You would never believe, watching the flight of the Plovers, that Redana has known how to pilot one for less than a month. She is a [i]natural.[/i] Even as the [i]Veterosk[/i] thunders after her, she is one step ahead, light as a petal on the breeze; her palms are steady on the grips, for all that they’re sweaty inside her gloves. The spitting lightning of ELF weaponry never so much as grazes her, and more than one of her pursuers finds themselves burning out instead.

Admittedly, they are creating a net of presence around her, one they will be able to reinforce easily; but getting out of the net isn’t her goal. She’s getting to that ship, speared within the skull of the biggest thing she can imagine existing. Sapphires swirl in her wake, and the cabin is full of the rich smell of lilies.

Two Plovers end up too close, having failed to scramble into position in time, failed sheepdogs: blam, blam!! Her Belchers vomit forth chaos, and through the smoke she hurls, clotheslining her opponents decisively. She doesn’t even draw her sword, just slams them into the side of a light cruiser and keeps going[1]. She has to; to stop is to be caught.

When she launches herself towards the beak of the long-dead monster, fecund with long spikes of its dark blue blood, immense wide-based fountains frozen even as they were flecked upon its lips, there is gunfire behind her, there is shrapnel scoring on her back, but she holds steady and refuses to flinch.

She may be caught in a trap, but the thought has not yet sunk in. She is thrilling with adrenaline and the freedom of flight, and the ache in her shoulder where she was pierced by a very thunderbolt has become only a hole punched in her jacket, a pale white scar that will remain for whole days, perhaps even a week. No blemish can last longer on the heir of Nero.

She smashes through a needle of blood, Plover’s arms held in front of the cockpit, and hits the ground hard; the feedback shakes the entire suit. But she has made it, and the thrill of victory drowns out any other concern[2].

***

[1]: let it be known that she does stop to let out a wild, barbaric yawp of delight and performs a fist-pump that could dent steel before vaulting up the length of the light cruiser.

[2]: if you asked her right now, Redana would probably say: “I can cut a hole through, right? How hard could it be?” This is because Redana has not tried to apply her sword to the near-petrified, frozen flesh; or to cut a hole large enough for a Plover to tunnel through with an Anti-Denizen weapon; or even paid much thought to her errand beyond “I have to fulfill my promise, and then I’ll figure things out from there.”[3]

[3]: pushing one’s way out through the excretory system is not only undignified, gross, and likely to be surprisingly dangerous; it is also the sort of thing a sailor would refuse to do. Poseidon would never let you take to the stars again, and that’s assuming your crew would ever let you live it down.

***

[[b]7[/b] to Overcome the pursuit; it’s a very temporary solution. As a result, this is also a successful Get Away, and Redana gets to choose two options, marking Safely and Quickly.]