I fly by and shatter the speed of sound, sky high --
Characters: Kimihiro Watanuki, Ichigo Kurosaki [AIM log]
Content: THEY'RE LEAVING ON A JET PLANE~ for the mountains, to catch themselves a banshee. They find her, but things don't quite go as planned.
Setting: The hangar to the mountains
Time: Early morning the day of the cave-ins, to late afternoon of that same day
Warnings: Standard language, tsundere, blood and tentacle warnings
Notes: This log is xbox-huge, so it'll be posted in installments with several days in between, because I don't want to flood the comm. If anyone actually manages to get through all this teal deer, Watanuki will cook the venison for them and it will be delicious.
The worst thing about cold weather, Ichigo mused as tied his scarf around his neck, was when you were dressed for the freezing cold you were about to face, but were still inside. It was hot and uncomfortable, and Ichigo really didn't like the feeling. But he had no choice -- better to break a small sweat here than deal with freezing winds up in the air. And they would be freezing, Ichigo knew. He had only been in Tulgim once before, and that had been in the dead of winter. While it probably wouldn't be quite as bad in the summer, there was still snow up in the mountains, and to the mountains they were going.
He glanced at the door that led into the makeshift-hangar. He'd just finished a final check of Zangetsu, and now he just had to wait for his other pair of eyes to show up. If this banshee was really a ghost-monster, then he needed a wingman who could see it. That left one person on the ship: Kimihiro Watanuki. True, it had only been a few weeks since the guy had been injured, but Ichigo would have been fine to fly by now. Besides, Watanuki wouldn't have to do anything besides sit in the plane and look for banshees. That wouldn't be too stressful on any lingering damage, would it?
One thing that annoyed Watanuki about Ichigo was his idea of how long it took to heal from a hideous near-death experience. Ichigo, being a strange, too-powerful, probably-not-entirely-human person who won third place in races not twenty-four hours after giving massive blood transfusions, existed on a different plane of healing than normal people like Watanuki did. Yes, with the skill of the healers on board, he was fine, but Ichigo shouldn't have just assumed that!
...Well. Maybe he was just looking for something to be angry about, he admitted grudgingly as he made his way to the hangar. Honestly, he was feeling fine - he'd been working at full capacity for some time now - and was actually kind of looking forward to getting off the ship and into the fresh air for awhile. It felt good to have his strength back enough to make expeditions into the wilderness. And Ichigo had become bearable enough in the intervening time that having to do this with him wasn't so soul-crushing a prospect. Worth living through to help Rhyme, anyway.
He entered the hangar and saw Ichigo standing beside his plane, as bundled up as Watanuki was. It was warm in here, but the breeze from outside was chill, and they weren't even in the air yet. "Hey," he called to Ichigo through the scarf wrapped around his nose and mouth, waving a gloved hand to get his attention. "Is it ready?"
"'Course it is," Ichigo replied, climbing into the cockpit. "You need a hand up?" he asked, glancing over his shoulder. There were rungs of a sort cut into Zangetsu's side; slight, but enough to climb up. He watched Watanuki for a moment, making sure the other got into the plane okay before he sat down.
"I'm fine," Watanuki said, climbing the rungs and settling himself without too much trouble. He didn't want to start out this trip making Ichigo help him out when so often it ended up that way. He tried to force himself not to start gripping the nearest available metal bit. Now that he was in the plane it was starting to hit home that they were going to have to fly it.
"Okay," Ichigo shrugged, sliding into his seat and leaning back. "Make sure you strap yourself in," he advised, doing so himself. The hangar doors were wide open already, and he probably didn't have to worry about closing them, since the ship was docked. So, he started flipping the switches that ignited the engine. He was used to how this new Zangetsu handled, but it hadn't quite lost its novelty yet. A small smirk crossed his face, and as he pulled his flight goggles down, he pushed the throttle forward. The plane leapt forward obediently, shooting through the open doors and soaring out into the air. It lost a little bit of altitude, but its acceleration quickly surpassed gravity, and it arced into the sky. Ichigo pulled on the yoke, making a tight 180-degree turn, and shooting off towards the mountains on the horizon.
Watanuki strapped himself in hastily, swallowing hard when the plane began to tremble with the engine's ignition. When it shot out of the hangar, he stopped feigning bravado, squeezed his eyes shut, and ducked down as far as he could, waiting for impact.
When it did not come for a few minutes, he dared to open one eye, though he did not raise himself up in his seat even remotely. He had no interest in looking down just yet. "Is it flying?" he ventured to bellow over the wind.
"What the hell do you think?" Ichigo shot back, roaring to be heard over the engine. What kind of question was that? Had this guy never been in a plane before in his life?
It'd take them a while to clear the town, and the banshee would be in the mountains. After the initial turn, he decided to keep things fairly steady. As boring as it would be, and as natural as flying was for him, the kid sounded kind of freaked out.
No, he had not in fact been in a plane before in his life! When Yuuko had made him travel, they had always gone overland, or in an airship - never in something this tiny, where the wind could make him feel like it was going to tear him out of his seat by the hair and there was no solid, comforting deck between him and the ground very, very far below.
"Well, I couldn't tell!" Watanuki shouted back at Ichigo. Yelling kept his mind off the terror. "It could have been plummeting for all I knew!"
"You really haven't flown before, have you?" Ichigo snapped back. "Take it from me, free-fall feels a lot different!" An ornery part of him was tempted to send them into a nose-dive -- a controlled one, of course -- just to show the kid what was what. But he decided against it. He didn't want to make the kid faint or anything like that. Watanuki was here to help him, after all. "If we were falling, you'd know!"
"For your information, no, I HAVEN'T flown before!" Watanuki snapped, forcing himself to straighten a little from the almost-ball he'd been curled into. That disdainful tone out of Ichigo made him want to grit his teeth and force himself to deal with the thousands of feet between them and solid ground and the very thin metal shell between him and empty air-- no! no, he wasn't going to think about that! He was going to pull his scarf up over his nose and mouth and open his eyes and look, because he was going to get used to it before he had to find the banshee. He added as he tugged at his scarf, "If it's all the same to you I'd rather NOT find out what it feels like today!"
"With any luck, you won't have to!" It'd only take them about ten more minutes to reach the mountains. Then they could start looking for the banshee herself. Since it was a ghost, it wouldn't leave tracks like most monsters did, and probably didn't have any kind of home. But spirits were drawn to both him and Watanuki, right? So if they were in the same place, chances were any ghost-monsters in the area would find them. Ichigo could deal with the unwanted ones, and on top of that, they were in the air. Only some monsters flew.
He kept a steady pace as they cut through the air, mountains rising in front of them. The town was practically built on the lower slopes, although the ground under them was mostly mines. They’d left the outskirts of the city behind them.
"With any luck" was not a reassuring thing to hear from the person flying the tin can they were sitting in. Talking was good distraction. "Just how far out are we going?" Watanuki called. The wind in his face was fierce and hard to shout over, but he had practice at high volume.
Zangetsu was not a tin can-- "We're going out to the mountains!" Ichigo shouted back. "Pretty high, too -- I don't think I can manage some of the heights, but I should be able to cover most of the slopes!" They reached the mountains, soaring out over scattered bushes and patches of trees. The vegetation was sparse at best; this was hard land, mostly rock and ice. He flew the plane low, leaving about forty feet between himself and the highest treetops.
Something in Watanuki stirred suddenly as Ichigo turned the nose of the plane to the southwest. He frowned and leaned to look ahead at the snowy mountain; there was nothing there. But something nagged at him. "Ichigo!" he shouted. "I think... I think we're going the wrong way!" He couldn't have said how he knew it. But suddenly the thought of continuing in the direction they were going filled him with unquestionable dread. Like walking into a nest of hungry spirits.
Ichigo frowned. "What the hell?" he yelled over his shoulder. "What do you mean, going the wrong way? Are you telling me you know where to find this banshee?" He had no idea what had gotten into Watanuki, and had to fight down a surge of irritation coupled with curiosity. Did Watanuki know something?
"Yes! ...No! I don't know!" It wasn't that he thought anything lay in the other direction. He had no idea. All he knew was that something was telling him not to go this way. And if there was one thing he had learned from Yuuko, it was that when strange invisible forces compelled you to do something, you did it. "Just turn the plane around!" He paused. "Trust me!"
Trust him? Trust one of this crazy kid's feelings? Watanuki's feelings had led him to jump in front of a sword for Ichigo, he remembered. But then again, Ichigo didn't have a particular reason for going south, and something in Watanuki's tone made him pause. He stared at Watanuki over his shoulder for a moment, gauging the look on his face -- or at least what he could see of it around and through the goggles and hat and scarf Watanuki had on against the wind and cold -- before turning around.
"Okay. We'll head the other way."
Besides, maybe he could give the kid the benefit of the doubt for once. The plane cut a wide arc through the air, tilting only slightly to the side, as they turned back north.
The instant the wing dipped to turn them, Watanuki's queasiness vanished. By the time they were heading back north, he felt completely fine. Even a little silly for having insisted so strongly. Ichigo must think he was insane. Anyone else would. "...Sorry," he called grudgingly, not really wanting to apologize but feeling stupid enough to. "I just... had a feeling."
"Must've been one hell of a feeling," Ichigo said casually, without turning to look at his passenger. Watanuki really had sounded freaked out. Sure, Watanuki was crazy. Maybe there was nothing to this. But then again, Watanuki had a sense Ichigo didn't, he remembered. He had been able to see that Ichigo had been in some kind of supernatural pain on Long Night. Either way, Ichigo figured he wasn't about to find out what it had been, since they were headed north. "Just keep your eyes open."
"Yeah." He wasn't going to say it, of course, but Watanuki was grudgingly grateful that Ichigo hadn't said anything more. He leaned back over the side of his seat and trained his eyes on the snowy ground again.
Hours later, they were still flying over expanses of snow and ice and rock, and while there had been an easily-evaded monster or two, there was no sign of anything that could be called a banshee. Judging from the quality of light in the sky, it was late afternoon -- probably about four o'clock. Since it was midsummer, the days were longer than usual, but he should still start heading back. As near as he could figure it, a straight shot back to the ship would take them about four hours (they had zigzagged to cover more ground), which meant they had just enough daylight. "Hey, I'm gonna turn around," Ichigo called. "We'll try again tomorrow in daylight, maybe cover the other side of the mountains." Maybe there was a banshee to the south, he thought, and that was what Watanuki's feeling had been about.
Watanuki's eyes were growing tired from straining at the white ground for four hours. Between their rapid movement and the reflection of the sun on the snow, he was just as ready to turn back. Besides, already the heat of the day was beginning to fade; he could only imagine how cold it would be by the time they got back to the ship.
He was about to move back to the center of his seat and declare his agreement with Ichigo's plan when suddenly, a new shape in the unchanging ground caught his attention. He paused and squinted, the better to see it.
It was a human shape-- he squinted and leaned further-- a human shape, with gray smoke wafting gently around its feet-- though where was that coming from? It looked like a woman, walking alone in the snow miles deep into the wilderness, and clearly staring back up at the plane.
“Ichigo!" Watanuki said sharply, flapping an arm at the pilot's back as though he could see it. "Down and right! There! Look!"
Ichigo leaned forward, straining up to get a good look. "It's not human, whatever it is," he called, "But it's not a monster either. Let's go check it out. I can't say for sure, but it might be what we're looking fo--what the hell is that?!"
Something else had materialized near the woman. It was much larger than she was, and was quite clearly monstrous. Tendrils that looked over a hundred feet long danced around her in the snow, and wordlessly, she pointed to the plane.
Watanuki wasn't the only one having bad feelings today, Ichigo realized. He made to turn the plane up and away, out of reach of the creature.
Watanuki gripped the side for dear life as the plane moved upward, the combined shock of a sudden tentacle monster and increase in altitude completely reversing his flailing instinct. "WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?!" he bellowed in agreement, craning his neck to see pursuit before it killed them. "And-- ICHIGO FLY FASTER IT IS COMING THIS WAY!"
"WHAT DO YOU THINK I'M TRYING TO DO?!" he shouted back, gunning the engine --
--only for the plane to careen off to the side, arcing through the air in an uncontrolled curve. A glance to the side showed that one of the tendrils had siezed the right wing, Ichigo gritted his teeth and hauled on the steering, trying to compensate for the sudden tether. He had to get the plane back under control, and then land it on the ground so he could fight this thing. He angled the nose down. If no more tentacles attached themselves to his plane, he could probably pull off a quick landing without too much trouble--
Watanuki tried his absolute hardest not to scream. That would not help and Ichigo needed to concentrate and so he closed his eyes and gritted his teeth hard and managed to keep it down to a high-pitched, strangled whimper that even in his terror he hoped Ichigo had not heard over the wind.
The plane lurched. Watanuki opened his eyes to a tentacle wrapped firmly around the nose and pulling the plane in two directions. At this point, he pretty much gave up on not screaming.
Ichigo's mouth was twisted in a grimace as he thought fast. His right hand strayed down to where his sword was nestled at his side. He had to cut one of these, and of the two, the one on the nose took priority.
Luckily, he had a passenger who could hold the plane steady for a few moments.
Unluckily, that passenger had just gone into hysterics. "GET A HOLD OF YOURSELF!" Ichigo yelled. "LISTEN UP, THERE'S SOMETHING I NEED YOU TO DO!" He was already half-out of his seat, one hand on the yoke, the other pulling Zangetsu out. The plane was flying in a big, unsteady, irregular circle, but as long as Ichigo kept the yoke pulled down, they were only losing a little bit of altitude.
Wait, what the hell-- Ichigo was-- was he climbing out of the plane?! Panic, strangely enough, brought Watanuki back to his senses. "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING, YOU IDIOT?!" he shouted. "YOU'RE NOT STEERING!"
"THAT'S WHAT YOU NEED TO DO!" Ichigo roared back, over the whistling wind and another, more eldritch sound from down below somewhere. "IT'S NOT HARD, JUST PULL THIS THING DOWN AS HARD AS YOU CAN AND KEEP IT THERE!" He kept a hand on the yoke until he was sure Watanuki had it. "C'MON, HURRY, THERE'S NO TIME!"
"WHAT--?!" But there was less than no time to argue. Watanuki hesitated a desperate microsecond in which he realized that there was absolutely no other course of action. It took all the mental constitution he had to force himself out of his seat and stretch over the distance to the yoke, which he grabbed like a drowning man and held with all his might. Had the plane crashed at that moment, he would probably still have been gripping it when he hit the ground. "HURRY UP!" he bellowed, bracing his legs and squeezing his eyes shut again.
Ichigo didn't waste his breath with a reply. Instead, he climbed out over the sheet of glass that served as a windshield, and gripping to its edge with one hand, brought his sword down, slicing through the appendage with one motion.
Unfortunately, this coupled with Watanuki's grip on the steering sent the plane tilting nearly onto its side. Ichigo's gloved hand had a deathgrip on the glass half-dome, and it was an instant before he was back in the plane and the yoke was under his control again. "Alright, I'm bringing us down!" he yelled. "Strap yourself back in if you can -- this is gonna be rough!" He didn't have time to be gentle.
Watanuki wasted absolutely no time getting back into his seat and resuming gripping anything nearby that could be gripped. The plane was no longer flying straight and smooth - besides being pointed very decidedly downward it was shuddering in the wind now, and Watanuki was reminded of his original doubt about this metal behemoth's ability to fly. He didn't squeeze his eyes shut this time - awful as it was, he wanted to see just how much space was left between them and the ground. He could only trust in Ichigo's ability to land it.
The plane soared downward in a wide curve; the tendril still clutched the one wing, making flying away impossible, but Ichigo could still land the plane within a certain radius. And land it he did; they were a hundred feet up now -- seventy -- forty --
Snap.
Ichigo's head whirled around to take in the damage -- shit. Half a wing was gone, and the only thing keeping the plane from spinning like a top was the tentacle gripping the side. This was bad. This was really bad.
Blood pounded in Ichigo's hears as he fought down panic and focused on landing the plane. That was the only important thing. There was no time for fear.
Watanuki's trust was not misplaced.
Ichigo pulled the lever to release the landing gear, and brought them down the thirty remaining feet. With a whoosh, the careening plane hit the top of the snow, cutting a crescent through it and sending up a twenty-foot spray of snow in their wake. The snow itself was about ten feet deep -- high enough to slow them down quickly without dealing much more damage to the plane.
Finally, they stopped with a jerk, and the engine cut out, leaving a moment of sudden, eerie silence.
It took Watanuki a long minute to calm down enough to realize that he was still breathing. He'd closed his eyes involuntarily in the instant before impact, and it was only the sudden cramping of his clenched jaw that made him realize that that hadn't been the moment of death. He opened his eyes slowly, heart pounding and adrenaline racing through him so fast he had to blink to bring the world into focus.
They weren't dead. They weren't--
"Ow--" With the euphoria came a sharp pain in his arm, so sudden it almost doubled him over. He'd been gripping the side of the plane with the broken wing in their descent, and in the madness of the moment had not had time to feel the piece of metal that had lodged itself in his skin. His arm wasn't broken and the shrapnel wasn't large, but the pain was enough to be more than a little distracting.
...Come to think of it-- "Is it gone?" Watanuki asked, clutching his injured arm with the opposite hand and twisting to look over his shoulder with a wince.
While Watanuki had been calming down, Ichigo had unstrapped himself, grabbed his sword, and vaulted out of the plane and into the snow, ready to fight this thing. He severed the tentacle attached to his plane, only for it to be replaced by two more, snaking above the snow towards him. Dammit, the deep snow impeded his movement horribly, although there was a layer that was packed tight enough to stand on. In effect, the snow came up to his waist. "What do you think?" Ichigo shot over his shoulder, as a tendril wrapped around his sword. "Get down and stay there!" He'd fight this thing, and get close enough to finish it off. He gave a mighty yank on his sword, pulling it free and leaving deep gashes in the tentacle -- as another snaked towards him, he brought the sword around, wading through the snow to meet it.
The creature was a little over a hundred feet away, and the woman stood with it. As she caught sight of Ichigo, her eyes widened, and she said something inaudible to the creature.
And the tentacles' movement changed completely. Four of them shot right at Ichigo, wrapping around both his upper arms, his waist, and one leg. He gasped in shock -- they hadn't been that fast before! "What the hell?!" he yelled as he twisted his sword, severing the one around his waist. But he couldn't reach the others before they pulled, dragging him towards the creature and the woman. His struggling body left a long furrow in the snow; he fought to get free of the remaining three, and succeeded in cutting one, but two more took its place.
Watanuki hadn't wasted any time ducking down as far as he could, but the seat he was in was tiny and he couldn't help but see what happened next - his stomach twisted in sheer horror as Ichigo was dragged through the snow, his sword arm useless. Clearly, the woman was controlling the tentacle-monster - but Ichigo wasn't going to be doing anything about either of them as long as he was hanging there, and he sure as hell wasn't going to last much longer like that--
The pain in his arm forgotten, Watanuki struggled out of the plane seat and jumped onto the snow, promptly sinking in up to his waist but immediately clambering out of the hole and making a run for the woman in white. He had no idea what he was planning to do. But she wasn't going to kill Ichigo. Hopefully the tentacle-monster was distracted enough by Ichigo's cutting off its limbs overhead that he could make it close enough to... to do something.
"Stop!" he found himself shouting as he ran. "Don't-- don't do this!"
Content: THEY'RE LEAVING ON A JET PLANE~ for the mountains, to catch themselves a banshee. They find her, but things don't quite go as planned.
Setting: The hangar to the mountains
Time: Early morning the day of the cave-ins, to late afternoon of that same day
Warnings: Standard language, tsundere, blood and tentacle warnings
Notes: This log is xbox-huge, so it'll be posted in installments with several days in between, because I don't want to flood the comm. If anyone actually manages to get through all this teal deer, Watanuki will cook the venison for them and it will be delicious.
The worst thing about cold weather, Ichigo mused as tied his scarf around his neck, was when you were dressed for the freezing cold you were about to face, but were still inside. It was hot and uncomfortable, and Ichigo really didn't like the feeling. But he had no choice -- better to break a small sweat here than deal with freezing winds up in the air. And they would be freezing, Ichigo knew. He had only been in Tulgim once before, and that had been in the dead of winter. While it probably wouldn't be quite as bad in the summer, there was still snow up in the mountains, and to the mountains they were going.
He glanced at the door that led into the makeshift-hangar. He'd just finished a final check of Zangetsu, and now he just had to wait for his other pair of eyes to show up. If this banshee was really a ghost-monster, then he needed a wingman who could see it. That left one person on the ship: Kimihiro Watanuki. True, it had only been a few weeks since the guy had been injured, but Ichigo would have been fine to fly by now. Besides, Watanuki wouldn't have to do anything besides sit in the plane and look for banshees. That wouldn't be too stressful on any lingering damage, would it?
One thing that annoyed Watanuki about Ichigo was his idea of how long it took to heal from a hideous near-death experience. Ichigo, being a strange, too-powerful, probably-not-entirely-human person who won third place in races not twenty-four hours after giving massive blood transfusions, existed on a different plane of healing than normal people like Watanuki did. Yes, with the skill of the healers on board, he was fine, but Ichigo shouldn't have just assumed that!
...Well. Maybe he was just looking for something to be angry about, he admitted grudgingly as he made his way to the hangar. Honestly, he was feeling fine - he'd been working at full capacity for some time now - and was actually kind of looking forward to getting off the ship and into the fresh air for awhile. It felt good to have his strength back enough to make expeditions into the wilderness. And Ichigo had become bearable enough in the intervening time that having to do this with him wasn't so soul-crushing a prospect. Worth living through to help Rhyme, anyway.
He entered the hangar and saw Ichigo standing beside his plane, as bundled up as Watanuki was. It was warm in here, but the breeze from outside was chill, and they weren't even in the air yet. "Hey," he called to Ichigo through the scarf wrapped around his nose and mouth, waving a gloved hand to get his attention. "Is it ready?"
"'Course it is," Ichigo replied, climbing into the cockpit. "You need a hand up?" he asked, glancing over his shoulder. There were rungs of a sort cut into Zangetsu's side; slight, but enough to climb up. He watched Watanuki for a moment, making sure the other got into the plane okay before he sat down.
"I'm fine," Watanuki said, climbing the rungs and settling himself without too much trouble. He didn't want to start out this trip making Ichigo help him out when so often it ended up that way. He tried to force himself not to start gripping the nearest available metal bit. Now that he was in the plane it was starting to hit home that they were going to have to fly it.
"Okay," Ichigo shrugged, sliding into his seat and leaning back. "Make sure you strap yourself in," he advised, doing so himself. The hangar doors were wide open already, and he probably didn't have to worry about closing them, since the ship was docked. So, he started flipping the switches that ignited the engine. He was used to how this new Zangetsu handled, but it hadn't quite lost its novelty yet. A small smirk crossed his face, and as he pulled his flight goggles down, he pushed the throttle forward. The plane leapt forward obediently, shooting through the open doors and soaring out into the air. It lost a little bit of altitude, but its acceleration quickly surpassed gravity, and it arced into the sky. Ichigo pulled on the yoke, making a tight 180-degree turn, and shooting off towards the mountains on the horizon.
Watanuki strapped himself in hastily, swallowing hard when the plane began to tremble with the engine's ignition. When it shot out of the hangar, he stopped feigning bravado, squeezed his eyes shut, and ducked down as far as he could, waiting for impact.
When it did not come for a few minutes, he dared to open one eye, though he did not raise himself up in his seat even remotely. He had no interest in looking down just yet. "Is it flying?" he ventured to bellow over the wind.
"What the hell do you think?" Ichigo shot back, roaring to be heard over the engine. What kind of question was that? Had this guy never been in a plane before in his life?
It'd take them a while to clear the town, and the banshee would be in the mountains. After the initial turn, he decided to keep things fairly steady. As boring as it would be, and as natural as flying was for him, the kid sounded kind of freaked out.
No, he had not in fact been in a plane before in his life! When Yuuko had made him travel, they had always gone overland, or in an airship - never in something this tiny, where the wind could make him feel like it was going to tear him out of his seat by the hair and there was no solid, comforting deck between him and the ground very, very far below.
"Well, I couldn't tell!" Watanuki shouted back at Ichigo. Yelling kept his mind off the terror. "It could have been plummeting for all I knew!"
"You really haven't flown before, have you?" Ichigo snapped back. "Take it from me, free-fall feels a lot different!" An ornery part of him was tempted to send them into a nose-dive -- a controlled one, of course -- just to show the kid what was what. But he decided against it. He didn't want to make the kid faint or anything like that. Watanuki was here to help him, after all. "If we were falling, you'd know!"
"For your information, no, I HAVEN'T flown before!" Watanuki snapped, forcing himself to straighten a little from the almost-ball he'd been curled into. That disdainful tone out of Ichigo made him want to grit his teeth and force himself to deal with the thousands of feet between them and solid ground and the very thin metal shell between him and empty air-- no! no, he wasn't going to think about that! He was going to pull his scarf up over his nose and mouth and open his eyes and look, because he was going to get used to it before he had to find the banshee. He added as he tugged at his scarf, "If it's all the same to you I'd rather NOT find out what it feels like today!"
"With any luck, you won't have to!" It'd only take them about ten more minutes to reach the mountains. Then they could start looking for the banshee herself. Since it was a ghost, it wouldn't leave tracks like most monsters did, and probably didn't have any kind of home. But spirits were drawn to both him and Watanuki, right? So if they were in the same place, chances were any ghost-monsters in the area would find them. Ichigo could deal with the unwanted ones, and on top of that, they were in the air. Only some monsters flew.
He kept a steady pace as they cut through the air, mountains rising in front of them. The town was practically built on the lower slopes, although the ground under them was mostly mines. They’d left the outskirts of the city behind them.
"With any luck" was not a reassuring thing to hear from the person flying the tin can they were sitting in. Talking was good distraction. "Just how far out are we going?" Watanuki called. The wind in his face was fierce and hard to shout over, but he had practice at high volume.
Zangetsu was not a tin can-- "We're going out to the mountains!" Ichigo shouted back. "Pretty high, too -- I don't think I can manage some of the heights, but I should be able to cover most of the slopes!" They reached the mountains, soaring out over scattered bushes and patches of trees. The vegetation was sparse at best; this was hard land, mostly rock and ice. He flew the plane low, leaving about forty feet between himself and the highest treetops.
Something in Watanuki stirred suddenly as Ichigo turned the nose of the plane to the southwest. He frowned and leaned to look ahead at the snowy mountain; there was nothing there. But something nagged at him. "Ichigo!" he shouted. "I think... I think we're going the wrong way!" He couldn't have said how he knew it. But suddenly the thought of continuing in the direction they were going filled him with unquestionable dread. Like walking into a nest of hungry spirits.
Ichigo frowned. "What the hell?" he yelled over his shoulder. "What do you mean, going the wrong way? Are you telling me you know where to find this banshee?" He had no idea what had gotten into Watanuki, and had to fight down a surge of irritation coupled with curiosity. Did Watanuki know something?
"Yes! ...No! I don't know!" It wasn't that he thought anything lay in the other direction. He had no idea. All he knew was that something was telling him not to go this way. And if there was one thing he had learned from Yuuko, it was that when strange invisible forces compelled you to do something, you did it. "Just turn the plane around!" He paused. "Trust me!"
Trust him? Trust one of this crazy kid's feelings? Watanuki's feelings had led him to jump in front of a sword for Ichigo, he remembered. But then again, Ichigo didn't have a particular reason for going south, and something in Watanuki's tone made him pause. He stared at Watanuki over his shoulder for a moment, gauging the look on his face -- or at least what he could see of it around and through the goggles and hat and scarf Watanuki had on against the wind and cold -- before turning around.
"Okay. We'll head the other way."
Besides, maybe he could give the kid the benefit of the doubt for once. The plane cut a wide arc through the air, tilting only slightly to the side, as they turned back north.
The instant the wing dipped to turn them, Watanuki's queasiness vanished. By the time they were heading back north, he felt completely fine. Even a little silly for having insisted so strongly. Ichigo must think he was insane. Anyone else would. "...Sorry," he called grudgingly, not really wanting to apologize but feeling stupid enough to. "I just... had a feeling."
"Must've been one hell of a feeling," Ichigo said casually, without turning to look at his passenger. Watanuki really had sounded freaked out. Sure, Watanuki was crazy. Maybe there was nothing to this. But then again, Watanuki had a sense Ichigo didn't, he remembered. He had been able to see that Ichigo had been in some kind of supernatural pain on Long Night. Either way, Ichigo figured he wasn't about to find out what it had been, since they were headed north. "Just keep your eyes open."
"Yeah." He wasn't going to say it, of course, but Watanuki was grudgingly grateful that Ichigo hadn't said anything more. He leaned back over the side of his seat and trained his eyes on the snowy ground again.
Hours later, they were still flying over expanses of snow and ice and rock, and while there had been an easily-evaded monster or two, there was no sign of anything that could be called a banshee. Judging from the quality of light in the sky, it was late afternoon -- probably about four o'clock. Since it was midsummer, the days were longer than usual, but he should still start heading back. As near as he could figure it, a straight shot back to the ship would take them about four hours (they had zigzagged to cover more ground), which meant they had just enough daylight. "Hey, I'm gonna turn around," Ichigo called. "We'll try again tomorrow in daylight, maybe cover the other side of the mountains." Maybe there was a banshee to the south, he thought, and that was what Watanuki's feeling had been about.
Watanuki's eyes were growing tired from straining at the white ground for four hours. Between their rapid movement and the reflection of the sun on the snow, he was just as ready to turn back. Besides, already the heat of the day was beginning to fade; he could only imagine how cold it would be by the time they got back to the ship.
He was about to move back to the center of his seat and declare his agreement with Ichigo's plan when suddenly, a new shape in the unchanging ground caught his attention. He paused and squinted, the better to see it.
It was a human shape-- he squinted and leaned further-- a human shape, with gray smoke wafting gently around its feet-- though where was that coming from? It looked like a woman, walking alone in the snow miles deep into the wilderness, and clearly staring back up at the plane.
“Ichigo!" Watanuki said sharply, flapping an arm at the pilot's back as though he could see it. "Down and right! There! Look!"
Ichigo leaned forward, straining up to get a good look. "It's not human, whatever it is," he called, "But it's not a monster either. Let's go check it out. I can't say for sure, but it might be what we're looking fo--what the hell is that?!"
Something else had materialized near the woman. It was much larger than she was, and was quite clearly monstrous. Tendrils that looked over a hundred feet long danced around her in the snow, and wordlessly, she pointed to the plane.
Watanuki wasn't the only one having bad feelings today, Ichigo realized. He made to turn the plane up and away, out of reach of the creature.
Watanuki gripped the side for dear life as the plane moved upward, the combined shock of a sudden tentacle monster and increase in altitude completely reversing his flailing instinct. "WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?!" he bellowed in agreement, craning his neck to see pursuit before it killed them. "And-- ICHIGO FLY FASTER IT IS COMING THIS WAY!"
"WHAT DO YOU THINK I'M TRYING TO DO?!" he shouted back, gunning the engine --
--only for the plane to careen off to the side, arcing through the air in an uncontrolled curve. A glance to the side showed that one of the tendrils had siezed the right wing, Ichigo gritted his teeth and hauled on the steering, trying to compensate for the sudden tether. He had to get the plane back under control, and then land it on the ground so he could fight this thing. He angled the nose down. If no more tentacles attached themselves to his plane, he could probably pull off a quick landing without too much trouble--
Watanuki tried his absolute hardest not to scream. That would not help and Ichigo needed to concentrate and so he closed his eyes and gritted his teeth hard and managed to keep it down to a high-pitched, strangled whimper that even in his terror he hoped Ichigo had not heard over the wind.
The plane lurched. Watanuki opened his eyes to a tentacle wrapped firmly around the nose and pulling the plane in two directions. At this point, he pretty much gave up on not screaming.
Ichigo's mouth was twisted in a grimace as he thought fast. His right hand strayed down to where his sword was nestled at his side. He had to cut one of these, and of the two, the one on the nose took priority.
Luckily, he had a passenger who could hold the plane steady for a few moments.
Unluckily, that passenger had just gone into hysterics. "GET A HOLD OF YOURSELF!" Ichigo yelled. "LISTEN UP, THERE'S SOMETHING I NEED YOU TO DO!" He was already half-out of his seat, one hand on the yoke, the other pulling Zangetsu out. The plane was flying in a big, unsteady, irregular circle, but as long as Ichigo kept the yoke pulled down, they were only losing a little bit of altitude.
Wait, what the hell-- Ichigo was-- was he climbing out of the plane?! Panic, strangely enough, brought Watanuki back to his senses. "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING, YOU IDIOT?!" he shouted. "YOU'RE NOT STEERING!"
"THAT'S WHAT YOU NEED TO DO!" Ichigo roared back, over the whistling wind and another, more eldritch sound from down below somewhere. "IT'S NOT HARD, JUST PULL THIS THING DOWN AS HARD AS YOU CAN AND KEEP IT THERE!" He kept a hand on the yoke until he was sure Watanuki had it. "C'MON, HURRY, THERE'S NO TIME!"
"WHAT--?!" But there was less than no time to argue. Watanuki hesitated a desperate microsecond in which he realized that there was absolutely no other course of action. It took all the mental constitution he had to force himself out of his seat and stretch over the distance to the yoke, which he grabbed like a drowning man and held with all his might. Had the plane crashed at that moment, he would probably still have been gripping it when he hit the ground. "HURRY UP!" he bellowed, bracing his legs and squeezing his eyes shut again.
Ichigo didn't waste his breath with a reply. Instead, he climbed out over the sheet of glass that served as a windshield, and gripping to its edge with one hand, brought his sword down, slicing through the appendage with one motion.
Unfortunately, this coupled with Watanuki's grip on the steering sent the plane tilting nearly onto its side. Ichigo's gloved hand had a deathgrip on the glass half-dome, and it was an instant before he was back in the plane and the yoke was under his control again. "Alright, I'm bringing us down!" he yelled. "Strap yourself back in if you can -- this is gonna be rough!" He didn't have time to be gentle.
Watanuki wasted absolutely no time getting back into his seat and resuming gripping anything nearby that could be gripped. The plane was no longer flying straight and smooth - besides being pointed very decidedly downward it was shuddering in the wind now, and Watanuki was reminded of his original doubt about this metal behemoth's ability to fly. He didn't squeeze his eyes shut this time - awful as it was, he wanted to see just how much space was left between them and the ground. He could only trust in Ichigo's ability to land it.
The plane soared downward in a wide curve; the tendril still clutched the one wing, making flying away impossible, but Ichigo could still land the plane within a certain radius. And land it he did; they were a hundred feet up now -- seventy -- forty --
Snap.
Ichigo's head whirled around to take in the damage -- shit. Half a wing was gone, and the only thing keeping the plane from spinning like a top was the tentacle gripping the side. This was bad. This was really bad.
Blood pounded in Ichigo's hears as he fought down panic and focused on landing the plane. That was the only important thing. There was no time for fear.
Watanuki's trust was not misplaced.
Ichigo pulled the lever to release the landing gear, and brought them down the thirty remaining feet. With a whoosh, the careening plane hit the top of the snow, cutting a crescent through it and sending up a twenty-foot spray of snow in their wake. The snow itself was about ten feet deep -- high enough to slow them down quickly without dealing much more damage to the plane.
Finally, they stopped with a jerk, and the engine cut out, leaving a moment of sudden, eerie silence.
It took Watanuki a long minute to calm down enough to realize that he was still breathing. He'd closed his eyes involuntarily in the instant before impact, and it was only the sudden cramping of his clenched jaw that made him realize that that hadn't been the moment of death. He opened his eyes slowly, heart pounding and adrenaline racing through him so fast he had to blink to bring the world into focus.
They weren't dead. They weren't--
"Ow--" With the euphoria came a sharp pain in his arm, so sudden it almost doubled him over. He'd been gripping the side of the plane with the broken wing in their descent, and in the madness of the moment had not had time to feel the piece of metal that had lodged itself in his skin. His arm wasn't broken and the shrapnel wasn't large, but the pain was enough to be more than a little distracting.
...Come to think of it-- "Is it gone?" Watanuki asked, clutching his injured arm with the opposite hand and twisting to look over his shoulder with a wince.
While Watanuki had been calming down, Ichigo had unstrapped himself, grabbed his sword, and vaulted out of the plane and into the snow, ready to fight this thing. He severed the tentacle attached to his plane, only for it to be replaced by two more, snaking above the snow towards him. Dammit, the deep snow impeded his movement horribly, although there was a layer that was packed tight enough to stand on. In effect, the snow came up to his waist. "What do you think?" Ichigo shot over his shoulder, as a tendril wrapped around his sword. "Get down and stay there!" He'd fight this thing, and get close enough to finish it off. He gave a mighty yank on his sword, pulling it free and leaving deep gashes in the tentacle -- as another snaked towards him, he brought the sword around, wading through the snow to meet it.
The creature was a little over a hundred feet away, and the woman stood with it. As she caught sight of Ichigo, her eyes widened, and she said something inaudible to the creature.
And the tentacles' movement changed completely. Four of them shot right at Ichigo, wrapping around both his upper arms, his waist, and one leg. He gasped in shock -- they hadn't been that fast before! "What the hell?!" he yelled as he twisted his sword, severing the one around his waist. But he couldn't reach the others before they pulled, dragging him towards the creature and the woman. His struggling body left a long furrow in the snow; he fought to get free of the remaining three, and succeeded in cutting one, but two more took its place.
Watanuki hadn't wasted any time ducking down as far as he could, but the seat he was in was tiny and he couldn't help but see what happened next - his stomach twisted in sheer horror as Ichigo was dragged through the snow, his sword arm useless. Clearly, the woman was controlling the tentacle-monster - but Ichigo wasn't going to be doing anything about either of them as long as he was hanging there, and he sure as hell wasn't going to last much longer like that--
The pain in his arm forgotten, Watanuki struggled out of the plane seat and jumped onto the snow, promptly sinking in up to his waist but immediately clambering out of the hole and making a run for the woman in white. He had no idea what he was planning to do. But she wasn't going to kill Ichigo. Hopefully the tentacle-monster was distracted enough by Ichigo's cutting off its limbs overhead that he could make it close enough to... to do something.
"Stop!" he found himself shouting as he ran. "Don't-- don't do this!"