The King's Last Rites

When the storm comes, remember

Monarch felt the wind rattle against his beat-up F-15XE, seeping its way into his cockpit as he slightly nudged the aircraft into a turn inland. His body felt tired, aching, strained from the constant Gs he pulled in the dogfight against Crimson 1. 

Red lightning splashed beside his cockpit, narrowly missing his right wing as he levelled the aircraft back to the highway base. Taking the moment, he inspected the beat-up plane; his left wing was intact besides the many bullet holes that littered it, his right rudder on the tail was non-existent, and his right-wing was barely holding together. All in all, he summed it up as getting off lucky. Looking backwards, he checked on Prez only to realise he was flying a single-seater plane, shaking his head at the habit. 

Glancing outside his cockpit as he left the airspace of Presidia, only then did he fully witness the destructive power that Crimson wrought against the city. Buildings lay collapsed in the streets, the magma eating away against its foundations as former Federation and Cascadians were left to rot in the aftermath. 

Is this what you truly fought for? Millions dead in seconds, and a calamity to claim a million more. 

Monarch shook his head, the adrenaline finally wearing off. Glancing at the plane's instruments, he ran a brief skim over the details before landing on the fuel gauge, the small arrow resting on empty. 

Bingo fuel, I wonder how far I have before I land her. 

He refocused his attention to flying before noticing the three small bullet holes that were punched into the side of the cockpit; he traced their trajectory until his eyes landed on himself. Small pools of red were already formed on his flight suit, which made him realise that the aching he felt was the three bullets that struck his body. 

His eyes widened, his breathing spiked, his body shook in disbelief, dread, shock? He didn't know; the grip on the flight stick slowly began to slack as the situation hit him full front. 

I'm not going to make it, not at this pace nor with these injuries.

Monarch started to get his breathing under control; he shifted his body slightly to the right, pain flaring through him as it protested against the movement. He can barely see Presidia over the horizon, but that wasn't what he focused on. Basking in the orange glow of the calamity, the ace pilot still saw the giant sphere in the sky; clouds pushed away from Crimson's final end. 

"Monarch...when you hear the thunder...when the storm...comes for you...remember me." 

Those last words of Crimson echoed through his mind as he focused his attention back to the front of his plane; already, he felt weak in his arms as his vision slowly darkened. He needed to land the aircraft and fast before he really did plummet towards the earth. 

Leaning to the side, he watched the ground below for a good landing spot. Rows of trees littered his vision as the plane slowly began to descend.

Come on, come on, you old bird, stay with m- There!

A small spot of highway was visibly empty besides some grass fields, with no hanging signs and barely any kind of vehicles in the way. He nudged his plane towards that direction, his vision still slowly becoming darker and darker as the effort of holding onto the flight stick grew. 

Thinking ahead, he popped the canopy. Immediately he felt the full frontal force of the wind, knocking his head back into the seat. Grunting in a mixture of effort and pain, he popped down the landing gear, the hydraulics audible over the rushing wind. 

Maybe this was his saving grace, or the Dust Mother smiled upon him, but all three wheels of the aircraft lowered, and he roughly landed on the makeshift runway, the wheels screeching as he applied the brakes and what surely he thought he could hear Prez yelling him about putting strain on it. But alas, he was alone, amid thunder and storm as he tiredly clambered over the side of the plane, having found what he looked for in the cockpit.