Chapter Text
“Ah! There it is!” Prompto said, pointing. Ignis slowed the Regalia so he could look along the younger man’s arm.
One of the massive pylons on the right hand side of the road had a giant gondola stalled near the apex. Even with the distance to the pylon they could see the occasional shudder as the gondola jerked, sending worrying vibrations though the heavy steel cables.
“I believe you are correct,” Ignis said, speeding up. “That must be the one Molly received the malfunction warning from. We’d best do something about it before it causes extensive damage.”
Prompto agreed, turning to look at the occupants in the back-seat. “Should I wake them, you think?”
Ignis glanced at the rear view mirror.
Gladiolus and Noctis were both asleep and sprawled across each other in an ungainly mess of limbs.
“We’ll wake them when we park,” Ignis said, focusing his attention back to the road. “Let them sleep until the last possible minute.”
It’d been a long night for the both of them.
The daemons in the power plant hadn’t been strong, per say, but there had been a lot of them and they’d been rushed to kill the last of them before the power plant detonated.
Which it hadn't.
Thankfully.
As soon as the all clear had come from the two, the women of the plant had flooded in and had stopped the imminent meltdown thereby saving the power plant, Lestallum and the entirety of Lucis now solely dependant on the power from Lestallum to stave off the daemons at night.
The daemons had done damage though and the four of them had spent several hours into the morning helping the women hunt down pressure relief valves in fear that the build-up would cause an explosion or at the very least a fire.
That should have been the end of it, the power plant workers more than qualified to handle the rest, but then the warning from a malfunctioned pylon on the line between Burbost and Lestallum came through and Molly had no one available to handle the problem. Everyone was tied up in repairing the damage to the power plant and, even if they had anyone, finding a vehicle to get them out to the pylon would take a while.
They had naturally agreed to undertake the task without hesitation. There was very real fear that everyone in Cleigne could lose their precious power, leaving them vulnerable.
They couldn’t and wouldn't allow that to happen.
Gladiolus woke abruptly as Ignis pulled over near the trail head.
He curled instinctively around Noctis as his eyes darted around them. They were in the Regalia and the loud metallic pop he had heard had been Prompto’s door opening. He had heard it though his own door, his ear pressed against the metal.
He relaxed, loosening his protective grip on Noctis.
“Wakey wakey, big guy,” Prompto grinned. “We found the pylon.”
Gladiolus gave a jaw-cracking yawn in response and sat up carefully, shifting Noctis in the process and shaking him lightly. “Wake up, Noct. Work to be done.”
Noctis groaned, and though it took a moment and a somewhat harder shake from Gladiolus, he opened his eyes. “I don’t feel like I’ve slept enough.”
“You never feel like you sleep enough,” Prompto said, rolling several blueprints up into a tight cylinder and slipping them into the satchel of tools Molly had loaned them.
Noctis made a rude gesture.
Ignis held out a hand to assist Noctis out of the car. “You and Gladio can get some more sleep when we return to Lestallum. It’ll be too late to try for Caem when we’re done here. So the quicker we get done, the quicker you get a bed.”
“Nice soft hotel beds here we come!” Prompto cheered. Noctis hummed, delightedly, and idly fanned his face with a hand.
It was hot.
They were still close enough to Lestallum that the heat from the interaction of the power plant’s shard and the remains of the meteor could still be felt. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, the sun was directly overhead and its rays were falling relentlessly to Eos’ soil.
Noctis removed his jacket, throwing it into the back-seat of the Regalia before glancing at the others.
Ignis had also removed his jacket, leaving it to neatly hang over the headrest of the driver’s seat and was rolling up his sleeves. Prompto, on the other hand, looked perfectly comfortable in his red sleeveless shirt and cargo pants, the only one with the sense to not wear black on an unforgivably sunny day like this.
Noctis gaze lingered on Gladiolus. He looked as tired as Noctis still felt but Noctis' eyes were more drawn to the bandages that just peeked out from the edges of his dark grey Crownsquard vest and the line of puckered red flesh on his forehead, held together by a neat row of stitches.
Cor's needle work, he had told them when they had managed to steal a few precious minutes for a private reunion in an empty alleyway.
The wound on his chest was worst but it was healing and healing faster since Noctis had pressed a hi-potion on him. It would scar, for now the wound was too old for potions to heal it completely, but it would heal and that was what mattered in the end.
The Tempering Grounds, it seemed, had caused a strange effect on Gladiolus' connection to Noctis' magic, not quite cutting him off from the mysterious aether that contained all of their things and the arsenal but not allowing for easy access either. The few potions Gladiolus had managed to conjure hadn't worked as they should of; the distance between the user and the source of the magic – between Gladiolus and Noctis – too great.
Prompto had tried to make a lame joke and Ignis' eyes had darkened when he looked at him and Noctis had pressed a potion on him with a cold lump in his stomach but Gladiolus hadn't allowed them to wallow in what-ifs for very long, brushing it off with a jest about 'the other guy'.
Ignis and Prompto led the way up the path without any further ado and Noctis could do nothing but follow, Gladiolus bringing up the rear.
There wasn’t really much a path left any more. No one had been this way in a long time and nature had long since reclaimed the trail. There were patches of grey dirt and thin grass that indicated where the path had been but it was mostly tall grass that reached their knees and made the exposed skin between Noctis’ trousers and boots itch.
The walk was pleasant – though they had nearly run into a large pack of Havocfangs in the thickets and had only got away without a fight because the animals were too interested in their grisly feast of a Spiracorn foal to take any notice in them – and it wasn’t long before they had reached the base of the pylon.
“We have to climb this?” Prompto asked, tilting his head back as far as it would go and nearly falling backwards as he stared up the ladder to the slender platform nearly at the crest of the tower. The gondola was still jerking and now that they were closer the sound of it through the heavy steel cables was more frightening.
“We?” Gladiolus echoed. “That platform won’t hold all of us. It’s too small.”
“That,” Ignis said, adjusting his glasses and pointedly looking away from the platform, “seems to be a very apt assessment. Prompto is the most qualified to work on the machinery in any case and Noctis can go as an extra set of hands.”
Prompto paled and looked back up at the platform, fidgeting with the strap of the bag across his shoulder.
Noctis snorted lightly at Ignis’ rather obvious attempt to keep both feet on the ground. Ignis’ acrophobia wasn’t exactly a secret but it wasn’t something any of them talked about either. Noctis could order him up the ladder and Ignis would climb it without a word but Noctis wasn’t cruel and, really, Ignis wasn’t wrong in his assessment.
“Come on, Prompto,” Noctis said. “I’ll be right behind you.”
Prompto gave him a pleading look but seemed resigned as he immediately placed his foot on the first rung and began climbing.
The wind grew stronger the higher they went up and Prompto had to stop once or twice to press his forehead against one of the rungs and swallow hard but eventually they were both standing on the steel of the platform. The whole pylon shook and shuddered as the gondola jerked and they really needed to fix that problem first.
Prompto slipped the bag of tools off his shoulder and crouched beside the pylon’s machinery, locating the panel and prying it open with a screwdriver. He sucked his teeth for a moment before doing something in the panel with the screwdriver and suddenly the gondola’s jerky movements came to a stop.
Prompto grinned in triumph, sitting back and tapping the screwdriver against his palm as he studied the wires and compared them to the blueprints that Noctis had helpfully spread out for him.
Noctis left him to it. He didn’t understand the blueprints at all and he’d more than likely just get into Prompto’s way instead of being any help.
No, better to leave it to the technophile with a head for machinery and assist only if Prompto needed him too. He pulled Prompto’s little spare digital camera out and settled in taking in the glorious view of Ravatogh and of Lestallum from this angle.
Noctis crossed his arms over the railing and rested his chin on a fist, staring out over the Disc. This would’ve been an excellent location to view the Meteor too if the Meteor hadn’t vanished alongside the Archaean.
He looked down at the tops of Ignis and Gladiolus' tiny heads.
They looked to be in deep discussion, Gladiolus leaning against the pylon's ladder as Ignis stood in front of him, arms folded protectively in the way he had never outgrown as a child. Noctis watched him raise a hand, reaching out for Gladiolus carefully before he had caught it and brought it up to press a kiss to Ignis' knuckles.
There was a humming clank behind him and he turned in time to see the gondola sway gracefully as it made its way along the heavy steel cables towards Lestallum. Prompto practically beamed when he looked at him.
“We’ll have to tell Molly to send someone out here when we get back,” Prompto said, closing the panel and collecting the tools scattered about him. “The wires need a complete overhaul and the fuses are bad corroded but it’ll hold.” He glanced back at the panel dubiously. “Well, for a little while.”
“At least it's working for now. Guess they don't have enough people to run constant maintenance on all the pylons,” Noctis said, heading towards the ladder.
“Mmm,” said Prompto and mounted the ladder as Noctis began his descent.
They had made it a little more than three-fourths of the way down when Prompto heard a faint, low drone carried on the wind. Looping one arm around a ladder rung, he turned to look back towards Lestallum curiously and cursed as he spotted the Imperial drop-ship heading along the road in their direction.
It would find the Regalia soon, then the Nifs would know that they were nearby and begin searching in earnest.
“Nifs!” he cried, pointing. “Drop-ship at three o'clock!”
Below him, Noctis also turned to look.
“Noct! Prompto! Climb down as fast as you can!” Ignis shouted. “You're too vulnerable up there!”
Unfortunately, even though Noctis and Prompto had sped up, the drop-ship reached them before they had managed to reach the ground. The hatch opened and no less than twenty MTs leapt from the drop-ship. Luckily, they were Axemen so at least there was little to no risk of Prompto being shot down from the pylon's ladder.
Noctis summoned his Engine Blade and warped down into the midst of the troop, impaling one of the MTs through the head as he landed on its shoulders before dismissing his blade into the arsenal and flipping away. The MT screeched as it fell and exploded in a puff of electrified smoke.
Gladiolus was suddenly at his side, swinging his greatsword over Noctis' crouched form and taking out an MT that had charged at him when he had landed.
“Thanks!” Noctis called, summoning a pole-arm to stab at another.
“On your left!” Gladiolus responded. Noctis deflected the MT's axe with the haft of his pole-arm and phased out of its reach. Ignis felled it by flipping his daggers into its core with unerring precision.
Noctis took a moment to look up, gauging Prompto's descent from the pylon. He was close enough to the ground that he had just leapt off and landed with a stumbling crouch when Noctis looked, gun already up and shooting the face-plate off of one of the MTs before he had stood.
Only, in looking up, Noctis saw another drop-ship beginning to lower itself down enough for another wave of MTs to join the battle.
“More MTs incoming!” he shouted to the others.
“What!?” Prompto cried. “More!?”
“Fuck! There's an armour!”
There was a slight reverberating boom as the armour landed, tearing the ground up beneath its feet. The hydraulics hissed ominously as it straightened, the spindly body and green plating identifying it as a MA-X Maniple class. Accompanying it was another twenty Magitek Axemen that immediately charged into the battle.
Oddly enough, the drop-ship didn't leave directly after dropping its load as it normally would have. Instead it moved away, further up the incline and hovered even lower to the ground. Five more figures dropped from the open hatch before it lifted up and was gone. (Once again not seeming to care that it had nearly destroyed the heavy cables of the pylon as it did so.)
Noctis didn't have time to question it.
He'd just barely dodged the actuator arm as it punched down at him and followed up the attack by summoning Prompto's massive Auto-Crossbow and laying a bolt into the hydraulics of its right leg. The metal groaned and hissed, twisting under the attack, but the armour plating had kept it from buckling completely and the machine was still moving.
“You gotta be kidding me!” Prompto cried again, scrambling away from three or four MTs as they ganged up on him. He yelped as the edge of one of the axes caught the back of his leg, tearing through his jeans and slicing into his flesh.
“Quit bitching and keep fighting!” Gladiolus snarled and put words into action as he swept his greatsword around and lopped off the heads of two MTs. They sparked and screeched, exploding when they struck the ground.
He backed off slightly to give himself a small respite, breathing hard and reaching up with one hand to press lightly against his chest with a grimace. He had probably needed another day or two of recovery before getting into a battle like this.
Electricity sparked across the ground and Gladiolus felt the tingle go up through his legs, leaving a strange prickly feeling behind though the rubber of his soles and the magical weaving in his fatigues had greatly lessened the charge.
Ignis had come to Prompto's aid and had unleashed a thunder spell into the MTs attacking him. Prompto crouched behind him and shattered a potion over his leg before he stood and emptied the entire chambers of his two pistols into another MT.
Noctis was still distracting the armour, keeping it focused on him until the others could deal with the remaining MTs.
He warped away from the lumbering machine again, phasing until he was little more than a blue blur as it launched five missiles at him. Noctis' erratic movements had had a purpose it seemed, taking out at least seven MTs in the process and putting distance between him and the Maniple.
Noctis was going to hit stasis before they had a chance to come to his aid at this point. There were almost half of the MTs left but it would still take them longer to destroy them than they would like.
Gladiolus grunted, summoning a shield and bashing an MT in its face twice before grabbing it by its collar and swinging it into three of its fellows, knocking them all over. He snorted with satisfaction and looked back around at Noctis, determined to at least keep him in his peripheries. Just in case.
Noctis phased again, trying to maintain the distance he had built up between himself and the armour. It seemed to work but then the armour halted in its steady march after him and raised its arm, the disc there spreading out and beginning to take on a red glow.
Noctis could feel the hair of the back of his neck rise as he felt the build up of electricity in the disc and instantly knew what the armour was about to do. With a curse, he summoned the Auto-Crossbow again and sent another bolt into its right leg. This time the metal buckled and broke, hydraulic fluid splashing in a steaming deluge to the ground beneath it.
The armour toppled over onto its right side and Noctis gave a feral grin.
It didn't stop the attack though. The arm slammed down and unleashed several thousand volts of electricity into the ground. Noctis warped away to avoid it and landed nearly on top of four Battery Soldiers and a human soldier partially hidden in the thickets.
The sight of the human soldier startled Noctis so badly that he forgot to dodge the weapons of the Battery Soldiers, swinging up to pistol whip him across the face and chest.
Okay, that...that had definitely dislocated his nose.
He cried out as he went down but he rolled with the fall, using the incline to stumble back to his feet.
There was a moment of absolute confusion.
The pack of Havocfangs that they had avoided earlier had come to investigate the commotion and had charged into the battle, attacking indiscriminately. Ignis had thrown a thunder flask at four of the MTs and there was the noise of yowling Havocfangs as they were hit with the electricity.
Noctis glanced around, slightly disorientated, and the human soldier threw a yellow flask or orb or something. It hit the ground between his feet, shattering on impact and releasing a yellow cloud that sprayed up and into Noctis' face like an explosion of yellow flour.
He gasped and gagged before realizing that he should of kept his mouth shut. An acrid, metallic taste flooded his mouth and burned his throat and sinuses and he began coughing, hard. Each cough ended in a gasp which just brought more of the yellow fog into his body and caused more coughs.
Noctis collapsed back to his knees, choking. He inhaled with a rasp and a wheeze, opening his watering eyes in a squint. The yellow fog had risen up now on the faint breeze running up the incline and this low to the ground the air was clearer, so he was no longer inhaling the fog with each choking breath.
He felt weird.
The ground between his hands seemed to move, undulating like waves on the ocean. The noises of the battle around him seemed to grow louder and fade out into whispers in turns. At one moment he felt stretched and too taut, like a rubber band that would snap at any moment – a feeling he was accustomed to when he was too close to stasis – and at the next moment he felt small and folded, like he was collapsing in on himself.
He had the brief, odd sensation that his fingers were shrinking and that the ground was a little closer than it had been before and that he had no idea were he was before he passed out.
Ignis saw him go down, collapsing like a rag doll to the ground.
“Noct!” he shouted, hoping that the call would cause Noctis to stir. It didn't.
They were in a bad position. There were still a handful of MTs left and the armour was still going, though it could not move. The Havocfang pack was also a cause of concern and now Noctis was lying unconscious, sprawled across the ground.
He didn't know what that yellow fog had done to Noctis, besides rendering him unconscious, but they were going to be in worst trouble if the effects of it hit him here in the middle of this battle.
“What do we do!?” Prompto cried. He had also seen Noctis go down. Gladiolus was already fighting his way to the Prince's side.
Ignis gritted his teeth, there was only option that he could see. He didn't like the idea at all. Gladiolus reached Noctis' side in time to save him from being disembowelled by a Havocfang.
“Retreat!” he shouted finally. “Pull back to the Regalia!”
Gladiolus didn't need to be told twice, he bashed a Havocfang in the muzzle with his shield and kicked another away before bundling Noctis over his shoulder and using his shield to plough through the combatants and down the incline. Ignis launched another thunder spell into the centre of the battle area and then he and Prompto followed.
They pounded down the slope to the road where the Regalia awaited and where dismayed to see two more drop-ships bearing down on them from Lestallum's general direction.
“Oh my god!” Prompto squealed.
“Get in!” Gladiolus yelled, pushing Prompto at the car with his free hand as more MTs leapt from the drop-ships, blocking the road back to Lestallum.
This had very obviously been a planned and coordinated assault.
Ignis flung himself into the driver's seat and barely waited for Gladiolus to throw Noctis and himself into the back seat before stomping on the accelerator. The tires squealed and the Regalia fish-tailed slightly, easily reaching a hundred in only a few seconds.
In the back-seat, Gladiolus had flung himself over Noctis, keeping his own head down and simultaneously protecting Noctis with his own body. It was because of this that he noticed that Noctis felt oddly...smaller than he should have.
Positively so, as his toes were pressing into Gladiolus' shins, but Noctis' face was against his shoulder and that should have put Noctis' feet down against his own. Also, Noctis' shoulders were suddenly much slimmer than Gladiolus was familiar with. He spotted one of Noctis' boots sliding off a far too small foot from the corner of his eye and he frowned.
Bullets ricocheted above him and off the heavy plating of the Regalia's body effectively putting a end to any idea he had of sitting up and determining just why Noctis appeared to be shrinking.
Eventually the bullets stopped and Ignis slowed down enough for him to slide back up into the seat properly, reaching up with one hand to stem the blood flow from a bullet wound in his arm. There were bullet holes in the back of his seat and in the back of the passenger seat but the bullet-proof plating in the seats had protected him from severe injury.
“Iggy...” Prompto started, pulling himself out of the passenger side foot well, but Ignis cut him off with a shake of his head.
“It's a flesh wound. The bullet only grazed me.” He looked into the rear view mirror relieved that there wasn't any pursuit at the moment. “We've got to hide. There's a haven near here. That'll mask our presence. Noctis will have to glamour the Regalia. How is he, Gladio?”
There was a stunned silence from the back seat.
“Gladio?” Ignis prompted, glancing up in the rear view mirror. Prompto turned around.
Gladiolus was sitting up now and looking down at Noctis.
Noctis: who was a little over three feet tall with a short black bob and the tiniest – and cutest – little nose on his chubby face.
Noctis: who appeared to be around five years old.