Being a nice guy, I would have helped Aziz down the ladder and discussed alternate plans to infiltrate the Lune observatory.
But I'm a pirate.
I shove their skinny frame through the sewer grate. Since they're so taken aback, they don't even have time to protest before I've followed and sealed it up behind me.
Their red eyes lock on my face, hissing through white teeth. "Why?"
I shrug.
"Because the end is near."
We look towards the stage, where the blue-haired Ophelia and snake-skinned Minister are staring at us.
No, not staring at us.
Behind us.
We turn around and find ourselves face-to-face with a corpse. Sol's axe made quick work of that guard. The Lunes scream and part, leaving us as the last defense between Sol and the Minister. "Brute force?" Sol smiles. Kura backs her up, grinning maniacally, wearing the face of the dead Lune Hiro to taunt Ophelia, then switching back to her own. "What about whatever you made us? Oh, right, we don't talk about the failed experiments, do we?" Sol laughs, kicking the body aside, pressing past me and Aziz as though we're nothing. "How unethical of you, Minister. The High Council's scientific margin of error is all messed up now because of your cover-ups."
I grasp desperately at Kura as she passes breezily by. Pull her petite frame close, hiss, "what got into your gods-forsaken minds?"
She sticks her tongue out at me, the piercing through it glinting cheekily in the light. "That's just it, you see, Luck. The gods." She points to Cato, and then reappears by Sol's side in seconds.
Sol makes for Cato's cage. She breaks Ophelia's electrifying lever along the way, snapping it between her claws. Ophelia tries to retaliate with her metal arms, but the regenerating power of Sol's axe overwhelms her weak scrabbling.
The blue-haired fighter falls, sobbing, "Hiro... your lot killed Hiro..."
But Sol ignores her. Instead, she goes to the cage. Cato, the god of war. The god who murdered and pillaged and utterly desecrated all of Rahasia in the First Divine War. The god of bloodshed. Of betrayal.
The god currently sitting in a puddle of unspeakable filth at the bottom of his cage, mewling like an animal as the Lune tech incinerates him.
Sol tears the cage open with her axe, pulls Cato free.
"Father..." she whispers, tears in her eyes.
He looks up, frowns. "Do I know you?"
Sol falters. A heartbreaking silence. Then she swivels around on the stage, facing all. "You will." She goes to the Minister, lifts him until his feet dangle from the ground. "Because I'll soon be the new Minister of Lune."
***
Pirates,
SOL, WHY?
-Sophia