The Day We Hailed The Heavens

Chapter 26

Chapter Twenty-Six

Into the Abyss

Button that says 'shoot'... button that says 'shoot'... where the heck are the weapons?!

Jade dashed from one side of Skyfire's cockpit to the other, uptight beyond all reasonable belief and breathing as laboriously as if she had just run a marathon. She had hit virtually every button that she had seen in a panic, which had only served to make more alarms go off - not to mention open the door to Skyfire's cargo bay, which she was not sufficiently expert in the aircraft to know how to seal again. She could only pray that one of the drones didn't see the opening and get in, or she would be dead.

She was supposed to be Skyfire's spark partner - why was she so inept?! Why had she always been so distracted by his holoform when he was teaching her about the controls? Could she not have just listened when he was going over the weaponry systems, instead of ogling the tall, handsome human manifestation that had been projected into the pilot's seat every time he had given her a tutorial?

Blitzwing was hardly helping matters. Now he appeared to be having some kind of argument with himself over the still-open radio link, fiercely debating which method would be best to kill her. Which was just slightly distracting...

"Oh, Jade! Come out and play vith me! I only vant to -"

" - RIP YOUR LITTLE ORGANIC HEAD OFF -!"

What little colour there was left into Jade's cheeks finally disappeared from them as easily as water down a drainpipe. She uttered a soft moan of dread, slamming herself up against one of the cockpit walls to gasp for air, close her eyes, and collect herself for a moment.

Skyfire's unresponsive form was still flying onward - she had jammed the controls into a forward-moving position before beginning her frantic search for the weaponry systems - but she could already see them slipping back into a neutral position, which would destroy any chance of escape, and would probably cause the bomber to fall out of the sky. She had to find a way to control those machine guns that he had used earlier; using the bombs would be useless, and she would only end up destroying the good guys if she dropped one onto the city without a proper targeting radar.

Tears were building up in her eyes in her terror and she sniffed thickly to force them back, trying to remember the words that had brought her such comfort in the past. Every cloud has a silver lining... every cloud...

But where was the silver lining now?

It wasn't just herself that she was concerned about; not by a long way. What was really forcing her to panic was the fact that Skyfire had been injured enough to offline in midair - he would never have left her in this horrendous situation if it hadn't been absolutely necessary to do so, and she was so worried that it was making her feel sick to the stomach with anxiety for him.

Her lower lip trembled as she opened her eyes again, brushing the unwelcome tears away with the cuff of her absurdly outsized pilot's uniform. Taking a deep breath to steel herself, she returned her attention to the multitude of buttons and levers that decorated the cockpit, concentrating as best she could with Blitzwing's multiple personalities raging and shouting in the background. At least the Decepticon was confused, which meant that he wasn't always in his angry state.

"Come out, come out, vherever you are!" the more excitable persona carolled from the speakers. "Ve shall have such enjoyment!"

"Why the heck," Jade muttered to herself in an exasperated undertone as she moved her hands over a collection of switches, searching out a way to access the Cybertronian weapon arsenal, "Does he have a freaking German accent?"