Redwing - Chapter 8.2

                I looked behind me and saw the Pengwing, still in flight. Claire had managed to get a hang of the wheel and had introduced it to Dawn; she was now keeping it in steadily in place in the sky. I was floating in the night sky in my mini-tornado, Claire next to me and Kelly below, all standing in front of the Pengwing, waiting for the Utopians to arrive. It felt weird, waiting to shoot down your own family and friends although; Claire did give us strict instructions not to hurt anyone. That’s why Kelly was beneath us, to catch any shot down pods and land them properly onto the waves of the huge Tortoise Lake.

                I observed the rope around my hand anxiously. A rope was coming out of Kelly’s left hand and was attached to my arm, allowing her to fly with me. It didn’t hurt much though, my wind was continuously blowing on the side of the rope, causing Kelly to swing forwards a little, taking some of the weight off my arm. Claire was sort of floating on her front, but above her were huge dragon-like wings, not attached to her, but above her back, just above were they would be attached, always flapping. It was one of the rare times I saw Claire use her animal powers. It looked like she would be using them a lot more on this mission.

                ‘There!’’ Kelly shouted up at me. Sure, enough I spotted three huge search pods in the distance. Three Pengwings could fit inside one of those. When they spotted us, their ship fronts opened, ready to collect us in. My heart rushed with adrenaline awaiting Claire’s signal.

                ‘Kelly, Wendy. Ready?’’ Claire stretched her arms out and held her hands up. In front of her hands, spinning tentacles appeared and started squirting ink. Claire, her wings and her tentacles, dived forwards. The pods must have been taken by surprise as Claire covered the pods’ windows in black ink. Search pods don’t usually carry very big missiles and I don’t think they wanted to shoot at us, so that was no problem. The problem was they were also Utopians and also had powers.

                A scream rang out from inside the pod on the right, a glass-shattering scream. All the windows on the two pods smashed into a thousand shimmering shards. Sonic sound, there was only one person that could be: Duma. Now the search pod team could see out the window’s again, I didn’t wait a moment longer. Cutting through the sky, I flew in between the search pods and slammed down all my strength on the two ships.

               ‘Kelly go!’’ I screamed. The pod seemed to be sparking with electricity as it hurtled towards the lake, must be Betty, trying to get a hold on the ship. The pod was spinning out of control towards the wave less, dark depths of Tortoise Lake. Why hadn’t they stopped yet? I looked down at Kelly. A rope was extending out of her hand, but clearly not fast enough to catch the out of control pods. My strength was gone from that big push so Kelly started weighing me down. Come on Wendy, think, think! Move fast, fast! My brain was confused and terrified sending useless thoughts and ideas pinging through my head. My brain seemed to be out of order, so my body acted by itself. With all my strength, I swung Kelly back and forth before releasing her into the direction of the crashing pods. She grabbed them both, one rope from each hand, curling around the two pods, but they were still hurtling down.

                ‘Claire… help… me…’’ Kelly was pulling with all her might.

                Claire swooped down towards her, circling one of the escape pods. I knew I couldn’t help, all my strength was completely drained and it took effort to stay in the sky. A huge, thick spider web started to form in front of Claire. She stretched out her arms and the spider web swallowed up the pod. It looked almost like a pod in a spider web shopping bag. Kelly let go of the pod Claire was holding and focused on the left one. My heart started racing, they were just seconds away from the lake. Closing my eyes I heard a huge splash. Claire flew up to me, Kelly holding onto one of her wings.

                ‘Quick! To the Pengwing! With Betty aboard they’ll be out of there soon!’’ I grabbed onto Claire’s other wing as she passed me, my mini-tornado letting up altogether. I clutched onto the hard scales, the wind almost blowing me off. Two seconds before we were about to re-enter the Pengwing, I was certain my muscles would give up on me and I’d be blast back and smash down into the terrifying black water below, but Page was waiting for us and pulled me on board.

                ‘I’d love to tell you guys it’s all over, but I’m afraid there’s a lot more to go,’’ Page said, dragging Kelly aboard while Claire and I caught our breathe. ‘Aura, check the exits are all ready, you’re going to have to be the first one to jump out. Billy, grab anything you can out the cupboards. Teya… tell Dawn it’s time to crash. We’re ready,’’ Page sighed.

                Kelly was panting uncontrollably. I helped her up on one side and Page the other. I had never been so exhausted and so desperate in my whole life. Together, we managed to drag her to the exit.

                ‘Ready to jump!’’ called Billy from behind.

                Page nodded at me. The ship began dropping, fast and Dawn appeared behind us.

                ‘We’re falling! It’s now or never!’’ she cried over the sound of the wind as it blew us backwards. Even with my strength down, I couldn’t feel the ferocious wind pushing me back as much as the other girls did. Kelly’s arm jerked me out of the plane and into the sky again. The feeling of falling was a tremendous one. My body felt like a feather with my arms out-stretched and my stomach dropping. Falling was normal for me, and I was not scared, but I had never dropped this far and this fast before. A powerful jerk brought me out of the falling moment. An octopus tentacle wrapped around me and slammed me into Kelly and Aura. We all were huddled up in a tight circle, held up by Claire’s strong, beautiful wings. We gently landed in a ginormous bush.

                Claire sighed and laid-back on the soft grass.

                ‘Almost there now! Aura, as we planned,’’ Page looked up at the falling Pengwing ship.

                Aura took a deep breathe, using your powers for the first time was never easy and Aura seemed a little anxious to fit in and prove herself. ‘Wh-what if it doesn’t work?’’ she asked.

                ‘C’mon Aura! You’re the only one who can help us now,’’ I urged.

                She took another deep breathe and rose up her arms in the direction of the ship. A bright light started pouring out of the Pengwing’s windows, a blinding light. The ship started to shake and in a huge boom, it exploded into a million pieces.

               ‘Let them try and find bodies in that wreck,’’ muttered Page as the remaining pieces hit the surface of Tortoise lake.

                ‘Yeah, as far as the search pod team are concerned, we re-entered the ship and it exploded. Since the ship is burnt to a crisp by one of Aura’s mini-supernovas made bigger, all they can do is assume were dead and report that back to base. Nice work Aura, I knew you could do it,’’ I stated.

                ‘So they’ll stop chasing us now right?’’ Teya watched as the two search pods rose up into the sky.

                Kelly gasped and winced. She laid-back on the grass, eyes closed, and held her hands up. In the middle of her hands, there were deep cuts were her ropes would come out from. Dawn gasped.

                ‘Too much strain… Can’t use ropes till they heal,’’ Kelly mumbled, eyes still closed.

                Dawn pulled a bag out of her pocket. She laid it on the ground and grabbed a paintbrush and a colour picker. She gently placed the colour picker on a patch of Kelly’s skin and it filled up with her skin pattern. She rubbed the colour picker on the bristles of the paintbrush and cautiously painted around Kelly’s cut. The paint magically filled itself in and skin hardened across Kelly’s cut. Kelly opened her eyes, to look at Dawn’s work and smiled. ‘Now I understand why you were assigned mission nurse,’’ she mumbled, closing her eyes again and resting her head back on the ground.

                ‘We’ll stay here for now and head to the Destiny Guider’s island tomorrow. Since it’s still quite early we’ll wake up rather early and make it there at round about 3:00,’’ Claire stretched and laid-down. Two bat ears appeared a few centimetres from Claire’s real ears. ‘I’ll wake everyone up if I hear anything.’’ Claire pointed at the sky, ‘If you wake up and the sun is on the right side of this tree, go back to sleep, if it’s above or on the right side, wake us up.’’

                We all laid-down except for Billy. I could sense his eyes as he scanned each one of us. Maybe he was still uncertain about this, he understood everything, but that doesn’t mean he agrees or even wants to help. Staying with six girls couldn’t be easy and after what Aura did, he was the only one who didn’t know anything about his powers. He must feel lonely, left out and confused. I hugged my knees and closed my eyes. Billy couldn’t want to not help, what just happened was exhilarating. I managed to convince myself that waking him up was the best thing I could’ve done.

                I moaned and turned over.

                ‘C’mon Wendy! Get up! It’s urgent!’’ Teya was shaking my shoulders so much my whole body vibrated.

                I looked up briefly at the tree. ‘The sun’s still on the left side, Teya,’’ I grumbled, laying back down again and closing my eyes.

                ‘Yeah but… I think Billy’s dead!’’ she cried. My eyes instantly flew open. As I crawled past all the girls to where I remember Billy being, Teya woke them all and whispered the news to every one of them. I didn’t know what to find, since Teya was young, she could be exaggerating or making things up, but I wasn’t going to take my chances.

                I found him lying on his side, eyes closed. I cautiously turned him over and gently shook him. Was that hard enough? Shouldn’t he be awake by now? I started shaking him harder and harder till it looked like I was trying to kill him. Please wake up, please wake up!

                ‘Wendy!’’ Dawn stood over me, paint bag in hand. Reluctantly, I moved aside so she could inspect Billy, but when she stood back up, her hands were shaking. ‘No pulse,’’ she whispered. Teya screamed.

                ‘I just don’t understand what could’ve hap-‘’ I stopped and looked back down at Billy’s now open eyes.

                ‘Wow,’’ he whispered. The sound that came next could only be described as terribly out of tune ambulance sirens. Every girl screamed at the top of her lungs, terrified out of their wits.

                ‘What on earth just happened!’’ Kelly cried.

                ‘I could… I could… it was so weird. I woke up next to my body. I could see it, I saw Wendy shaking it, but I didn’t feel it, and she didn’t see me.’’ Billy was shaking his head in disbelief. He couldn’t say anything more, but it was too late now, he had all of us hooked, staring wide-eyed at him.

                ‘Ātmā magic,’’ Page explained, her nose buried in a book, ‘Ātmā, being soul in Hindi, allows the user to let their soul escape from their body. It can then move around, see things, possess people, all but, unfortunately, walk through walls.’’ She closed her book and it turned back into her portable library box.

                Billy, still shaking, nodded uneasily.

                ‘We should head in the direction of the Destiny Guider now, I know it’s early but that means we have even more time till dark.’’ Claire stood up and brushed grass off her jeans. ‘Dawn.’’

                Dawn reached into her paint bag and brought out a silver paintbrush out. ‘Follow me in or you’ll be left behind. These definitely don’t last very long, are quite clumsy and not very efficient, but they’re our last hope,’’ she said. She drew a large circle in front of her with the paintbrush. At first, nothing happened, but after a few seconds the circle she drew became a spinning turmoil of colours. Faint reds, purples and blues spun around at confusing speed. Dawn stuck her finger in and it didn’t come out the other end. She completely walked in and disappeared. A bemused Billy, fascinated Aura and interested Page all followed. One by one, we all entered Dawn’s spinning portal. By the time I stepped through, only an extremely light and pale blue colour was slowly spinning around in the portal.

                A weird, watery sensation passed over my whole body as I stepped through and out the other end.