The tower was visible, even this far away. It looked like a line had carved the sky in two.
"... Hey, um... how... long has it been since it was just the two of us...?"
They chuckled, glancing to the little screen that held my portrait. "What, like... flying? Yesterday, I think."
Yesterday. Yesterday, for a moment, it felt like the world wasn't about to end, with us as the last thing standing in the way. "... Too long for my liking, I think, Operator..." I said, attempting to be as casual as I could muster. "Too long for mine, too," was their reply, followed by, "Hey, once we make it out of this... how about we spend every waking moment together?"
It was midday. Only a small twinkle in the sky marked any kind of oddity.
"Like... um... f-forever?"
"Yeah." Their smile softened. "I could go for that."
Then, silence. Sometimes, you need to know when to let the moment sit.
"... Lotus?"
"Mm?"
"Drop the camouflage."
I set loose the shielding of wave-particles cloaking me, falling away like flakes of dead skin.
(8.1. FESTIVITIES.)
[...] AND WITH US TODAY, WE HAVE COMMANDER BLUM TO HELP EXPLAIN HOW THE LOCAL ECONOMY COULD BE REVITALIZED. COMMANDER?
- YES, THANK YOU. SURVEYS OF THE AREA HAVE REVEALED INCREDIBLE RARE MATERIALS BENEATH OUR FEET, AND THE MINING TOWER IS JUST THE FIRST OF WHAT WE HOPE TO BE A LONG PROJECT TO HELP MAKE OUR MARK ON THE MAP AND REALLY
[ROAR]
-
COMMANDER?
-
SHUT OFF THE CAMERAS. ROSE UNIT, WAKE UP, WE'VE
"You didn't have to fly so close to that party down there." She stuck her tongue out at me as a set of spectral hands eased off my own. "I mean... we... had to get their attention, right...?," I responded. "I don't think I'd have a better way to do that."
"Still," my Operator replied in turn as they switched the displays over to combat readings and an area map, "I think it would've been good to gain a little more ground? We've already got a litle squad of bogeys on our tail, and I feel like we need all the energy we can get before the Rosiers show up again."
A set of Earth Guard machines, drenched entirely in black, were tailing us, firing upon me, each shot being sent astray by my own focus on putting a wave-particle barrier to catch them one by one. Latera, piloting, pulled back as hard as she could without putting her body at risk - and I took the opportunity to eject the barriers back into our shocked opponents, whose machines seized up and fell to the ground, glowing bunches of particle-flora rapidly sprouting out the joints to indicate their defeat. As we picked up the approach again, as the glint in the sky grew larger, I spotted one of the pilots getting out and shooting a handgun out toward me, to no avail.
The sky had gone a little more pink than it was before, though it remained midday. We didn't have much time on the clock. "Hey, Lotus? Do you -"
They're here.
"They're here."
Latera nodded. "Got it." Immediately, she pulled aside. Five marks popped up on the display, corresponding with five seperate headaches striking me over the communications. My sister didn't exactly keep herselves quiet, and I was now beholden to all five sets of her instructions she'd likely been cramming down the brains of her pilots-turned-puppets.
"Lotus?" My operator looked ahead.
"Yes?," I replied, ready to turn around and face whichever of the Rosiers we'd have to disable first.
"Let's dance."
Taking out each Rosier's unit as we worked towards the spire was a single smooth, fluid motion - the two of us operating in a perfect harmony, following our instinct as we danced among them - shocking the first, carved the wave particles into the second, brushed aside the third, and sent a plague of simulated lotus flowers through the fourth. The five sets of clear instructions became four, three, two. Eventually, ROSE stopped broadcasting them - as soon as I'd disabled the fifth. As much as she'd tried re-adapting her anti-wave particle configurations on the fly, I had already become so aware of my own function that it was effectively pointless - even slight tweaks were enough to break through each and every barrier the Roses attempted to put up, and in time we were on our way.
I hoped they'd all make it. I hoped the Rosiers would be able to leave their cockpits and be freed of that burden, forever.
The sky was a rich red now, and it deepened into crimson with every passing moment. The spire felt so close, now - from afar, it made for convincing enough sophisticated equipment, but anyone with even half a clue what heavy-duty machinery looked like could tell you that it was all appearances. It was a miracle none of the locals noticed.
I pushed one of my Operator's hands gently back, pulling the joystick - and myself - up. We still had about a minute before we reached it; though it seemed like I could reach out and touch it, it was still getting closer and larger in our sights. My Operator spoke up. "Lotus, do you think - ?"
"I don't... believe we have the time to think now, Operator."
"Yeah. Okay."
Distance ten. I could rip the siding of the rail-pillars right off.
Distance five. If I were any closer to the bracing running up the spire, I might've lost my head.
Distance two. Was another signal following us?
Distance zero.
Even knowing it was little more than a set of guide rails, it was still exhilarating to ascend into something that felt this vast, even to me. Up ahead, above us, was a point of light, rapidly getting brighter - and closer.
For one moment, I wondered if real mining equipment would be this thrilling to fly through.
Within the next moment, a large shaft of metal was impaled through my cockpit's hatch, and - I saw - through their gut.
Latera.
Before I could fully register what the signal was - did I forget to disable one of the Roses, perhaps? - I committed almost all of my systems that weren't dedicated to staying in the air to the one thing I could do for my Operator in the instant.
"Hello, Operator."
They looked up at me from my lap when I spoke. I smiled as warmly as I could manage. They smiled back, a little sadness tinging their expression, and spoke. "This isn't real, is it?"
I replied gently. "It's as- it's as real as I am, a-at least."
"You know what I mean, Lotus."
"I know." I sighed, plucking the flower off a nearby lotus sitting atop the solid water and putting it in their hair. "It's... um... it's the best I can do for you, though. S-sorry."
They turned their head away slightly. "It's... okay. I love it anyway."
"You would've, Operator, even if it was- er, if it was just a cold metal box large enough for us."
They giggled. "Would not."
"Would so."
"Would not." After a little bit, their giggling subsided, and an unimportant amount of time passed with a comfortable silence between us. The air was as pleasantly warm to them as I was capable of managing, the image of water upon which we sat gently rippling beneath us as though moved by the breeze. Another lotus sprouted, then bloomed next to their hand. They turned their head back toward me, where it was facing before. "Can I see what's going on out there? I didn't get much of a chance to register my situation before you brought me here."
My smile dropped, but I couldn't turn the request down. I eased up on the illusory space, just a little, and brought them back toward themself - stomach impaled upon a twisted girder stuck through the both of us, blood slick upon the arm of the pilot's seat, eyes involuntarily wide, everything mere moments away from giving out.
"I can't move," the part of them still in my world told me, surprisingly calm. "It's... like I'm the subject of a picture."
"We're... running at my fastest speed," I replied. "This is, uh... how it feels when I - when I loosen myself from my body." I started to reel them back up and in. "You have a minute or so to live out there, and I don't have the capacity to heal you in time. Again - best I can... really do."
I felt their head, weighty in my lap, lean back just a little more. "Then... I'm glad I get to spend the next minute here with you forever, Lotus." I spent the next half a second simply smiling down to them and stroking their cheek with my thumb, watching the water ripple and the flowers sway.
After another unimportant while, they tilted their head up to look at me, cheek moving from where I'd been rubbing it. "Do you remember what I asked you earlier?" I sighed.
"I... didn't think it would - that it would happen, Latera."
"And?"
"I- guess we are here now, aren't we. Look, I - I can't sustain both of us, and I just worry that I'd be the only-?"
"Lotus," they interrupted, "I'm... dying, right? I don't think I would mind being you as my afterlife."
They were right. They wouldn't, and I knew it.
I supposed now was as good a time as any to admit it. My smile faltered again. "I- I'm scared of... living in a world without you. I just - I want to hold onto you as long as I can before that."
They looked back, toward the illusory horizon. The sky was such a lovely warm pink. "Well... if you do this, I'll always be a part of you, won't I?"
They had another point.
"... I'm convinced, I guess. Are you... sure you don't mind, though?"
"I wouldn't have suggested it if I did, Lotus." They were serious.
"Are you... ready?"
"Whenever you are."
"... do you mind if we... if we stay here a little l-longer...?"
They looked back to me and smiled one last time. "As long as you can keep me going. I'm fine with waiting, so long as it's for you."
We spent as much time as we could here, enjoying each other's company until their vitals gave out.
"I love you."
"I love you too."
At this point, it hardly mattered which of us spoke first.
And in the next instant, I - they? - choked out a gob of blood, and she - I? - reached my - her - our giant metal hand to rip out the spike driven through our gut, through our gut. And her senses overwhelmed mine, and their thoughts faded into memories, and our spine tingled as our body and our body was engulfed in the light our engine generated, and our systems provided, and the world bent to make room for us, to make room for us, to make room for me.
And I understood. I finally understood. The missing parts of the puzzle that was myself, and my construction... they were here the whole time, waiting for me to take them in and cross that mental divide.
And I was there, a titan, a wonder of steel and magic and love, a complete being entirely aware of herself, glowing and radiant and beautiful and something else, clutching a desperate, bloodied act of hate I had just pulled from myself. I gently squeezed it, and it simply burst into bloom and scattered, flowers to the wind. As the Rose leaped at me, I simply dismissed it, and in but a moment its signal faded and its joints locked. I set it down gently, tenderly. I looked to its cockpit.
"I'll be back for all of you... okay?" My own mouth, my own voice, loud and clear and resonant.
And I turned back to the spire. From above, what appeared to be a cargo container descended at an impossible speed, the last desperate move of power to forever shatter the world in a thousand thousand ways. I walked, and flowers bloomed in my wake, glowing brightly to counter this hell of Man's own making.
A breeze, blowing through my hair. I rose, and I rose quickly, and behind me and alongside me the tower-columns on which the guiding rails were built burst into flowers too, and I stretched a hand in front of me to catch the payload, and it was there, upon me like the unstoppable force meeting the immovable object -
and, for a single moment, the entire universe was in bloom.
... and the towers fell away, and every mark between the two fell away, and all the weapons failed, and the light faded, and it was dusk as a shower of brilliant specks raced across the sky like meteors, and my own enormous glowing body twinkled out and faded too, leaving me - just me, now - lying in my own battered body, power supply just enough to keep the lights on in the battered cockpit. I looked in the screen's reflection, and saw only myself - not Latera, or some variant, but truly myself, wrought new of flesh and blrood and bone and imperfection.
I laughed. Joyful, sorrowful, relieved, a thousand other emotions I couldn't place. This was the world I made for myself, now, and the one I have to live in.
Lotus.
I stirred from my state, feeling them within me still, somewhere, a pattern at the back of my brain.
"Mmhh...?"
A couple lights flickered in the cockpit as the one remaining fully operational screen flicked to a camera view. It zoomed on its own - no, they zoomed on their own, showing everyone riding toward us on a pack of clearly stolen old Earth Guard military vehicles, waving our way. I think forever will have to wait until you're done with them, first.
... I smile - no, we smile, genuinely. "We're fine with waiting, aren't we?"
*(If you've been reading these all from the beginning, or even if you're just finding these now at the end: thank you, sincerely, from the bottom of our heart. Cohost's impending shutdown was the kick in the ass we needed to finally get out the final chapter that has lived complete in our head and heart for months. We've finally gotten to shake out the last tale for these wacky girls, even if it isn't quite as long as we think it could have been in a universe where we had both motivation and time to get even deeper into the weeds... and we hope maybe it's an ending you can live with.
Please do feel free to shoot us a friend request over Discord at gullwingdoors, if we've ever interacted. Even if we don't chat or anything, I think that presence is always nice.)*