All thoughts of guilt were gone. At least for the moment. Her heart pounded. Oh god. Oh god. Deelie. Deelie. "[color=ffe63d]Deelie![/color]"

Her ears were ringing. There was no time to wait for someone to extract her. No time for her to rappel out, even if the rope and harness had remained in the cockpit for the duel. So what else was she to do but throw [i]Ablaze[/i] down, resting the side of its head against the ash-and-ichor grass as she finally, [i]finally[/i], disconnected. The heat of her phase slipped from her, to be replaced with the frigid air of the cockpit. Her whole body was [i]soaked[/i] in sweat. Her leg hurt like fire. Her leg, and her—her everything. It was all sore.

She'd seen [i]Dragon[/i] get tossed around like a ragdoll. 

The pains faded. The terror remained.

Yanking herself out of the seat and falling to the wall of the cockpit, she bared her teeth, struggled up to the sideways skullport, and squeezed her way out.

Half climbing and half sliding her way down the ravaged head of her Savior, her feet—tiny human feet—nearly fell out from underneath her as they stepped on soil for the first time in what felt like eons. And she [i]did[/i] go down, stumbling, falling, cracking her knee on a rock. But it didn't matter. She ran. Frantically. Across the cracked, baked earth, hot air still rising from it. Everything was forgotten as she scrambled, barely staying upright, barely staying [i]comprehensible[/i]. She wasn't even sure she could hear through the ringing in her ears.

"[color=ffe63d]Deelie, Deelie, [i]Deelie![/i][/color]" As she passed the shattered fragments of [i]Dragon[/i]'s jaw, her voice escalated to a hyperventilating [i]squeal,[/i] the voice of a desperate child who's lost something very important. [i]"[color=ffe63d]Oh god, Deelie![/color]"[/i]