[OOC: Little long, though future posts shouldn't be this long. Long story short, one turret goes boom, and airships have an easier time getting onto the platform because of that victory.]
Although Natsumi was the first to arrive at ground zero, she was far from the last. Whilst the Fox struggled to control her newest acquisition, the Mistress of the Hunt arrived on scaled wings. Airships from the nations of Parvpora also came from the horizon, bearing soldiers and adventurers too crazy for their own good. Even the ground crawled with the presence of a familiar vampire hunter who had foolishly stepped out into the line of fire. There was little doubt, thanks to these arrivals, that the Goddess was far from alone in this war of worlds.
Despite the massing force, however, the iron platform just became more violent in direct proportion to the amount of Revaliir's defenders that rose to fight it. Like a disturbed hornet's nest, the alternate version of Tarishitar raised all of its canons, firing them into the sky at the approaching ships. Some of these vessels were downed immediately, their carcasses landing on the charred ground. Others were forced into evasive maneuvers, their pilots unable to make headway. Only a few of the original ships were able to land, one of them carrying Natsumi's old ally, Katerina.
Meanwhile, the Gatekeeper was having her own problems. Despite having knowledge of Revaliir's airships and how to pilot them, Natsumi found herself unable to control the Shadow Fox. Her flight pattern was erratic, swinging wildly back and forth in the wind. The cannons couldn't target her in this state of chaos, but neither could she do anything useful. The inside of the cockpit just kept blaring alarms at her until she eventually went into a tailspin. With seemingly no control on velocity, she plummeted into an obviously fatal descent.
'I can't see,' Natsumi thought as the world started to feel faint to her in that desperate situation. The force of the Shadow Fox was incredible during the downward spiral, and her consciousness at that moment was nothing short of a miracle. She was just about to try forcing herself to eject before she slipped under, but stopped when something scratched the back of her mind half way down to the earth. It was an itch from a far off place and a forgotten time.
'Y-you sure you can fly this thing?' A familiar voice resounded in the woman's ears, replacing the reality that fled from her senses. She blinked to find herself no longer in the war torn skies of Bakulaw. Instead, the fox stood younger in front of a scraggly looking man with curly, orange hair; freckles and ill-fitting spectacles. He reminded Natsumi of a younger version of the man she had seen rescuing her daughter years ago now: the very same one she had never heard the name of nor ever found again. Oddly, this time she felt like his name was on the tip of her tongue, but couldn't quite grasp it even as he spoke up again. 'The Shadow Fox is a beauty, but she's also a beast. Heh. Heh. And I don't mean that lightly.'
Natsumi thought to speak at this point, only to realize this was only a memory. Her younger self spoke for her, sounding far cockier than the current rendition.
'Sounds like me, doesn't it,' the youthful Fox postulated? 'I told you, Meyne. I'm not good. I'm not even great. I'm…' Pain: sparking, snapping, turning inside Natsumi's head like a set of malignant cogs. In that moment of reverie, memories long lost rushed back to the girl as she struggled to finish the sentence of yore. The name of the stranger had been a catalyst, and now the Harbinger remembered all that Timedeath had taken from her.
Finally, the Goddess of Secrets was awake. I was awake.
Surprised? Yes, I thought you would be, but then it's difficult to talk about yourself with personal pronouns when you're not actually yourself, isn't it? Anyway, let's get back to the action, shall we?
When I awoke in the Shadow Fox, I was no more than a couple hundred meters from the blackened earth while travelling at a velocity that gave me only a couple of seconds to pull up. I managed to do so, but only after drawing close enough to Naota to send a strong gust of wind in his direction. My airship leveled out with the terrain beyond that point, and then shot back up into the sky in Moliira's direction.
"I'm the best damn pilot you've ever seen." Arrogant, but true. Now having regained complete mastery of my ship, I used its superior maneuverability to get around the cannon blasts and regroup with my fellow deity. She had just loosed ice arrows into a nearby turret by the time I arrived, and, while this attack of hers would obviously not be very effective against the turrets on its own, it was not in vain. Arrows alone wouldn't be especially good against plate metal, especially plate metal that did not lay over a body that could be crushed by impact force. Used as homing beacons for spells from a war airship on the other hand? That was a deliciously effective ploy.
~Let me help you with that, Moliira.~ Flying past the drow's, ice dragon, I mentally commanded my ship to lock onto her arrows in pursuit of this stratagem. The platform's cannons seemed to know my intentions, seeing as all the ones in range started trying to shoot me down more intensely the closer I drew to their wall. I was able to dodge the resultant onslaught till I got close enough to unleash my attack, but had to pull back from the extreme barrage afterward lest I be knocked out of the sky. The many energy missiles I fired from the Shadow Fox's arcane weaponry ports remained in my stead, however, and each one headed straight for the targeted cannon whilst I fled in the opposite direction.
Telling the difference between these bolts and the attacks of the platform would be difficult for most onlookers – especially given the distance most of them shared – but that predicament would change immediately once those missiles hit all of Moliira's arrows. ~Boom.~ was all I could say telepathically when that happened, because the entire turret exploded into a furious plume of arcane energy moments later. The arcane missiles I had fired had used the puncture marks and weakened points caused by Moliira's archery in order to directly target the inner workings of the turret itself. Their explosions overloaded the machinery directly, causing a chain reaction and, ultimately, glorious destruction.
Cheering broke out aboard some of the friendly airships once the wreckage of that now destroyed turret fell to the ground below the platform. The destruction was but a small act of defiance in a much larger conflict, and it stood as proof to those gathered that victory was possible with teamwork. This triumph also poked a hole in the floating island's seemingly impenetrable shield or magic missles, allowing airships to more easily pass through into the bowels of the city itself. The war of worlds was definitely far from over at this point, but my actions had won a much needed advantage for the Revaliites against their Automaton Counterparts.
