Lost Change

Chapter 101

The scent of something burning gradually entered my awareness. Smoke. Burnt plastic.

The memory of the electricity sparking through the shuttle came back to me. I opened my eyes and tried to take stock of where I was.

I was upside down. And still tangled up in the netting. Some of my scales seemed darkened, and there were scorch marks in the yellow material of the harness. The end of the leash was still clipped to my harness, but the rope that had been impossible for me to damage had been burned through. Only an inch or so was left dangling from my back.

I tried not to think of how powerful something would have had to be to cause that much damage to a leash that had stubbornly resisted my own attempts to flame it.

At the very least, I wasn't in any pain or discomfort. I was lying against one of the walls of the shuttle and I wasn't trapped in someone's hand now. The net was no longer pulled shut behind me. That was an improvement.

After a few careful twists and tugs I managed to slip out of the tangled mess. I hissed at the blasted thing and clawed a little at the handle just for good measure.

Once that was out of my system, I looked around and saw that I was still in the shuttle. Angry black scorch marks dotted the walls and chairs. The glass had shattered like safety glass and was now just an opaque mass of cracks. We didn't seem to be moving anymore - through the window I could make out a green blur, and it was hard to make out any specifics, but the blurry colors were at least holding still.

There was also a lot of smoke obscuring my view.

I didn't have much to use as a frame of reference, but the shuttle had clearly ended up on its side at some point. Everything was tilted. My sense of direction and the instincts I had built up as part of flying were telling me that 'down' was in the direction of one of the walls instead of towards the floor.

The Kymari all seemed to be unconscious. With the exception of Minna's father everyone was still strapped into their chairs, but the chairs had snapped out of their positions and had been thrown around the shuttle. Minna's father was lying near the back of the shuttle against one of the walls, evidently thrown there at some point after I had blacked out.

I flew towards Minna and tried to check on her condition.

She was breathing. I felt a sense of profound relief when I saw her chest slowly lift beneath her armor. It was a slow rhythm, though, and she was obviously out of it. I chirped at her and nudged at her chin, but she didn't respond.

I didn't want to try anything more drastic to wake her until I had a better idea of how hurt she was... but I was glad she was breathing. That was a good sign. That was good.

She had cuts on parts of her face where the armor hadn't covered her, but other than that she looked fine. Her chair had landed upside down and her legs were trapped underneath it, so I couldn't see if she had any injuries there, but for the most part it looked like her armor had protected her from any major injuries.

I flew to the side of the chair and tried to push on it, but that proved to be just as useless as I had expected it would be. There was no way I would have been able to move the chair even by itself, but with a fully grown Kymari in it, the task was impossible. My dragonet body just wasn't up to moving that much mass.

On the other wing, my claws proved to be quite capable of slashing through the safety straps still holding Minna in the chair.

She slumped the short distance down to the wall of the shuttle. I heard her groan when she hit the 'floor' and had a bit of hope that she might wake up... but she didn't stir or make any other motions after that.