The Titian flew into the wide blue sky above the churning waters of the Eizic ocean as it shot out of the coast-facing hangar port carved in the side of Mt. Kyero. Despite it being 5 o'clock in the morning, the sun was already over the horizon due to how far north the Peninsula was. Before it had even left the Auxiliary, Prism had caused the plane to become invisible, making it imperceptible across the electromagnetic spectrum. Once it was several kilometers away from the mountainous coastline, the tiltjet accelerated well past the speed of sound.
RED-1 would be in the Holy State of Sguvi in just a few hours. At least, that was the plan.
"I'm all jittery." Prism said while shivering in an exaggerated way. He sat in his favorite place on the ship; the folded-out flight seat along a wall of the transport bay.
"I can't tell if you're joking or not..." Leanna said. She stood near her locker as she tinkered with her red dronepack, which hung within it.
Ursun stood by a window and watched the ocean zipping by beneath them. "Half-joking, I'd bet." He said, eyes still fixed on the fast-moving landscape.
"Still put off by his new appearance, boss?" Srell said as he and Lorias sparred in the middle of the bay. Srell dodged several quick jabs thrown by Lorias as if the taller man was moving in slow motion.
"I'm not "put off" by it." Ursun said with a slightly raised voice. "It's a good body, from the looks of it."
Lorias kicked at Srell's shins, causing the smaller man to skip backwards a few steps to create a bit of distance between them. "Come on, sir. It clearly makes you uncomfortable." Lorias said before reaching out to grab Srell. Srell ducked and shot up at Lorias with a palm that struck Lorias in the chest. Lorias staggered backwards a few steps and smirked.
"It's okay. I know you all aren't used to people just up and changing the way they look. Your discomfort is completely understandable." Prism said with a sympathetic expression as he addressed the room, though his eyes were fixed on the back of Ursun's bald head.
Ursun turned around and glared at Prism all of a sudden. Prism closed his mouth and stared nervously at his commander while Srell and Lorias continued to fight nearby.
"It doesn't suit you," was all Ursun said.
Prism heard Leanna giggle at her locker. He leaned forward in his seat and placed his elbows on his knees while not breaking eye contact with Ursun. "What do you mean?" Prism asked, though he was pretty sure of the answer he'd receive.
"You're just a kid. You might be centuries old or whatever, but it's clear to each of us that you're still somehow mentally a teenager or a kid or something. We all saw how you acted back at Getla. You've fought in wars before, sure, but you fight like a child soldier."
The longer Prism listened to Ursun's words, the more anxious he became. Any denials the elementeitan might make would be lies out of his mouth. He couldn't fool his team anymore; they'd been through too much together to be fooled by him.
"Yeah, that's right...my race matures a lot more slowly than yours does." Prism said before sighing loudly and leaning back in his seat again. Srell and Lorias stopped fighting and stood by silently to hear what was being said. "It takes us elementeitans thousands of years to reach the same developmental milestones that take a decade or so for your own."
"Developmental milestones?" Leanna asked, turning away from her dronepack to watch Prism while he spoke. "You mean, like, puberty?"
"A baby becoming a toddler, a toddler becoming a child, a child becoming a teenager...that's what I mean." Prism explained with a few demonstrative gestures of his large hands.
"How long are we talking here? Decades? Centuries?" Srell asked.
"It takes an elementeitan 2000 years to develop from a baby to a child capable of walking and speaking, for example." Prism said to Srell. Prism's lips formed a half-smile when he saw the disbelief on Srell's face.
"That's a bit absurd. Caring for a baby for over a millennium sounds like total and complete hell." Lorias said as he leaned against the wall near Ursun.
"When a being lives for tens of thousands of years, a millennium is perceived in a similar way that you all perceive years." Prism said with a shrug. "But just like your babies, my race's infants and toddlers spend most of their time asleep. Our naps can last for centuries at a time."
"So then how old are you? 14,000 years?" Leanna spoke as if she was being made fun of. The scales that Prism was speaking in bothered her a great deal, and she didn't understand why. "It sounds like you're finally ready to tell us the truth, so please, elucidate us."
"There's a slowing in development that happens once my species enters puberty. Our magical bodies place a great strain on our corporeal ones, so we end up needing to take long periods of dormancy to restructure our physical forms." Prism continued to speak. When he saw the pained impatience on the faces of his teammates, he gulped and summoned what courage he could to share one of the many truths he'd been hiding from them. "I'm about 35,000 years old. BUT I've spent much of that in hibernation." He quickly said before he lost his nerve.
"No way. That's just silly." Srell said as he shook his head over and over again.
"Sounds like I just got a lot richer." Lorias said as he looked snidely around the room at each of his teammates.
"I was way off...dammit, how could you have been right?" Leanna grabbed her head and groaned loudly at Lorias. "Srell's correct, it's absolutely ridiculous how old you are, Prism."
"Wait, you all took bets on my age!?" Prism stood up and pointed at them.
"Of course we did. Don't you know us at all?" Ursun smirked at Prism before walking over and pulling him into a bear hug that squeezed the air out of Prism's lungs. Ursun leaned over and whispered, "It took guts to finally share something like that with us, kid" into Prism's ear before letting him go.
"Yeah, I just...don't want to be thought of as some...unknowable, unfeeling immortal being. That's usually how I'm treated by shorter-life species when I share my real age with them." Prism said with an exasperated clenching of his fists as he stood before Ursun, who still towered over him and everyone else.
"Why does it matter that much to you, Prism? Your year with us is probably like a millisecond to you." Leanna said a bit spitefully. She'd begun handling her dronepack again, no longer even looking at Prism.
"That's not..." Prism tried to say. He felt his deep voice become almost as high as it used to be.
The floor beneath their feet suddenly began to rumble, sending each of them into an alert panic. They ran to hold onto whatever was nearby to avoid being thrown about the bay. An alarm began blaring from the various speakers scattered around the transport bay.
"What's going on, pilots!?" Ursun yelled as he held onto a leatherine strap that hung from an especially tall overhead rack.
"Not sure, sir. It seems that the flow of air around the Titian is being disrupted somehow. The bio-computer is still analyzing..." The pilot started to explain.
"Slow us down right now! Get us out of supersonic!" Leanna screamed, sending a small bit of feedback to the pilots' headsets through the mics installed throughout the bay.
The ship began to shake more severely as the fast-moving airflows around it became more unstable. Even the fascia that kept the internal cabins stable couldn't prevent the transport bay from vibrating more intensely.
"Do as she says!" Ursun shouted.
"Yes, sir!" The pilot said.
The ship began decelerating, causing it to shake less and less. Ursun looked over at Leanna, and she anticipated why.
"Sir, our ship may be invisible, but the air moving around us isn't. At least, that's what I th-" Leanna said.
Prism raised his hands up defeatedly and said, "It isn't. Sorry, that's a lot trickier to manage."
"What happened to the ship?" Srell yelled.
"Lasers, most likely." Leanna said. When she saw the confusion on the faces of the men around her, she continued. "Our enemies fired some high-intensity lasers at the airstream surrounding our ship to make it unstable. That, in turn, introduced a severe amount of drag on the ship, which would have led to us crashing into the ocean."
"Laser hit air around ship. Ship shake. Ship almost crash." Srell said, earning an eye-roll from Leanna.
"My invisibility magic is still working. Our slower speed should make our movement easier to mask." Prism said. His brown irises became blue in color while he layered the enchant he'd placed on the tiltjet to increase its effect.
"Pilots, what's the status of the ship?" Ursun asked loudly. He'd calmed down since the Titian had stopped shaking, but he knew that they were still in danger. The alarm soon stopped blaring, which he thought was a bit premature.
"Leanna was right, the bio-computer detected the long-range laser attack. It estimates that the laser cannon is located on an island about 100 kilometers away." The female co-pilot said.
"The Vadamites, probably. They've improved the range and power of their lasers, it seems." Lorias said.
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The alarm began to ring through the ship's cabins again, putting RED-1 back on edge. Before he could ask, Ursun heard the click of the intercom system. "We're heating up. Not sure if it’s a laser or some other energy weapon being directed at the hull." The co-pilot said nervously through the bay's speakers.
"They must be tracking our movements based on the Titian's effects on its surroundings." Leanna said. "I doubt your magic can hide our presence completely." She turned and said to Prism, who was still trying to expand the field of invisibility around the ship.
"Yeah, we're dealing with supercomputers that can perceive of minute changes in the environment." Ursun nodded to Leanna as he spoke. "Cut the invisibility, Prism. Focus on defending the ship instead. I have a feeling we're in for a fight."
"Yes, sir." Prism said dejectedly as he let out a labored breath.
His eyes shifted to a golden color as he surrounded the Titian in an aura of protective magics that acted as a force field. He soon perceived the large amount of energy being directed at their moving ship. With a wave of his hands before him, he intensified his magic at the bow and the starboard side to stop the energy from damaging the ship any further.
"Temperature of the hull is lowering, sir. Whatever Prism is doing is working." The co-pilot communicated. "However, we've got enemies incoming from the east and southeast. Fighsaus AND lightfighter jets, all coming from a large Vadamite dreadnought about 200 kilometers southeast of us.”
“Any reason we’re just detecting them now!?” Srell shouted.
“The directed energy attacks temporarily blinded our sensors.” The co-pilot quickly answered.
“Get us back to supersonic.” Ursun ordered with a measured but booming voice.
After a few seconds of moving at the same standard speed, the intercom clicked to life again. “The starboard engine was damaged in the energy attack. We can’t accelerate much faster than we are now.” The pilot said seriously enough to concern everyone else.
“Can you repair it, Prism?” Leanna asked, watching as he stood quietly near the center of the bay with his eyes closed. He waved and twisted his hands in flowing motions in front of his chest.
“Yes, but it’ll take a while. I’m still maintaining the ward around the ship, after all.” Prism said. His voice echoed unnaturally off the walls of the bay.
“How long will it take you?” Ursun asked as he walked over to the weapons console.
“10 minutes, give or take.” Prism said with an ethereal voice suffused with magic.
Lorias and Srell buckled themselves into the flight seats lining a small section of the port-side wall within the cabin. Leanna took a seat in the glossy black leatherine chair beside the one that Ursun sat in. She and the commander both fastened the straps hanging down the sides of their chairs tightly across their chests and waists. They all knew how wild things were going to get.
Ursun activated the weapon control console before them, causing the large black screens above the consoles to display the Titian’s surroundings. Buttons and switches of all manner of shapes and sizes lined the surface of the console, some of which glowed. Ursun grabbed a joystick near his section, and Leanna did the same.
“Pilots, we have to give Prism 10 minutes to repair the engine. I need the fanciest flying you’ve got while Leanna and I shoot these queenies out of the sky.” Ursun said with grit and a bit of excitement.
“Yes, sir.” The pilots said in unison over the intercom.
The dozens of small saucer-like ships and arrow-shaped jet planes, each several kilometers away and closing, began firing a barrage of missiles at the Titian. The fusion-powered tiltjet was not only visible; it was shining brightly with a golden sheen of defensive energy surrounding it. The Titian began to dive through the air as its automated missile defense systems came to life, firing invisible beams of pulsed microwaves to neutralize the missiles. Such technology was trivial in its implementation aboard larger craft, and missiles merely served as warning shots in most engagements. Most aircraft, however, were shielded from such EM interference.
Gunports opened along the top portions of the Titian's wing sections as Ursun and Leanna activated its weapons. A spray of 40mm shells were fired from its long black chain guns just as the Sguvan lightfighter jets came into range first. Several of the smooth, sleek aircraft were shot out of the sky from a mixture of direct hits and air bursts. However, over a dozen of the jets evaded the bio-computer-assisted aim of the guns entirely.
The bronze-colored lightfighters shimmered in the light of the sun as they dove downwards to pursue the Titian. The jets flitted and flipped in elaborate formations to avoid the high-explosive rounds and the numerous deadly fragments the rounds released when they exploded. Soon, the lightfighters were firing their own armor-piercing rounds at the Titian, despite its own acrobatic movements.
"Each hit...an additional second...Each second...pain..." Prism said in a distant, reverberating tone. His feet hovered slightly above the floor of the bay, and the golden light from his eyes began to shine more brightly.
"He's in a trance." Lorias rolled his eyes and said, still sitting beside Srell as the ship turned and flipped upside down.
"At least we can kind of understand what he's saying this time." Srell said as he gripped the safety straps running down his chest tightly in time for a barrel roll. "I'm gonna barf if this keeps up..."
"We're doing the best we can, Prism! These gnats are sticking real close to us!" Leanna shouted before she fired a small cluster of missiles at an especially close lightfighter, destroying it. The blast rocked the Titian despite its magical force field. "Damn!" She then exclaimed.
Prism let out a grunt that rang in the minds of his teammates. He was jerked backwards in the air a meter or so, still floating rather than standing. "10...becomes 15..." He said, drawing his knees up to his chest before he began floating in the fetal position before Lorias and Srell.
Most of the lightfighter jets stayed close to the Titian as it tried in vain to outmaneuver them. If it weren't for Prism's protective magic, the tiltjet would have sustained enough damage to send it hurtling into the ocean below. But even magic had its limits.
"Stay with us, Prism!" Ursun yelled as he kept firing the ship's cannons fruitlessly at the darting lightfighters. He gritted his teeth when he saw numerous new ships appear on his console's sensor readout. "Fighsaus now in range! Looks like there's 50 of them!" He said before changing his targets to the slower, slightly less agile ships.
The Fighsaus, or Fightersaucers, used precision fans within a domed, ducted saucer, giving the aircraft its name. Powerful airflows directed at the bottom surface of the saucer lifted the craft into the air, while its many ducts allowed it to change direction. The flying saucers, which typically had one pilot, had plenty of smart-turrets to do plenty of damage once the ships converged on their target.
"This is an ambush, no doubt about it." Lorias sighed, crossing his arms over his chest harness as the Titian flipped upside down again but for a moment.
"They must've known when we were leaving! Twinsdamned spies!" Srell cursed.
"These fucking lightfighters are up to something!" Leanna cursed too, which she rarely did. She used the Titian's smaller guns to fire at the jet planes that were practically hugging their ship. She feared causing another lightfighter's engine to explode so close to the Titian, but she was running out of options. "What if..." She thought aloud to herself when she saw some of the lightfighters move even closer to the Titian's glowing hull.
While Ursun unleashed a chain of air bursting ammunition at the approaching masses of fighsaus, a special alarm began blaring throughout the cabin. "Proximity alert!" Ursun yelled in case any of his people didn't know what the alarm meant. "They're on us...the lightfighters are laying directly on the hull!" He yelled out in concerned anger that bordered on panic.
Before anyone could say anything else, the five lightfighter jets that had managed to fly onto the Titian self-destructed simultaneously. The entirety of the tiltjet shook violently enough to give a few of its seated passengers whiplash. Prism screamed in agony as his mental focus was torn asunder, causing him to hit the metal flooring of the transport bay hard. The golden light in his eyes faded as his barrier of magic dissolved from the hull.
"Damage report!" Ursun shouted as the others shook and rubbed their battered heads. He continued firing his chain gun at the fighsaus that had begun shooting at the Titian in its unprotected state.
"Minor damage. It's pretty miraculous, sir. We should all be chunks falling into the sea right now." The co-pilot's feminine voice was full of relief.
"We aren't safe yet! Keep the ship steady and give us as much speed as you can." Ursun replied. He tapped a few glowing buttons before slamming his fist down on one of the larger switches on the console. "Prism! Time for a field test of our fancy little combo!"
Prism slowly raised himself off the ground and looked over at Leanna and Srell, who were both disoriented. He could make out Ursun's voice, but Prism's senses were muffled from the neurological shock of abruptly leaving his trance. Prism brought his heavy eyes over to the weapon's console, watching Leanna frantically touching the controls in what seemed like slow motion.
As his eyes moved over to where Ursun was sitting, Prism instead saw large black boots block his field of view. He soon felt himself being raised roughly by his black shirt. He grabbed the massive fist that lifted him, which was wrapped around the fabric of the shirt, before looking up at his captor. Prism was soon staring groggily into Ursun's bright green eyes.
Prism then felt a strong slap across his face, dispelling what was left of his dazedness.
"Sync up with the plasma cannon, or whatever it is that you need to do to it." Ursun said harshly to get Prism's attention.
"Right, of course, I understand..." Prism said softly before being let down onto his booted feet by his commander.
Ursun walked back over to the weapons console and began powering up the large, long barreled plasma cannon that had retracted from the roof of the Titian. He looked over at Prism, making sure that the elementeitan was doing as he was told. Prism raised his hands up towards the ceiling of the bay, where the plasma conduits that pumped power throughout the ship were hidden. He pushed out what was left of his body's mana reserves up into the conduits, through the flows of energetic plasma and into the very structure of the plasma cannon itself.
Soon, the Titian began to glow again, just as Prism's eyes began to. But the light it radiated wasn't gold, but a bright variety of hues and shades of many colors. The fighsau pilots that had begun to fire upon the hull were nearly blinded by the shining ship. Its prominence was focused on the exposed cannon that the enemy pilots had hoped to destroy first.
Prism felt his feet shake beneath him as the Titian picked up speed despite its still-damaged right jet. The fighsaus stayed on them, and a new formation of lightfighters came into range as the tiltjet accelerated closer to the dreadnought. The enemies were hesitant to approach the incandescent Titian before them, but they had their orders.
"Is it ready!?" Ursun shouted over to Prism.
"It is ready." Prism said calmly as his eyes became so bright that they were hard to look at.
Ursun pulled a sliding lever near his joystick all the way up its track and then pressed a button on that lever, activating the full power of the plasma cannon. The Titian hummed as the magical power Prism directed into the cannon was released as well. The magic augmented the beam of plasma that the cannon normally fired, creating homing strands of brilliant prismatic energy that sought out each enemy ship that pursued the tiltjet. The strands moved like snakes through the air, colliding with each fighsau and lightfighter jet, triggering radiant explosions that looked more like colorful fireworks displays than anything else.
"It's...beautiful..." Leanna said as she watched the event unfold all around the Titian on the monitors of the weapons console.
Lorias and Srell held hands in silence as they looked out of the window opposite to their seats, dazzled by the light show.
"Enemy contacts?" Ursun asked the pilots in an attempt to verify his own readings.
"Zero, sir. All enemy ships have been neutralized..." The co-pilot said in audible disbelief.
"The first field test of the Prismatic Plasma Cannon looks to be a success." Ursun said with a smirk back at Prism. Ursun's face took on a less positive visage when he saw what Prism was doing, however.
"This...will be...faster."
Prism's entire body, which was hovering in the air once again, glowed with the same opalescent light that he'd enwreathed the Titian in. He reached out his hands towards the nose of the ship before suddenly striking a powerful pose that kept his right hand outstretched. Each passenger aboard the tiltjet felt a soothing warmth as the entirety of the Titian and its contents started to shine.
"Oun Da!"
The alien words reverberated throughout the area of sea and sky that the Titian flew through. The ship then seemingly became a bolt of pure energy, firing itself into the distance as the dreadnought released another group of fighter aircraft to pursue them. Those enemy pilots soon realized that their target was long gone, far out of the range of their sensors.
