The pull-string on Joy’s pack worked perfectly. It deployed a massive canvas parachute that theoretically would have slowed her descent adequately enough for her to land on the terrace of the ziggurat without incurring too much damage to her legs. However, one of the riflemen on a Sky Armor had noticed the girls leaping off the side of the Blackjack and decided to turn his aim her way, shooting several holes in her chute which tore into large gashes sending her wildly off course.

She tugged on the cords as hard as she could, trying desperately to stay on target, but continued to veer off towards the large military drill yard adjacent to the complex. She was being turned and spun as the wind whipped past her in her fall, deafening her to the sounds of the fight above and the possibility that the other girls might have been calling out to her. She was approaching the packed earth of the training grounds fast, too fast, and with a sickening crunch, she landed.

Yeri’s descent had been surprisingly smooth. She had released her chute and had even managed to land on top of a guard near the side entrance to the complex, breaking his neck with a satisfying snap before hopping up from his collapsed form to dispatch his partner. She disentangled herself from her pack and left it where it lay, looking around for the others, but felt her stomach lurch at the sight of Joy’s unmoving body, crumpled in a heap on the wrong side of the gates to the drill yard.

She was running before she realized it, and it wasn’t until she bodily slammed into the tall iron gates, rattling them on their hinges, that she heard herself scream a name and finally snapped out of her daze.

It hadn’t been Joy’s name she had screamed.

She gave the gates another shake as she looked for the best way around, or possibly through them and took a few steps back before launching herself up as high as she could jump, quickly scaling the bars that rose several times her height. She couldn’t bare to look at Joy’s still form as she hurriedly climbed, and her attention was caught by the movement of several figures running across the yard towards where Joy had fallen - Imperial soldiers.

Yeri vaulted over the top of the gate and tucked into a roll after the long fall, back on her feet in a in a moment and running towards Joy with her daggers drawn. She slid to a stop in the dirt beside the queen’s body and quickly cut her free of the shredded parachute, but the soldiers were approaching too fast - she had no time to assess Joy’s injuries.

It was so familiar - so hauntingly familiar - watching the soldiers bear down on her as she protectively crouched over her fallen friend. She couldn’t believe it was happening all over again.

+++

Seulgi was starting to have serious doubts about this new plan as she fell backwards, watching the Blackjack quickly rise out of reach surrounded by the remaining Sky Armors, buzzing about like so many mosquitos.

Mosquitos with rifles.

The roar of the wind in her ears as they fell suggested that it’d be useless to try to ask Irene how she was doing, or to ask when exactly she was supposed to pull the string on her pack. Irene had a death grip around her neck, and had even tangled their legs together in a desperate attempt to not be separated. Seulgi would have probably been able to enjoy the intimacy of their closeness a lot more were it not for the fact that they were plummeting towards the base of the Gestahlian Imperial fortress complex at such an alarming speed.

Carefully unwrapping one of her arms from around Irene - which only caused the ex-general to nearly choke her in an attempt to not let go - Seulgi d for the string on her pack. Finding it, she gave it a strong tug and yelped breathlessly into the wind as the chute deployed and jerked them out of their freefall.

While they still seemed to be falling fairly fast in Seulgi’s opinion, she wasn’t sure what else to do aside from letting the parachute carry them the rest of the way to the ground. She scanned the area, trying to guess where they might end up, and that’s when she noticed a group of figures scuffling in the large drill yard adjacent to the ziggurat. She spotted a limp canvas parachute lying near a prone figure, and several soldiers fighting with someone…

“Yeri,” Seulgi barely heard herself mutter as they descended.

Irene must have heard her too, as she raised her head from Seulgi’s chest to tuck under her chin, still nearly choking the breath out of her with a death grip around her neck. The ex-general couldn’t make herself open her eyes, even after she felt their descent slow. She knew she should be using this opportunity to take in their surroundings and forming a strategy, but with nothing but Seulgi’s arms around her keeping her from falling to her death, she couldn’t bring herself to focus.

With her face pressed against the high white collar of Seulgi’s dress shirt, she shakily asked, “Wh-what about Yeri? Where is she?”

“She’s already fighting and I think… I think that’s Joy with her but she seems… hurt,” Seulgi forced herself to finish. The figure in the dirt was becoming clearer with each passing moment, and Seulgi couldn’t help noticing the glint of the chainsaw strapped across her back. It was definitely Joy, and she definitely wasn’t moving.

Irene took a deep breath and forced herself to peek an eye open, but the sight of the dull, flat roofs of the buildings of Vector stretching out to the horizon made her dizzy and she squeezed her eyes shut again.

“There,” Seulgi indicated, freeing one of her arms to point down to the yard below.

Irene risked another glance, following the line of Seulgi’s arm and saw the fight below for herself. Yeri was pitted against six soldiers, and though she seemed to be holding her own, Irene could tell the thief was at a disadvantage as she fought and struggled to keep herself between the soldiers and Joy’s body. She needed help.

Irene retrieved one of her arms from it’s vice-like grip around Seulgi’s neck and wrapped Seulgi’s arm back around her waist. Seulgi obeyed her silent request and held onto her tightly as she saw Irene loosely curl her fingers and manifest a jagged shard of ice in her hand.

Seulgi gasped in spite of herself. She had seen Irene use her magic once, long ago, but not up close like this. Did she expect to be able to hit the soldiers from way up here? Seulgi had to guess they were still several hundreds of yards above the training ground and while she had every faith in Irene’s ability to kill a foe once she set her mind to it, this would be quite a feat of marksmanship.

But Irene wasn’t aiming for the soldiers on the ground. With a flick of her wrist, she flung the shard straight up at their parachute, rending a gash in the canvas that the wind pulled even wider, hastening their descent.

“Irene, wait-!” Seulgi choked as she scrambled to grab Irene’s hand before she could do any more damage to their chute. She pinned Irene’s arm to her side in a bear hug as they fell faster, arcing away from ziggurat. “Are you crazy?!” One minute Seulgi had to trick the ex-general into jumping off the side of the Blackjack, and the next the woman was cutting holes in the only thing keeping them from smashing into the ground like a ripe tomato?

“Seulgi, let go; I’m going to jump once we’re close enough. It’s too dangerous for us to land together anyway,” Irene instructed.

“But…”

“Seulgi,” Irene cut her off sternly, but when she pulled her head back to look up at Seulgi, she saw the concern written all over the rancher’s features and she softened her tone. “We jumped off of a flying airship and now you’re worried about my safety?” she asked wryly.

Irene’s point notwithstanding, Seulgi pressed her lips to her forehead for a brief moment. Irene blinked up at her in shock when Seulgi pulled away again. No one had ever given Bae Irene, ex-General of the Gestahlian Imperial Army, a kiss on the forehead before. Unable to meet Seulgi’s gaze, Irene busied herself with judging the distance to the ground and disentangling their legs so she could prepare to jump.

The ground was so near now, it would only be like jumping from a multistory building, the tenth floor… now the eighth… the fifth… the third…

With a shove, she pushed herself away from Seulgi and fell the last few several dozen feet, rolling onto the hard-packed dirt of the all-too familiar training ground. This was her home turf, and she would show these recruits exactly how she had earned her rank.

She took off towards the scuffling group, more shards of ice crystalizing in her free hand as she drew her sabre. Yeri only gave her a grateful look as she continued to dodge about between the soldiers, taking advantage of any opening to get a stab in with her pair of daggers. She was distracted by thoughts of Joy and the possible extent of her injuries. Broken bones? Internal bleeding? Had she landed on her feet and shattered her knees? Or snapped her neck?

One mantra rose up from the confusion of thoughts as she skidded onto the ground between two soldiers and cut at the backs of their knees, hamstringing them with her signature move.

She’s not dead. She’s not dead. She’s not dead.

She can’t be dead.

And an old anger that she had been masochistically nursing for years rose up from the icy pit in her stomach into the tight confines of her chest as she kicked back up onto her feet, viciously plunged both of her blades into the abdomen of another soldier with a frustrated grunt. She wasn’t going to lose Joy, too.

Seulgi wasn’t prepared for the fall the way the two more agile girls had been, and as she tumbled to the ground roughly, she could only be thankful that she didn’t sprain or break anything though the bruises would be likely be a sight. She laughed a little at her worries; if that was all she came away with today, she would be lucky indeed.

By the time she was able to disentangled herself from the parachute and get her feet back underneath her, she saw Irene and Yeri had just finished off the last soldier. Though as she jogged over to them, she noticed several more were already running across the yard, so she increased her pace.

“How is she?” Seulgi asked breathlessly as she drew her longsword and placed herself between Yeri’s crouching form and the oncoming soldiers.

Irene brought one down with a well-aimed sliver of ice lodged deeply in his chest as she came to stand beside Seulgi, quietly relieved that the rancher had landed safely.

Yeri ignored Seulgi’s question as she carefully looked Joy over, only slightly relieved to see no protrusions or blood. She prayed Joy had just fallen too heavily and had been knocked unconscious, but as she brushed the queen’s red hair away from her face and lowered her ear to Joy’s mouth, listening, she heard that Joy’s faint breath had a troubling rattle to it. Still, she was alive, and Yeri briefly rested her cheek against the queen’s. “Thank Phoenix,” she whispered. She sat up and began pulling bottles out of her pack, quickly scanning labels and sorting them into piles.

Seulgi, after knocking a soldier to the dirt with the sheer strength of her swing, took a moment to look behind herself and saw Yeri in full triage-mode right out in the open field. “Wh-what are you doing?" she sputtered. "We can’t stay here!” She was momentarily reminded of their haste back on the Veldt so long ago, rushing Joy onto Boko’s back so they could run from the army. She dearly wished her yellow friend was with them now, but she knew he was much safer up on the ship rather than down here.

“Use whatever you have to,” Irene commanded sternly as she threaded her blade past a soldier’s defenses and impaled him straight through the torso in a fluid motion. “Just do it fast.”

Yeri pulled the most expensive bottle out of her bag and the stopper hesitantly. Was she overreacting? There was no time to figure out how severe Joy’s injuries were, just that she was unconscious, and that her breathing was unsteady. Yeri would prefer that the queen would just yell at her later for squandering the supplies than the alternative.

Without wasting anymore time, she pried the stopper out of the bottle with a dull pop and carefully cupped Joy’s jaw, holding her still as she began to pour a trickle into her parted lips.

“... , ,” Yeri hissed as she wiped at the liquid leaking out of Joy’s unresponsive mouth. The once-clear liquid had a faint red tinge to it as it dripped down Joy's jaw onto the dirt.

“Yeri…!” Seulgi strained, as she heavily hammered her longsword against a soldier’s, knocking it from his numb hands. “We’re drawing a crowd… Do you need help?”

“I’ve got it,” Yeri snapped back, panic lacing her reply. With a resolute expression, she took a swig of the potion herself.

Irene wasn’t quite sure what she was looking at when she spun to cover their rear and saw Yeri tenderly holding the sides of Joy’s face in a desperate kiss. She was still trying to find a voice for her question, fearing the worst for the queen, when she saw Joy’s fingers twitch.

Yeri pulled back immediately when she felt Joy’s lips moving against her own. The bitter herbal taste of the potion hung thick on her tongue as held her breath, watching Joy’s eyes flutter open and squint up at her.

“... Did... did you just…?” Joy asked weakly.

“Shut up,” Yeri broke in, her terse tone not matching the way her eyes watered at the sight of Joy pushing herself up on her elbows.

“Okay, great! Now let’s go!” Seulgi said hurriedly as she stooped to sling one of Joy’s arms around her shoulders, hoisting the queen to her feet. She looked at Irene expectantly, and the ex-general needed no further prompting to begin leading them back towards the ziggurat.

Yeri shoved the half-empty bottle into Joy’s hands, and ran on ahead to look for a way past the gate, but slowed as she watched it open to admit more soldiers into the drill yard. She pushed up the sleeves of her cropped jacket, eager to take out the adrenaline from saving Joy’s life on some Imperial cannon fodder.

+++

“Do you know how much this cost?” Joy grumbled as she finally caught up to Yeri and shoved the bottle back into the thief’s satchel.

“Shh!” Yeri hissed back at her as she peered around a corner, checking for guards. After fighting their way into the complex, they had taken a detour into the dungeons as instructed by Irene. The detention facility would lead them around the main rooms and halls of the ziggurat and hopefully past the bulk of the obstacles that patrolled between them and the Emperor as they wound their way up to the top of the building.

Once Yeri decided the coast was clear, she turned a quick glare up at Joy. “You’re welcome, by the way.”

Joy pouted as she adjusted her grip on her chainsaw - silent stalkers like Yeri might not approve of her method of attack, but they couldn’t argue with the results. “It would have been cheaper to leave me there,” she muttered under her breath, thinking of the fights yet to come and how they were already breaking into their supplies.

But Yeri stood up straight and gave her a serious look, commanding her attention. “Don’t say that,” the Treasure Hunter admonished, and Joy realized the implication of her own words to someone like Yeri and dropped her gaze.

“This way,” Irene indicated, leading them down a row of cells. The dungeons were some of the oldest rooms of the ziggurat, renovated from old servants quarters when the complex was still only a few stories high - and before the current dynasty had taken the throne of the Empire and turned Vector towards its more militarized ways. The low-ceilinged hall was lined with exposed cells, iron bars being the only barrier between the four girls and the pitiful occupants held in detention.

The dungeons should only have a few guards, and beyond, into the research labs, there might not be any armed personnel at all if they were lucky. But as they quickly trotted down the hall, a voice called out, stopping them in their tracks.

“Yeri?” a woman's voice asked from one of the cells, and Yeri turned to see a different redhead calmly seated on a bunk, watching the Returners through the iron bars. “Are you guys in a hurry, or do you have time to make a quick stop?” the woman continued with a faint smirk.

“Boss!” Yeri gasped as she instinctively walked closer.

Solji, the Don of the Slam Shuffle Gang, stood and walked to the front her cell, lazily grasping onto the iron bars. “Hey, kiddo.”

“Elly said you were in Vector,” Yeri recalled as she took Solji’s hands in her own.

Joy crossed her arms and gave the smuggler a wry smile. “What she said was that you were negotiating with the Empire. I take it that didn’t go so well…?” the queen asked, eyeing the squalor of the dark cell behind the don.

Solji raised her eyebrows. “Queen Sooyoung? Yeri, you left us for the Queen of Figaro? I suppose I can’t be too mad at you for that,” she said with a nod to Joy, returning that smile. “The Empire realized my value and decided to skip negotiations and go straight to acquisitions, unfortunately.” She gestured for Yeri to work the lock on the door while she continued to explain. “I tried to convince them I was more of an asset as the head of the Slam Shuffle Gang than as a prisoner, but they figured if they controlled me, then they controlled our supply routes- Thank you, Yeri,” she paused, once she heard the lock give way with a rusty clink.

“The joke’s on them, then,” Yeri muttered as she stood up and dusted off her pants from kneeling.

“That’s right,” Solji said as she let herself out of her cell. “Elly’s the one in charge of managing operations. I’m more like the…”

“Brains?” Seulgi offered helpfully, but Yeri snorted. Solji glared at the blonde.

“She’s more like the mom,” Yeri corrected with a fond gaze up at the don.

Solji just rolled her eyes at the save and looked at the others. “So, where to? What brings the Queen of Figaro to the dungeons of Vector?”

“We’re going to take down the Emperor,” Irene answered succinctly, scanning up and down the hall for any signs of approaching guards.

Solji’s smile faded, recognizing the Empire’s Ice Princess. “You have been making some interesting friends lately,” she mused quietly to Yeri.

“The Empire’s not the only one making strategic acquisitions,” Yeri replied with a wink.

Even without knowing what Solji’s capabilities were, Seulgi was glad to have another person join their group. The tense moment outside, and that initial fight had made her impressed with how confident Joy and Irene had been about their plans from the beginning. Their infiltration of the fortress had almost ended before it had even begun, so any extra help they could find along the way was welcomed in her eyes.

But, “I think I’ve had more than my fill of this place, so I’ll show myself out,” Solji declined.

“Well you’re not going to be able to leave the way we came,” Joy drawled, a little less than impressed with the don’s desire to cut and run. “I’m sure soldiers followed us in here from the training yard and are looking for us as we speak.”

“Which means we need to keep moving,” Irene chimed in, anxious to continue on.

Solji sighed. “I guess I have no choice.” She rolled her shoulders and cracked her knuckles, bouncing on the balls of her feet. “What’s the plan, then?”

+++

Their plan led them onto the factory floor of the research labs, after a quickly resolved scuffle with the guards near the exit of the dungeon. Seulgi was now very well aware of Solji’s capabilities after witnessing the don execute a series of moves that resulted in dislocated joints, snapped necks and numerous contusions for the guards, and was relieved that the weaponless woman was already proving herself to be quite useful.

While Irene may not have had much cause to visit the fortress’s dungeons during the span of her military career, the factory of the Magitek Research Facility was much more familiar to her. She quietly led the party along the outer walls of the massive open room, past large, thundering machines, and uniformed personnel analyzing dials and inspecting the production of what she knew were parts of the various weapons Heechul was constantly designing. She glanced back to make sure the others were keeping close, and noticed Seulgi had her hands over her ears.

Irene reached back and pulled Seulgi’s hands away with a frustrated sigh. She tugged Seulgi down to her level by the lapels of her tuxedo and spoke into her ear, “I know it’s loud, but you need to stay alert. We just need to make it through this room to the labs on the other side and it should be quieter.”

“WHAT??” Seulgi shouted back into Irene’s own ear.

Irene took a breath, about to repeat herself when Yeri came up and smacked her arm. Instead of bothering to yell over the rumbling noise of the machines, the thief simply pointed towards the far side of the factory where a pair of large bay doors, several stories tall, were beginning to open. The others couldn’t tell the difference through the orange haze of the sky beyond, but Irene could see that the sun was already beginning to set, casting the interior of the iron facility in a rusty hue.

Soon, a new sound joined the sparking saw blades and hissing steam as up over the rows of machinery, the Returners watched several Sky Armors rise into the air and file out through the large doors.

“Two, four, six… ten… fifteen,” Irene concluded, unable to hear her own whispering over the noise. Another squadron deployed to deal with the Blackjack, she suspected, and she quickly gestured for the Returners to follow after her as she realized that the airship and its insufferable captain were waiting on them to complete their mission. She wasn’t sure if it was bravado or stupidity that kept Moonbyul circling the skies waiting for them instead of just taking off and saving themselves - she suspected it was both - but Irene begrudgingly realized she should probably thank the rakish captain if they got out of this alive.

Thoughts of the silver-haired airship pilot died away as they tiptoed their way around the edge of the factory floor, avoiding the gazes of the goggled engineers, and through a door into the labs beyond.

At the rear, Seulgi gave the noisy factory one last look before pulling the door shut behind them, plunging them into a deafening silence.

No, not quite a silence.

There was the faint sound of bubbling liquids and the constant, dull hum of a new kind of machine. As opposed to the rusted iron palette of the factory behind them, this first room of the magitek labs was bathed in a blue-green glow, emitted from a series of glass tubes lining the iron walkway. In the relative quiet, they could all hear Irene let out a surprised breath as the ex-general walked to the railing of the walkway to get a better look at the containers.

“What are these?” Seulgi asked hesitantly, a little unnerved at the confusion on Irene’s features. Was this another secret the Empire had decided to keep from one of its leaders?

They looked like glass tanks, larger than life, and full of some sort of solution that was giving off the eerie glow that supplied the only light in the lab. The Returners slowly began walking, the strange room putting them on edge, until once again Yeri grabbed for Irene’s arm, as they rounded a corner.

“Irene!” the blonde nearly cried out, but she didn’t have to say anything more as Irene came up behind her and saw for herself.

Some of these tubes were occupied.

“What in the World of Balance…”

The next section of tanks that lined the iron walkway was filled with monstrous specimens, submerged in the strange blue-green solution and hooked up to a tangle of tubes both large and small.

“They look like the creatures on the Veldt,” Seulgi said dully after finding her voice.

“No, Seulgi,” Irene murmured as she walked down the line to a particular tank. “... I don’t think these are from the Veldt…” She approached what looked to be a woman, floating there unconscious, bubbles rising in rhythmic intervals from a mask around her face. And maybe it was the liquid she was suspended in, but her skin seemed to be a pale shade of blue, and darker still was her long blue hair that floated around her exotically costumed figure, nearly down to her bangled ankles.

Irene placed her hand on the glass and marvelled at how cold it felt to her touch, compared to the somewhat humid air in the lab. As she looked up at the woman in the tank, she gasped and retreated suddenly, surprised to see the woman staring back down at her with eyes as blue as her hair. After her initial shock, Irene approached once more, hypnotized by that powerful gaze.

“Then what are they?” Joy asked, eyeing the way Irene seemed entranced with obvious unease.

“They’re espers,” came a tired voice from farther down the walkway. There was the sound of weapons being unsheathed as a man dressed in a yellow lab coat approached. He seemed to not acknowledge the threat of the four other women in front of him while he looked at Irene. Indeed, he seemed too exhausted to care.

“That one’s Shiva,” Chief Engineer Heechul continued, gesturing to the tank Irene was in front of. “And she’s a part of you now, Irene.”