Why was it that every time Emma got on a plane in this world, something went wrong? Granted she'd only been on one twice, or three times if she counted the glider she'd accidentally smashed into that dragon's stupid tower, but it seemed that for all her effort in flying, the sky was about the worst place she could choose to be.

Fortunately, Emma's armour was up. It came just in time too because she started bouncing off walls even harder than Vari had been, hard enough that she figured her tiny little blood baloon of a body would've popped right open were she just a mere few seconds too late.

But she wasn't too late, and so when Emma smashed face-and-shoulders-first into the cockpit door it was the heavy length of metal that surrendered rather than her own shitty little body. She heard Aexilica scream as she tumbled into the front, limbs splaying everywhere and not even knowing which way was up.

"Get her off me!" Emma heard the words right before something clamped down hard on her shoulder and hauled her back through the air. Her sight and bearings cleared enough that she realised then she was dangling from Aexilica's grip, having just been pulled out of Kruger's way as he clung to the controls like a baby against its mother.

Of course babies had a good reason to do that, because they were about as reliant on their mothers as everyone in this plane was on it not crashing into a fucking mountain.

"What's going on!?" Emma screamed, right before another round of extinction-level turbulence bounced her head off Aexilica's.

"We're being attacked," Kruger growled. He did something with the controls and Emma smashed hard into a window. Too hard, apparently. She actually broke the glass on impact and was left with her head sticking outside and her ass waving around in the cabin as wind whistled past her ears and destroyed every semblance of sound she might otherwise navigate the chaos through.

***

It actually brought quite a bit of ease to Kruger's mind, seeing Emma smashed through the window like that. On the one hand, her accidental vandalism had immediately flooded the cockpit with winds strong enough to risk blinding a man.

On the other hand, Kruger wasn't the slightest bit threatened by a meagre few hundred-mile-per-hour air currents, and having the much more solidly tangible woman removed from flailing-range meant that he could now focus more thoroughly on piloting.

Not that his focus was doing much good now, of course. There was only so much a man could do flying any sort of plane, let alone a kind one full century more primitive than he'd been trained on, when anti-air batteries were emptying themselves at him. By the second, more jagged holes were being shredded in the hull of the vehicle. If anything Kruger was surprised its canvas and aluminium construction proved enough to shield them from penetrating shots, but it was doing nothing for the plane itself.

They were losing altitude. The more they lost, the closer they grew to the anti-air cannons. The closer they grew, the faster the projectiles were on impact. A particularly lucky salvo sent a line of perforations right down the plane's belly, and the next few seconds of Kruger's existence were a long, undening struggle to keep his vehicle righted.

A losing struggle, as it happened. They closed in ever more on the ground, and he had just enough time to yell a warning, conjure his shotgun and blast Emma out of the window to keep he from being cut in half before the impact came. Everything went dark for a few seconds.

Then everything went bright. Too bright. Kruger came to, surrounded by thick smoke and burning metal. Fire was dancing on every surface he could see, the cockpit was already ruined beyond use, and it was getting harder to perceive anything at all as the air became ever more clotted.

Aexilica was moving already, always quick in these situations, and she of course headed towards the back, finding Vari to break him out. Kruger focused on making an exit before the interior heated up more. He didn't know if a diesel fire would be enough to scorch his flesh and kill him, but he didn't want to find out under these of all circumstances.

Had he been trying to beat a modern plane's door, he may have been in trouble. But this was not a modern plane, and the exit he now smashed open with his foot was not composed of inches-thick warped aluminium hardened against any disaster imaginable. His heel was a battering ram of solid iron, and it took only one solid kick to not only dislodge the door from where it had been forcibly compressed into place, but wrench it entirely out of place. The smoke poured through its new exit ahead of Kruger, making the interior that much less hostile already.

The exterior, he found, was no better.

***

Emma made a note to kill Kruger later, when convenient. She didn't quite have that chance now though, as she'd just been shoved out of a moving fucking plane. It took her long, terrifying seconds to orient herself enough for sustained flight, and it came just soon enough to ensure she wasn't caught in the fireball as the vehicle hit the ground. Her heart stopped. Aexilica, Vari, Kruger, all of them had been inside that. They were all—

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—one of the cockpit doors came off. Right, of course. They were all superhumans who made Captain America look like…Steve Rogers.

Of course her friends being turned into crushed mulch by a plane crash had only been the second biggest concern at play, the primary one—the one she'd have been focusing on from the start were she a bit less stupid—was the large number of people circling the vehicle with what Emma imagined were weapons raised.

She had to do some imagining, because they were fucking weird looking. Silvery metal, not dark steel or plastic, and oddly long. Too thin, too. There were humming, glowing sigils etched into the sides and Emma felt a pricking at the back of her mind as she stared at them—the same one she felt when looking at anything strongly magical these days.

Well that wasn't good.

"Who are you?" one of the gunmen angrily demanded, waving his stupid sci-fi rifle around. He was dark skinned, actually black and with features Emma couldn't match to anyone except…No, hang on, Sade, from the pirates, she'd had something of a resemblance to these people. A common ancestor maybe, or a parent from among them.

Not that knowing where they were from, even if she'd been able to recall the name, would have helped Emma at all here. This matter was a bit more practical than theoretical.

"Wait!" she called out, then screamed as one of the soldiers whirled around and shot at her. They didn't even hesitate. The gun did not, as Emma had half-expected, fire a bullet. It just lit the air up and sent tongues of lightning scorching towards her. She winced, eyes clamping shut on reflex as the sheer brightness of it threatened to sear them out, then started spasming where the unnatural energies wrapped around her.

She'd been hit by lightning before, Emma remembered this much. At the attack on Tepetlmoseua one of those stupid asshole Sculds had blasted her with some. It hadn't been quite as bad as this though.

Emma fell out of the sky, momentarily unable to focus on anything—even holding herself aloft—but the shock of being…shocked.

Hardlight wasn't nearly as good at soaking up electricity as it was at blocking kinetics, but at the very least it seemed to insulate Emma more than thin air would have. She deduced this from the fact that her eyeballs were not running down her cheeks in gooey smears.

"Idiot!" Emma heard, through ringing ears.

I agree.

But the words weren't aimed at her, and as she sat up with a groan, blinking the spots away from her vision, she saw one soldier yelling at another. The one on the receiving end, looking pitiably chastened despite his menacing armour and still-smouldering gun, was evidently the one who had shot her. Good, the prick.

"Who are you!?" Emma snapped, keeping her hands still but letting her mind, and magic, move.

It was a crutch, to some extent. Physical motion. It helped her focus her power and, to some extent, was needed to unleash and shape it. Emma couldn't direct her magic without the use of fingers and wrists nearly as well. But it was still magic.

She could build the energies up ready for a movement, then unleash them with a more telegraphed motion. If Emma's hand moved even a foot before any of these idiots pulled down a trigger, their next bolt of lightning would meet a solid hardlight wall feet ahead of her instead of the armour protecting her flesh. Emma would be fine…And then what?

Maybe the wall would hold, maybe it would blow apart faced with so much concentrated firepower. If the latter happened, Emma would be fucked. She'd not get the chance to protect herself again before more volleys came, surprise no longer helping stop them.

"I surrender," she called out.

The soldiers frowned, blinked.

"We…We're not arresting you," one of them replied. It was the woman who'd been yelling at the idiot that shot her.

"You're not?" Now it was Emma's turn to be surprised. "That idiot just shot me."

Another of the soldiers piped up at that.

"What are we doing then?"

There came a pause following that, and Emma found herself staring between them all. There were a dozen, she thought, though only half were focused on her—the remaining six had their weapons aimed at what was left of the plane while Kruger and Aexilica slowly crawled from the wreckage. Emma feared for Vari, but had to focus on this for now. She could check on him later.

"We're taking them prisoner," the woman snapped, face hardening now. Emma wondered for one second what the fuck was with these people. Were they just not used to…what, taking prisoners? Actually fighting?

She wasn't left wondering for long before the guns were waving at her, and Vari was, fortunately, hauled from the wreck by Aexilica, who only then agreed to stay still as ordered. Emma still wasn't sure why she hadn't been shot—it seemed these people weren't very trigger happy outside of jumpy surprise.

"Do you all do…Uh, much fighting?" Emma asked, and found a sudden streak of embarrassment running along the whole group's features. It was actually kind of cute, especially on the women, but didn't last long before humiliated anger bubbled up to replace it. On the faces of people with fucking magic guns, that was a good deal less cute.

"Get moving," the leader snapped. And they did.

After the strange soldiers paused and set up a surprisingly well-made stretcher for Vari, of course. Which they ordered Kruger and Aexilica to carry, speaking harshly as if projecting enough menace into their voices would somehow keep from mangling their intimidation factor when they just…made a stretcher for their own sickly prisoner.

"Who are you people, anyway?" Emma asked.

They hadn't bound her hands, which told her that this probably wasn't a designated police force—surely they'd have shackles or something prepared already if they were. She did get her answer, though it hardly cleared things up at all. That was the trouble with being isekaied, you didn't know anything.

"We are a reconnaissance unit of the Eramade Republic's Fifty-Second battallion," the leader said proudly, "and we are taking you to our leaders for evaluation."

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