Shattered Skies: The Morning Lights

CHAPTER 60: Young and Unafraid

[Author's Note 1: In the interest of full discretion, I should note that I made a few small changes to Chapter 1 back in late December, just to make sure everything going forward was consistent. Go back and reread before reading this chapter, if you'd like. - BHS]

Chapter 60: Young and Unafraid

-VERTEX ONE: 15.556984-

Azabu-Juuban, Minato Ward, Tokyo

Twenty-five.

Just eight more.

I'm almost done, only eight more until— "SHIELD!" Sakura Kinomoto's invocation barely left her lips in time. Rocketing down from high above, Joker's heel slammed into her, a cannon shot directly to her stomach. SHIELD's protection kept her alive, but given that she was hovering over a hundred meters off the ground, the subsequent fall would finish her off if it failed to hold. Wind screamed in her ears like a horde of banshees as she plummeted at terminal velocity, spiked like a volleyball with no way to course correct. FLOAT was now out of commission, and FLY and WINDY weren't yet recovered enough to be summoned. Whatever was directly below her was about to be destroyed, and she could only hope nothing important was within radius of her impact. But this was Tokyo, almost every square centimeter of available space was occupied. That was why she took their battle to the sky, to avoid as much collateral damage as she could... So much for that.

Arcana's primary and secondary power systems were reserved for the mission and taxed to their limit. Shields and barrier systems were currently relegated to tertiary power, lowest priority. Self-repair would take time she didn't have. To ease the burden, Sakura took to using intermittent bursts of the SHIELD Card's power to protect herself from Joker's attacks. Only a few seconds at a time when she could help it, so as not to exhaust the poor Card. SHIELD was trying its best to protect her, to keep it together for this, the most brutal fight of Sakura's life, but she sensed its growing weariness. Same for all of them; the Cards weren't made for fighting a war, and most of them weren't even made for fighting... I'm so sorry, SHIELD! she thought to it. Please just hold on a little longer! Eight more, just eight more—

Hold it did, somehow, even as she struck the roof of the building beneath her and kept going... it was a multi-story parking garage. Her body punched through layers of concrete, through metal girders, through embedded electrical cables, through things she couldn't identify. The roaring of the wind was replaced by an even more terrible sound: the thunderous hammering of entire floors collapsing atop each other one after another, as if the building had been hit by a bomb and not a single falling teenage girl. Five floors, eight floors, ten... SHIELD cushioned her impact with the ground level enough that it merely knocked her half-senseless and drove all the air from her lungs rather than crushing all her bones and killing her instantly. Alive was always better than dead, but lying there immobile and heaving for breath as what once was a skyscraper crumbled to pieces around her ears was an ordeal she would have nightmares about for years to come. Assuming she lived that long.

When the awful hammering and tremors finally subsided, when all that was left was rubble and an immense, spreading cloud of chalky dust, Sakura pushed herself up onto her elbows in the sizable impact crater she had left. It was at least half a meter deep. Gingerly she crawled to the rim and pulled her battered, aching body over its lip. "A-Arcana...?" she said after an extended coughing fit.

Arcana's ring-lights flashed from beneath the coating of dust that blanketed her and it both. Thank heaven. The gloves' insides still burned with intense heat, but she supposed she must have grown numb to it by now, for the sensation didn't hurt that much.

"Okay," she whispered, beyond relieved. "You hold on, too. We—"

Ashen clouds parted before her to reveal a shape in the debris, a human shape. Sakura forced her tender legs into a stumbling run. It was an old man, in his sixties by the look of him. He was a little portly and a lot bald, and he lay on his side amidst the destruction, his back to her.