madness and ecstasy // leo valdez

-kill bill vol 1-

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Borrowing the helicopter was easy. Getting her dad on board was not.

Piper needed only a few words through Leo's improvised bullhorn to convince the pilot to land on the mountain. The Park Service copter was big enough for medical evacuations or search and rescue, and when Piper told the very nice ranger pilot lady that it would be a great idea to detour completely and fly them to the Oakland Airport, she readily agreed.

"No," Piper's dad muttered, as they picked him up off the ground. "Piper, what—there were monsters—there were monsters—"

It took all of them to get him into the helicopter. Jason was squinting with his dinged up glasses, but he bore most of the weight. Piper held onto her dad's hand and tried to calm him down.

"It'll be okay, Dad," she hushed in a soothing voice. She felt torn to shreds charm speaking him, but she didn't know how else to get him through it. "These people are my friends. We're going to help you. You're safe now."

He blinked widely and looked up at helicopter rotors. "Blades. They had a machine with so many blades. They had six arms ..."

Coach Hedge trotted behind them with everyone's supplies and dropped weapons, neatly recovered and chewing a spanner. Leo tugged Teqi in the right direction and away from the grassfires, prompting her to step up and into the helicopter. She scrunched herself up in the corner and went listless.

"We should get him to a hospital," the pilot decided, after shining a small torch into her dad's pupils. She reached for the walkie talkie contraption on her jacket.

"It's okay," Piper replied in what she hoped came across as a clear voice, swallowing the trembles. "The airport is good."

"Yeah, the airport is good," the pilot agreed immediately. Then she frowned, as if uncertain why she'd changed her mind. Her eyes sort of shifted over all of them like they were too bright. "Isn't he Tristan McLean, the movie star?"

"No," Piper said, her voice wobblier this time. Now this was a conversation she knew how to have. She blinked blood from her eye. She didn't know where it was coming from. "He only looks like him. Forget it."

"Yeah," the pilot accepted her answer, turning away. "Only looks like him. I—" She blinked, confused. "I forgot what I was saying. Let's get going."

The helicopter's sliding door made a tremendous crash when it shut, that startled all of them, but then they were off, rattling through the thick smoke. The pilot kept getting questions over her radio, asking her where she was going, but she steadily ignored them. They veered away from the burning mountain and headed toward the hills in the distance. Coach sat in the passenger seat, wearing his own pair of pilot headphones, and arguing with everyone on the radio.

Her friends were pointedly not looking as she tried to reassure her father that he was safe. That he was okay. The reality was that he wasn't okay, and they weren't actually that safe.

The quest wasn't over. Piper wiped tears from her face with the palm of her hand quickly and watched as Jason pulled water from a burnt backpack for them all. Teqi didn't lift her head

Even in her battered, drooping state, she was still hunched defensively. Piper looked at the faint, sharp scars scattered across the skin of Teqi's hands and arms and face.