid, come in Snowbird!" The Resistance have got to be closing in, and that damned caster and his lackeys are still on her tail.

"You're stupid," comes the languid response, half-garbled by static. "What do you want, Max?"

She snaps open her revolver, loading rounds in as quickly as she can manage. "Emergency pickup, on the uh..." a rifle blasts out a large chunk of the wall she's hiding behind. Okay. Three rounds will have to do. She snaps the revolver closed again. "East side of the city rooftops."

There comes a long pause. "What city?" the voice on the vox demands, exasperated. "If you need evac from Limsa, you're shit out of luck."

Another gunshot, another Ruin. "Y'think I'd get vox signal that far out?! Ala Mhigo, you shite!" Max breaks cover, firing three rounds towards the advancing brute squad (that fucking caster is the Brute Squad, she swears), before running.

"Ala Mhigo?! If you're trying to kill yourself, you're doing a magnificent job. You think the Alliance won't blow me out of the air the moment I show my face? Have you seen what dragoons do to fliers?"

"Nope. Seen what they do to cannons, though." It's a low blow. In Max's defence, she's being shot at. She slides below a merchant's cart, and the cart promptly shatters behind her as a spell blasts shitty Rhalgr charms in all directions.

She ducks into an alleyway. There's silence on the vox save for Max's perpetually-ragged breathing for a few moments, then a wooden crash and a bang. The background noise seems to die down, and Max lets herself wheeze more freely.

"...Laelia. Please." A please from Maxima Sawyer is rarer than a thank you, and almost, almost as rare as a sorry.

For a moment, there's just static.

"...Fine. You're lucky I have some spare nitro. Get to a high point and carry something bright. You're going to have maybe thirty seconds to jump on board. And afterwards you're paying me for the fuel cost one way or another. I have to steal this stuff now, you know." There comes another, longer pause, and then: "Don't you dare fucking die."

"No chance," Max whispers. There are voices, muffled, nearby. "I've got a date."

"Snowbird to III, you still kicking?" comes the voice at last over the vox.

Max lets out a sigh of relief. "Yeah." She's had to run a few times, her hiding places getting found out, and at one point she had to hit someone repeatedly in the face with the butt of her revolver. But she's still kicking. "Guessing I need to make my run for it now?"

"Yeeeeeeeeeep," Laelia drawls. "See that balcony to your northwest? Run like you're being chased by the Frumentarii."

Max groans. "Great. Fuckin' great." She holsters her revolver (it's out of ammo by now, anyway) and flexes her fingers. Takes a few slow, steady breaths. Then kicks open the door in front of her, and sprints out into the streets. She makes it almost a full twenty paces before someone yells "there she is!"

At the same time, the Delphinus descends like a great wyrm upon Ala Mhigo, burning bright and blue. Max sees it roar past her, just for a moment.

Max doesn't know if it's the Resistance or the goon squad yelling behind her, and she doesn't much care to stay and find out.

She leaps and grabs a loose stone on the side of the building to her left. Thank fuck for Mhigan building techniques. She clambers her way up the side of the building quickly, and looks around as soon as she reaches the rooftop. There. Aligned, pixel-perfect, with the balcony.

She's never been so happy to see an airship in her life.

A gunshot blasts the minaret next to her head and she yelps. "Seriously?!"

She starts running, slipping her bow from her back and nocking an arrow as she sprints across a wooden bridge between rooftops. Almost there. "Ten seconds out!"

"All you have is ten!" Laelia warns. Already dragoons begin to spring across the rooftops, and cannons train on the gunship from below.

Max shoots an arrow towards the Resistance marksman who seems determined to make her life miserable. It misses, but she wasn't exactly aiming for him. She isn't here to kill the Alliance, as weird as it is to even think that.

Another bridge between buildings, and she's one house from the right balcony. Her lungs are burning from her sprint, but she can't stop yet.

She leaps. The marksman peeks out of his cover again...and fires at her. Max stumbles on the landing, almost dropping to her knees before staggering the last few steps into the Delphinus. "GO!"

Laelia doesn't need to be told twice. She punches it, pulling away at such a harsh angle that gravity threatens to knock them both out. It doesn't, however, and they fly free, screaming over the alabaster salt-flats below.

"You okay back there?" she asks at last.

Max staggers towards the cockpit, gripping one of the handholds. She lifts her jacket a little, looking towards her back. A rifle bullet is digging into her armoured vest, and a small amount of blood trickles down to her pant leg. "Bastard shot me!" she grumbles.

"Dunno what you were expecting." Laelia doesn't turn, fully immersed in her flying. "So you wanna explain what madness made you decide that going to Ala Mhigo was a good idea, or do I just have to speculate?"

"New job for a cute cyclops." Max tugs off her hood and unclips her respirator. She gives Laelia a shit-eating grin. "Hey Belisar. Glad you could make it."

"You're a shit," comes the blunt response. Laelia still doesn't turn, though she's grinning. "You're lucky I like you. I wouldn't go out of this way for just anyone, you know."

"Yeah, I know." Max pauses. "...Thanks." She slumps into the co-pilot's seat and hisses as it jostles her injury.

Laelia finally glances aside, slowing some as they finally put distance from the danger. "We've got to find you a medicus."

"Careful; I might start thinkin' you care about me." Max grins again. "It's not bad. Barely pierced my armour."

Laelia stretches. "Nah, you're just useful. Either way, where should I take you?"

"Wherever you're calling home now. I can get the rest of the way back to Ul'dah. You gotta steal your fuel now, after all." Max seems to be mulling over her next words with considerably more care than she usually would. Finally, she seems to reach the decision point of sod it (her usual decision factor in life), and just says what's on her mind. "...Castellus is alive."

"'Wherever' is my home. I go as far as my fuel can take me. I don't know if they want us here but I'm going to guess no." Laelia frowns, her expression hardening more at the mention of Victoria. "...Is she...?" comes the quiet response.

"Survived the Reaper, just about. She's got some stylish scars and a missing bit of ear, but...she's okay. Working out of Ul'dah, keeping her head down." Max tugs a little at the collar of her coat and coughs. "...Got herself a girlfriend. Roegadyn, if you can believe that." She snorts, and that transforms into another cough.

"Roegadyn!" Laelia laughs, falling back into her chair. "So we've lost her to the savages. I knew she was hopeless." Despite her harsh words, there's humor to them. It's clear she's only joking. "I don't know. I've mingled some among the Eorzeans, pretending I'm a knife-ear. They've proven pretty boring thusfar."

Max cackles. "You've got the attitude to be an Elezen."

Laelia shrugs. "I'm only channeling our dear late emperor. He'd not have fired upon his own, I'll say that much."

Max winces at that particular statement. "...Yeah."

Laelia falls silent, flying them on. At last she pulls up in the East Shroud, landing them not far from Baelsar's Wall. "I don't want to send you too far on a hike, but this is the best I can do," she said. "If you travel west along the road from here you'll come upon a tiny homestead called the Hawthorne Hut. It's staffed with knowledgeable conjurers and they'll be able to patch you up."

Max nods, getting to her feet. She staggers, just a little, and clutches the injury. Alright, she might have been slightly downplaying how deeply the bullet pierced her armour.

She pauses, just for a moment.

"...Thanks, Lee."

"Anytime," Laelia murmurs, not able to reach her comrade's gaze. "Keep in touch, alright? I'll be around."

"Will do. I'll bring Vic over to see you sometime. Promise it won't be for an evac, next time." Max smiles, and it seems genuine, for once. "Stay safe, yeah?"

"Good. I'd love to see her again. Tell her to keep her chin up, kay?" She turns to glance behind her seat, smiling. "Like I said, don't die. I'd be pissed, and that's way too much effort."

"Really?" Max hits the 'open door' button with the side of her fist, and waits for the stairs to extend outwards. "Always felt like the easiest emotion for me to get a handle on." She smirks, and offers a lazy Imperial salute before stepping out of the Delphinus and into the Shroud.

Laelia chuckles. She waits until she's certain that Max has her feet on the ground and then pulls away. The Delphinus vanishes behind the canopy above.

((Featuring Laelia Belisar’s flying talents and snark.))

#ffxiv #ffxivwrite2019 #Max Sawyer #Laelia Belisar #III Squad

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