Johannes Volkner bid farewell to the days of not being used as bait. The Governor had made it all too clear exactly what role Heliopolis personnel would be playing in this expedition and relocation plan. They were going to catch the eye of the 'great beast in the sky'. At some point or another, Takahashi and Melion had arrived to rejoin the rest of the group, and Johannes scanned the rest of their group over quickly to make sure that everyone was there. Tadakatsu, Yoshinaka, Wilhelm, Pádraig, Jill, himself, Aylin, and Martin. Besides the two who had run off, everyone seemed to be present. Now that he'd had time to cool his head, he did worry a bit for those two's safety, but they'd ultimately decided to leave the group on their own accord. It was their decision to run away.

  For whatever reason, those thoughts sent a pang of hurt through his heart, but he didn't have time to think on it.

  Wilhelm had taken up the front and Yoshinaka took the chance to pull the cart. With everything calmed down, Johannes took the time to just take in the environment as they finally left the colonial village's ruins. Mexico was not like what he'd pictured at all. Lush, vibrant, humid and hot. The amount of colors, as they moved past the fire-scarred ruins and into the untouched wilds, was almost unbearable. From the brightest greens to the darkest browns, with a surprising amount of noise from the world around them. It was hard to believe this was so close to the death and violence they'd come from. Cypress and oak trees overhead helped to give them shade as they walked, trying to find passage through the thick shrubbery.

  Johannes whispered gently under his breath, even as he watched the beautiful scenery. There were two people who could easily pick up on such a whisper, and who would hopefully be able to look past the trees for the real purpose they'd taken this route. "The Aztecs have a 'great beast' in the sky. The color of wood and steel. Please, look out for it if you can." Though Melion gave no indication on whether or not she heard him, the way that Takahashi had turned back and narrowed her eyes made it clear both that the message was received, and that she was not a fan of him giving that message to her to begin with.

  ...He made a note to try and only speak with her through Melion, for the time being.

  Minutes stretched into over an hour of trekking, before finally something caught Melion's attention. The knight's helmet suddenly shifted, and they looked up, hand on the handle of their sword. "It's coming. This, mm, 'great beast' of yours."

  Everyone seemed to straighten up at that, except for Pádraig, who drew his sword and pointed it off towards the horizon, as if it could somehow reach the beast in question. He looked sort of gallant, then, and Johannes couldn't help but picture that in another life, he might've been some legendary knight or king, the wind swaying through his hair.

  Johannes drew Bellende Hunde, steadying his breath as he ran magical energy through it. Soon enough, the Rune of Kenaz poured free from the wand. Rune of Torches and Eyesight, in this case, allowing him to get a better view through the tree coverage. And what he saw shocked him, because both the Governor and Melion had been a bit mistaken in their initial estimates. The massive figure above in the sky was no beast. Bearing no less than twelve wings, and roaring internally, was a 'winged monster' akin to a gigantic aircraft, yet unlike any modern aircraft Johannes had ever seen.

  Its frame was snarled, twisted in a way, made from countless beams of wood and metal that seemed as if there should be no earthly way that such a thing could fly. Even as it soared through the air at breakneck speeds, it simply looked far too large, too bulky, and too cumbersome to ever get off the ground, much less maintain itself aloft in the undulating manner that it did.

  Johannes could understand why the Governor had asked them not to slay this 'beast', but simply to distract it. Even if they could get someone up to it, the chances of destroying something of such massive stature were almost nil. Boudica could perhaps pull it off if she used all her power, but it would depend on how well her fire held out against it. His eyes widened as his thoughts continued to jumble - speaking of Boudica, could they not carry a Spirit across the world on this same airship? Could they carry an entire warhost, and drop them into a fight at any point?

  He realized he'd been shaking, as the gigantic aircraft's engines bellowed so loudly that the ground around them shook and nearly took him to the ground. A loud, horrid roar, not unlike what he thought a dragon might sound like. The bottom doors of the aircraft slid open, dropping into two halves as everyone scurried to make some form of defensive measures for themselves. Melion picked up Takahashi and ran for it so quickly Johannes lost track of them entirely. Frankly, he couldn't blame them, and he even looked to Jill to see if she might want to do something similar.

  "If I try to carry you, I'll trip, y'know? You're a good bit bigger than I am." She'd practically read his mind, and quickly given an answer to his question before he even had time to ask it.

  That meant there were distressingly few options left to deal with the inevitable bombing run. Shielding - Possible but unlikely to seriously help. Between his jacket and an Algiz array, he didn't trust them to hold up to a genuine bombing run from such a massive aircraft. They could be compared to solid armor, but the defensive power of a bomb bunker was something else entirely. That left one major way to try and stop any bombs. He would need to intercept them at range so they would explode far from his comparatively squishy and delicate body. He had a few runes at his command that could possibly do that, he could manage it on at least a few bombs.

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  --And yet he never needed to. Before he could even swap to another Rune in an attempt to intercept the dropping bombardment, another Caller had already made a personal move to deal with them. Wilhelm drew his knife, and drove it into a tree several times. Bizarrely enough, though, Johannes could see several of the bombs that were dropping suddenly get punctured, as if by a knife themselves, before exploding high in the sky, some twenty meters away from the members of Heliopolis. The explosions were still deafening, but at such a distance, there was no real threat, just the already drastically weakened pushback of the shockwaves and a wave of heat pouring over their skin.

  The silver-haired man calmly put his knife away as if nothing had even happened, continuing to walk on. It was as if a genuine bombing run had been no more than a nuisance to him. Johannes felt his jaw set in envy once more, but didn't say anything about the scenario. If he was worse, he would simply need to improve. He would need to become someone similar in scale to Wilhelm, especially by the time he came back home.

  As the massive plane overshot the group, Johannes expected that it would have to turn around in a wide arc. After all, that was how a normal aircraft would deal with overshooting a target, especially at such an absolutely ridiculous size and scale. Yet, rather than turning in a conventional manner, it flipped up and back, exposing the top half of the craft to the ground, before flipping with half a roll. An Immelmann's turn.

  His eyes widened as his mind raced. It might have more bombs, or for that matter entirely separate weaponry. Flash of Inspiration warned him with a pang, and he used the Rune of Algiz from Bellende Hunde to erect a small ward without questioning it. Sure enough, several cracks sounded through the sky, so many that it almost sounded as if they'd become one droning sound as dirt, dust, and chunks of wood and rock blew up from the landscape around him. His first instinct was to say that it was a machine gun, but the thick smoke that tried to obscure the plane's form was too much for that. No, this was something far, far more primitive.

  Rather, looking at it, it had a similar construction to a gatling gun, but the weapon itself seemed to literally be constructed from dozens of arquebuses firing in a circular formation, in multiple rows. Thankfully, that probably meant that it was a one use weapon, but to those who had never seen warfare performed with advanced modern technology, he could only assume how utterly terrifying it would be to face. Worse yet though, from within the smoke, he could see that the bomb bay doors were opening again as it passed closer, readying for a second bombardment. Had they made an adjustment already to account for Wilhelm's capabilities? Who the hell were the pilots to make that sort of judgment call that easily and call for suppressive fire, on top of managing complex modern aerial maneuvers?

  Thankfully, any bullets that had come Johannes's own way had pinged off of the shield's convex form, and he was so-far unharmed. The Spirits had all more or less vacated the area, except for the two human vessels. Had they chosen to stay with the Callers, or were they too slow to leave the firing range? He didn't know, but Aylin stepped forward, reciting something that Johannes could barely hear over the chaos of the bombardment.

  Whatever she was doing, it seemed to be some form of spell or ritual, as he could practically feel a thrum of magical energy coursing through and from her, connecting to the ground itself as she spoke.

  “Upon this earth,

  On which we live

  Ussen has Power,

  This Power is mine

  For striking the enemy,

  I search for that Enemy

  Which only Ussen the Great,

  Can show to me.”

  Even as the bombs dropped, her words did not waver, seeming to be slow and fast all at once. In terms of actual speed, they were absurdly fast, but the measured and methodical way that she chanted them made them seem slow and deliberate, even as she drew a slew of knives from her belt.

  One. Two. Three. Four. Even through the haze of smoke and flaming death, she threw each knife skywards, striking one bomb after the next, and forcing them to detonate with unmatched precision. At first, Johannes couldn't help but wonder if she had used this spell to see through the obstructions similarly to how his glasses function, before he remembered something from orientation. Alongside Artifacts, there was a second key to any given Spirit's power. Aristeia, the moment of greatness. Special actions with deep impacts performed in their lives or legends that had cemented themselves as part of that selfsame Spirit.

  Whatever Spirit was inside of her, she had drawn forth its Aristeia to prevent the bombs from landing, her eyes not once looking through the smoke, yet her strikes landing unerringly despite any of that. He couldn't help but look on in awe at that - The power of a living human with access to a full Spirit's capabilities. She was breathing somewhat haggardly afterwards, yet she, and for that matter the rest of their entourage, was entirely unharmed by the explosives. He watched the plane fly past them again, yet this time it did not make another U-turn, complex maneuver or not. Instead, it continued to head deeper into the land, likely back to Tenochtitlan, from where it had originally been deployed.

  Had they only brought forth two rounds of bombs and some shots? That would certainly have been enough to take out an ordinary group of surviving refugees from the colony that they'd burnt away. Yet, it seemed more urgent than that, as the plane did not slow down in the slightest in midair, as if not worrying for the sake of fuel consumption but blitzing as fast as it could. Regardless of what or why, though... They had survived again. He'd been bailed out by Aylin and Wilhelm's prowess, but he could only see that he was in good hands. His allies were skilled, and powerful. Just maybe, they really could all get out of this alive.

  The rest of the journey to the other beachhead was thankfully much more uneventful. Four more hours of walking and swapping who was pulling the cart, and they had eventually arrived to the smiling face of the same Governor they'd already met, as well as a young man with a malicious, greedy countenance.