Isaac's scarf fluttered behind him, a scrap of purple cloth gifted to him by the Lady Watari obscuring the damnable collar about his throat. While it was a detestable affectation that was a constant reminder of the lethal nature of this competition, the token of Skylar's favour was a much more agreeable accessory as it trailed through the sky.
At last, he was back in the pilot's seat, the thrumming of the engine before him as the propeller blades scythed through the air a melody that had been sorely absent during the months he had been trapped in this realm. The wind whipped around the curvature of his flight helmet, aerodynamic armour offering no resistance to the blinding breeze as his biplane cruised over the isle far beneath, hiding the beatific smile blooming behind the crimson steel.
The fact that black clouds of flak blossomed around him, shrapnel shrieking past his ears, did nothing to dampen his mood as he rolled around an incoming round, the detonation doing little more than scratching the paint. He was in the skies once more- let that golden god-king that they had deigned to place
above him trample upon the earth. The Red Baron ruled the sky.
A wall of detonations raised itself before him, tracer rounds audibly pinging off the reinforced hull of his vessel, seeking to cage him within a prison of lead and fire. A pity that they believed they had a chance against The Don. He adjusted his radio as he pushed his yoke deeper into his machine as it began a steep drive, the familiar rush of blood into his head as reassuring a sensation as a lover's touch. The G-forces pressed him deep into the leather of his chair as the assorted speakers strung together with bared copper wire sparked to life,
emitting a battle anthem plucked from a distant realm. This was his demesne- the fine line between blackout and redline, and he'd not let these miscreated groundlings claim it from him.
He could see them far beneath him, scrambling like ants throughout the trenches and bunker complexes, flak cannons laden with barnacles and outcroppings of coral as they spewed death into the skies. They were not men- there were too many teeth and tentacles burdening their shambling steps to even pretend to be human. Still, though, their hands were nimble enough as a salvo of rounds
pinged off the hull, broken lead pelting his helmet like a ruinous rain as he dived through the hail of incoming fire.
The Red Baron answered with a roar of its own as Isaac's thumbs depressed the trigger studs set into the yoke. Depleted uranium rounds ripped through a ground crew and the earth around them as he pitched himself up, a lead weight seemingly crashing into his stomach as his body struggled to keep up with the momentum. Perhaps it would have been best to take a few seconds to simply breathe, but instead, Isaac reached down into the side of the cockpit, one hand still clinging to the control mechanisms as he unleashed sporadic bursts of fire against the infantry scrambling through their ditches and dug-outs.
He'd not seen fit to install a bomb compartment within his beloved biplane- but the incompetence of his service staff had seen him thoroughly over-stocked with '44.
As his steed screamed over the enemy gun emplacements, Isaac lobbed a wine bottle laden with a burning wick from the cockpit, a fine Santagrian vintage splashing against the dredged-up deck gun and its malformed crew. Fire engulfed them, monstrous screams torn from throats still filled with seawater lamenting their fate until the ammunition cooked off, a fireball rising in his wake as it mercifully consumed their twisted forms and wretched memory.
He could hear more gunfire over the cacophony that surrounded him, the roar of his engine, the blood rushing in his ears.
The peasants. There was still plenty of glory left to carve out from the Foe this day, and they sought to rob it from him so early? He fixed his gaze over a great complex of concrete rising out from the blasted earth, hollow tubules of dead coral bursting from its otherwise normal constraints, firing slits chattering with machine gun fire as field guns bellowed from deeper within.
Well- if that was the case, then let them come.
The yoke was pressed into his chest as Isaac heaved it upwards, the Red Baron climbing, climbing, climbing over the bunker- until its engine stalled, a moment of sheet, utter silence dominating the battlefield where once there was the heartbeat of the great steed beneath him.
As he fell, Isaac slammed a gauntlet-clad fist into a button set into the side of his cockpit, and a great grinding of gears began deep within the metallic skin of his mount. The wings folded inwards, cocooning around the cockpit as great limbs of pistons and steel cables burst from the chassis- one hand grasping a ten-foot pole laden with a missile that seemed to be duct-taped to its end, while the other held a shining sabre scaled for this massive machine.
Within its core, Isaac's limbs were bound in a complex series of wires, each exertion of his muscles moving the machine like a puppet- and now, his feet pressed themselves against the crossbar of his spear, the great machine descending like an arrow into the heart of the enemy, the warhead at its tip gleaming like a predator's fang in the light of dawn.
Let them witness the glory of Santagria.
