When We Fall

by ObCom

Part 5

Vinyl Scratch shut down.

She did not feel the jolt that traveled up her spine when she fell to the ground. The cries that sprung up around her from the crowd were blocked out by her augmentations. She picked up her right hand, her finger tips glowing blue, and brought them up before her. Her vision was cluttered with an onslaught of messages and calculations and notifications. She didn’t remember activating any sort of program to see if a massive space station would smash her, but she did know that there was nothing in the digital miasma that she cared to see. She waved them aside and cleared her vision. The action drained her, and she didn’t feel like keeping her eyes open.

To her side, someone was shaking her. They were persistent. Vinyl opened her eyes, just enough to find out who it was. Octavia. Her eyes were wide, and she was screaming something. Her movements were erratic. She was terrified. Vinyl felt compelled to help her.

“What is it, Tavi?” Vinyl asked, lowering her deafness to the cacophony surrounding them.”

“We have to get moving!”

Of course that was what the cellist would say. Vinyl rolled her eyes. “Sit down, Tavi.”

Octavia blinked, probably hoping that she had misheard the DJ. “Sit down? Vinyl, we are going to die if we don’t move right now!”

Vinyl shook her head. “No we won’t.” She pointed a finger at her eye. “Just did all sorts of calculations with these bad boys. We’ll be fine.”

“Forgive me if I don’t believe you!”

“Didn’t you just say that you trusted me?”

“No. No, I didn’t,” Octavia said, crossing her arms and pouting.

Vinyl shrugged. “I’m pretty sure you did. Now come on, sit down. Or better yet, sit across from me.”

Octavia let out a loud sigh, but Vinyl’s heart skipped a beat when she sat down. “Alright. I’m sitting,” she said sarcastically. “Why aren’t we moving?”

Vinyl shifted to sit up straighter. “Well, there’s a couple of reasons. One, I don’t want to be running with that giant stampede over there. Two, if I’m going to die, I wanna know what an angel looks like before I go.” She couldn’t stop herself from grinning at her joke, and neither could Octavia.

“You’ve been waiting to say that, haven’t you?” Octavia asked, her smile growing wider.

“That would be telling,” Vinyl said. The third reason Vinyl wanted Octavia to sit across from her, which she wouldn’t say, was because Octavia now had her back to the falling space station. Vinyl cast a lazy glance over Octavia’s shoulder and added, “Hey babe, did I ever say how much you mean to me?”

Octavia shuddered at the words. She might be happy or she might know that something bad could be happening. Nothing got past her. Instead of panicking, she played along. She flicked her hair over her shoulder and said, “No, you never did.”

Vinyl looked over Octavia’s body, her eyes staying on certain parts for an obviously long amount of time. “That’s a shame,” she drawled, meeting Octavia’s eyes and licking her lips. “Maybe I should just show you instead.”

The two women leaned forward at the same time, Vinyl quickly and Octavia slowly. When their lips collided and their arms wrapped around each other, the two were lost to the world. Vinyl’s augments told her that the impact was imminent. She pulled away from the kiss, just enough so that the tips of their noses were touching. She wasn’t kidding when she said Octavia was an angel, and she didn’t want to die in any way that didn’t involve staring into those beautiful, lavender eyes.

Shining Armor’s headache was becoming a fast friend. There had been two brawls, both of them involving loyalty to Celestia. If he wasn’t careful, the base would split into two camps. One group wanted to go to Earth and help with the relief efforts. The others wanted to stand by their orders of occupying the lunar base. If the Mars expedition somehow needed help, Shining’s troops would be able to react the fastest. Shining found the bottle in his desk, quickly becoming empty, and poured a shot. When he tipped it back and the whiskey began its slow, burning descent. He shook his head, blue hair covering his eyes, and groaned.

His heart still went out to the troops under his command. The reports from the ground kept talking about the Loyalists and the Separatists. The troops were going crazy, being set aside from the conflict, not knowing whether their friends were alive or dead, or if they were on the same side anymore. Add onto that the collapse of Camelot and the disappearance of his sister. Shining groaned and put his head on his desk. He was tempted to yell his troops into some sort of action, to go to Earth or stay, but he also knew that would be the turning point. There would be yelling, then people that he had laughed with, drank with, fought side-by-side with, would be baying for his blood.

Shining couldn’t do that. Not yet. Not ever. He turned the lights off in his office and relied on muscle memory to pour another shot.

The calculations hadn’t lied. Thank the Empress that the calculations had been right, Vinyl thought as the world turned to bedlam around her. She had activated her sound dampeners again, as the space station passed unnervingly close above them. Bits of the station had fallen off from its entry into the atmosphere and began peppering the area.

The DJ was forced onto her back by the pressure. Somewhere, she knew Octavia was screaming her head off. Her augments were still new and she had no idea how to use them. Vinyl felt a touch of guilt as she kept her dampener on. She thought of listening to the song she and Octavia had made together, but for once in her life, Vinyl had found a moment that didn’t need a soundtrack. Besides, watching a space station crash in silence was oddly appealing. It put her life in perspective. She could think that she was every bit the badass DJ that she was, a gigantic chunk of debris would kill her just as quickly as the next person. If a gigantic piece of space debris did land on her, and if she died on the side of the highway, Vinyl found that she couldn’t care. It had been a good life, she decided, putting her hands behind her head and reclining.

When she was sure that the station was done being loud and crashing, Vinyl turned off her dampener and sat up. She coughed and wished she still had her trademark goggles. A light coat of dust had been kicked up in the air, but her augments allowed her to penetrate it.

She looked around the scene, surprised to see so many pieces of the station in the ground around them. People were screaming in the distance. Vinyl swallowed when she saw the outlines of someone on the highway with their head split open. She patted herself down and was relieved to see that she was whole. “Tavi?” she asked.

There was no response. Vinyl stood up, her body sore and aching. “Come on, girl, you were right next to me!”

A dust cloud had settled across the highway. Vinyl ran through different filters in her augments. The world snapped to present thermal images, but the amount of debris and bodies made it difficult to see. With a loud swear, Vinyl went back to normal vision and started her search.

“Tavi, you better be alive so I can yell at you!” Vinyl shouted, walking around the tree that they had been hiding by. She almost ran into the Bruiser on the other side.

“Whose side are you on?” The Bruiser raised his gigantic, arm-mounted machine guns. The Solar Empire’s insignia still shone in the dust, but the rest of the armor looked like it had gone through re-entry itself. Maybe it had, but something about staring down multiple barrels made Vinyl want to get on her knees and plead for mercy.

Instead, she jerked her hands, fingers burning a brilliant purple, and the power in the Bruiser’s suit shutdown. Vinyl realized she didn’t have a gun and felt like apologizing. She would promise to be a good girl and be executed.

“Oh, now you fucked up,” the Bruiser said as the power returned to his armor. Before he could fire, a Hunter flew past Vinyl and tackled him. Without knowing what her body was doing, Vinyl had recognized that someone had just saved her impulsive ass from being blown off and she wasn’t going to squander the second chance they had given her. She also noticed that the Hunter’s Solar Empire insignia had a black mark through it, but all of that could be thought about later. The only thing that mattered to the DJ was getting away from the two armored monsters. And finding Tavi. That would be nice as well.

Author's Note:

Fun fact: I thought I had uploaded this part already. Turns out it was sitting on the Word doc being all fragmented and shit. Funny how that works.

I won't say this is a glorious comeback, but the story ekes on and I feel a little better knowing that the reader won't be stuck alongside Vinyl and Octavia as a space station falls towards them, unsure of whether they will live or not.

Comments

[Neko-sama]

I'm glad to see you back!

[RD]

Hum Hum. Where are you? I am still waiting for a new chapter, and yet there is none! I have already read both stories twice! Where did you go?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

[Sound-Scythe]

Please upload the next chapter soon.