./\.+ Lycra +./\.

Muffled noises dragged him from a dreamless rest into cruel reality.

His body hurt, and where it didn't hurt, it felt cold. Everything complained with the slightest movement, and he couldn't pick his arms off the ground. When he tried, the pain got worse. His legs felt the same. Something in his right eyelid cracked and bled as he forced it open. The left, he couldn't feel.

Vision tinged, Lycra tried to look around the tunnel. Something pulled against the skin on the back of his head, and Lycra struggled against it until he felt the back of his head tear itself free. Blood flowed out of the new wound. That was okay. He'd experienced worse.

His eye went to his own body first, and Lycra's breath caught. Eggshell, his armor from Reid, had fully burnt away over the front of his body. Bone dust and tiny, blackened shards were the only evidence the equipment had ever existed. His skin was heavily charred, and blood seeped through cracks along with other fluids he didn't recognize. He pulled at his right arm again, and kept going until the skin tugged and tore. Lycra lifted his shaking arm, and turned it to see shards of armor and half-melted rock embedded near the new tears in his skin.

The last few moments of consciousness before his awakening flitted back into mind.

They had been resisting. Holding against the beam for wonderous moments before Vidita fully expended herself, and the bubble cracked. That failure nearly coincided with the end of the barrage, but even that fraction of exposure had been enough to incinerate his armor and leave him heavily burned.

Worse, the heat turned the tunnel half-molten and welded his skin to the ground.

And it wasn't just him.

Blackened, groaning, and screaming forms surrounded him in the tunnel. The ground here was still hot enough to sizzle and steam, and a few hundred feet farther ahead, the tunnel was still glowing, molten rock.

A gasp came close and drew his attention back to his immediate surroundings. A few sunburnt-looking Vuxarinans were carefully dislodging a terribly burnt man and their power armor to his left, and one had noticed him moving.

"H-Hey! This one's awake! I think it's Lycra!"

"Focus on the lower leveled first - they have less time. Just, keep going. We might still save some."

Lycra felt his consciousness slip away from him as the teams worked around him, carefully removing those brave enough to fight against an orbital barrage from where they'd melted into the floor.

#

#

When light and sound came back to him again, Lycra found himself in a wide tent structure surrounded by suffering survivors. He had the vague sense that they were underground, but in a different underground than the escape tunnel. There were other smells mixed in with the scent of burnt flesh.

Calm, practiced hands moved around his body once someone noticed him awake. They asked simple questions with a faraway voice, and poked things that only gave him dull sensations. He realized he didn't feel his arms and his legs the same. And he only felt pressure from his left eye. His limbs were numb more than they were painful, and wrapped in half stained bandages.

He was just starting to feel properly awake when Edith's face appeared above him.

The lines in her skin seemed deeper and darker than usual. She gently wrapped her fingers around one of his hands - or, rather, the bandages covering it.

He lifted his head and coughed violently for a few moments before a rough, nearly unintelligible "Hi" escaped his lips.

"Hi Lycra. I need you to keep resting up, alright? Your body needs it to get better. Just focus on that, okay?"

He managed to get more words through his mouth without coughing. "Survivors?"

"That's right - there were plenty of survivors, all because of you. You did a good job there, Lycra. A really good job. I saw what happened. It's a miracle anyone survived at all."

"How... many?"

Edith shook her head. "Even if I knew the number, that's a dumb question. The answer is more than zero. Which everyone here is celebrating, alright? So rest up. You earned it."

She started to pull away and stand, but Lycra forced his fingers to bend, and grimaced at the pain it caused.

"Jenna."

Edith sighed. "You're going to be a stubborn ass about this, aren't you?"

Lycra nodded.

"Fine. I'll get you a chair."

Edith fought through objections from a handful of other caretakers to put him into a wheelchair. The bumps made him appreciate what was numb, and what wasn't, by the shocks straight to his nerves he received with every shift and jostle.

Jenna slept on a bed the same as his, and much of her body was covered in either bandages or ointments. Lycra looked her up and down, then frowned at her left side.

"Arm."

"She's doing alright overall. Woke up a few hours ago, and by all measures she'll be back walking well before you. The left arm, though... the appendage was too damaged to reattach anything below the elbow, so we had to amputate. Worse, we were - I was unable to regrow the damn thing. I think it was timing. There were just too many to attend to before I got to her, and by then, it had been damaged too long. Until we figure out a fix or find a healer better than me, her left arm is out of commission."

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Lycra gave a stiff nod and blinked away forming tears.

"Hirv."

Edith pursed her lips and shook her head. Lycra frowned and fought against it, but more tears came than he could blink away.

She stepped to the side until he was done.

"You'll hear everyone talking about it, so I might as well share the story. When that shield broke and everyone got cooked by the blast, he saw it coming. He managed to put himself between Vidita and the worst of the damage - but, well, he took it. If it matters, I think it was quick."

Lycra swallowed to stop himself from crying again.

"Vidita?"

Edith's mouth opened and closed a few times before she took a breath.

"Lots of things with the system are a mystery. Skills and magic and changes. But there are signs that give us ideas. One of those, is that when someone uses up all their magic, it's the same as starving the body of oxygen. When the body has no oxygen, things get damaged. Sometimes permanently."

Moisture glinted at the bottom of Edith's tired eyes.

"Vidita is alive. The King is with her. But she isn't waking up."

^+ Nyx +^

She watched the troubled young girl sleeping in Reid's arm, worried and relieved in equal measure that Bubbles was serving as some kind of stand-in for Sara. Reid needed that type of raw emotional tether right now. She had always felt his emotions. She knew his capacity for love, and his potential towards rage. It wasn't enough this time for her to remind him that he was, at his core, a good person. That he did questionable - even cruel - things for decent reasons.

No, Reid needed something good to balance out the frustration and rage that had built within him here. She chided herself for not pushing him in certain directions or offering more advice. But she'd promised herself that she would let Reid experience things for himself - for so many reasons. He had seldom asked her opinion in the underground space, so there was little she had to offer. In those situations, winning often felt like a loss, no matter how good you did.

She did regret the timing, though. Reid may not have felt it, but a reprieve was good, and sometimes necessary, to make the most of one's gains. Reaching a more normalized mental state allowed you to let go of fatigue that had a tendency to build and stick to your mind when you were doing too much, too quickly. That was also true for rest's impact on a person themselves. They needed time to... solidify. It was the only word that came to mind without the threat of suppression.

But Reid was solid, now. Refreshed mentally, even if his second to last stop on the island had been one of the worst possible situations for him.

That meant he was ready for the next step - the next lesson. Another she would demand he complete before he had any rational right to be considering the work and the alterations involved. To put him further on his path towards power. To familial reunions. And... to more.

Her attention shifted back to the girl drooling into Reid's elbow. The doctor had told him as much, but she wondered if Reid knew. If he understood what the scientist had actually done to the girl. If he noticed that Bubbles had changed and morphed in ways that made her look more like Reid's own human form. If he'd seen that her eyes were now nearly the same green as his own.

+ Reid +

The tarmac was spotted with sections of differently colored asphalt where patches and fixes were applied after the planetary awakening had shifted the ground. It wasn't completely level, but perfection was a pipe dream here anyway. The simple fact that someone was maintaining the runway meant the situation was better than he had feared.

More promising was what awaited them inside.

Reid had worried the compound's alarm system and alerts would be connected to the aircraft hangars, but the mechanics and other workers there were a friendly and hospitable bunch. Also good for their general health, they gave Bubbles odd glances and readily accepted Reid's half-baked explanation that she looked mutated because of 'system stuff'. Finding people within the Ferber compound not in on the child experiments was refreshing, to say the least.

Bubbles rode on Reid's shoulders as one of the mechanics, Josselin, continued the tour. The girl had been sticking to Reid like glue since she'd woken up. He didn't mind it, but he was going to have to curb the habit sooner or later. Reid had a tendency to get into less than safe situations, and he had no desire for her to need to fight.

"...so when the awakening happened, the jets really wanted to go, but their systems threw a whole bunch of errors that shi-... stuff was wrong. They gave us more trouble than anything else at the start. They were the first we tried after the awakening threw us across the island - after we got the tarmac set, mind you. So, jets had trouble. The prop planes, well, they loved the change, needed to push hard to get in the air but once they were up, stayed stuck there like a fly on..." The man trailed off as he seemed to remind himself Bubbles was present. "...poo. Uh, anyway, we thought that was interesting and we had some theories, and we pulled out one of the rotary wings." The man tipped his head back towards the single intact helicopter in a row of three set against the dark side of the hangar bay and his excited grin grew wider. "That old gal went twice as high as she's supposed to, and I swear we could've given her more. See, rotary wings like it when there's a good amount of air - and they can't fly if the air gets too thin. So, it was density. The awakening increased the density of the air, which means it's easier to stay up. And that was how we figured out the jet computers were cranky because the air was denser than it was supposed to be. Corrected that, and bam - working aircraft. Well, until the spiders grounded us."

Reid nodded at the proud, smiling Vuxarinan with seemingly permanent oil stains at the sides of his fingernail beds. He was the most animated of the two dozen or so locals set up in the hangar's dormitories. The others within earshot groaned and booed at mention of the flying arachnids. Reid got an idea.

"So, Josselin, if someone were able to, say, thin the things out for you, you'd be able to fly again?"

"Heh, you did that, the rest of these grumps wouldn't be sitting around like miserable fu-...olks. Folks. Heck, some of us were planning out a flight to the mainland, based on some early math on the position of the near islands. But when those damn monstrosities hear engine noise, they swarm."

Reid tried to stop himself from sounding too eager. "You know where the surrounding islands are? And you can use that to get to the main continent?"

Josselin pointed to a massive piece of graph paper stuck to the wall. "Course. It's just math. Big enough wings, enough fuel, and bingo."

"Alright. I'll do it."

"Huh?"

"The spiders. Wheel one of the heli- the rotaries out and fire the engines. I'll take care of the rest."

Josselin's eyes narrowed in doubt.

His face - and the faces of the other grumpy men watching the conversation - shifted into shock, then joy as Reid manifested his wings.

#

#

The helicopter's engine made uniquely unhealthy sounds as it came to life. Reid hovered above and to the side of the pad, marrowbombs charged, mace and shield ready.

On the ground, Bubbles sat cross legged amidst the group of engineers and pilots brave enough to watch. She was pouting. It was cute.

He put his attention back to the forest as the helicopter's blades began to turn, and its noise amplified. Slowly, hovering arachnids floated themselves above the treetops and out of shady cover. There were more than he'd expected hiding near them in the forest. Even if they were weak.

Reid cracked his neck, and got to work.

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