One helluva nervous aircraft carrier here, surrounded by dragons all roaring, and with their dignity they cry—

“IT’S BAAACK!” “Rough it up!” “Fuck off with ya!~”

I’m just slightly disappointed, really, but I guess they’d make alright buddies if you got to know ’em well enough.

The entire space has turned into a disco ball subspace. Lasers are cracking the air into fractals more than broken glass could ever, and missile streaks followed after supersonic dragons dodging desperately for their lives—

“No no no nO NO—”

He fuckin’ exploded.

“Gaagghh, my ego!”

The same dragon zips past the poof of smoke.

Looks like the tanky bastards’ll be fine. Meanwhile, I’ll be hightailing it out of here. I mean, there’s a fuckin’ death pyramid just looming over the mountain ridge. Not sure how big it is, exactly, but a bunch of the Liberty Dragons are firing off breath lasers at it, but the explosions at the end are tiny.

It’s probably another floating fortress. It’s trading similarly-sized lasers and cannon fire with the Liberty Dragons. My shield ain’t even recharged yet, so fuck that.

{Sam, I’m fuckin’ off outta here!}

She’s still dazed. {Sam? Oi—uhh, Oreo? Oreo?!} Not you, too!

At the least, they’re not disagreeing, so I go ahead and start to turn around—way too fucking slowly.

That’s when a bolt of lightning hits the bridge. My consciousness flickers like some sort of memory lapse between my first beer and the next morning.

“Grey! Grey! Are you okay?!”

Oh, it’s Marge. I’m a little dizzy but, haha, it’s Marge. She’s tap-tapping away at a keyboard in her little control room. Haha.

“We’re falling!”

Haha? HA?

It hurts like fuck, but I put my all into the engines like a case of magic constipation. I can’t say I’m sobered-up, but I don’t wanna crash, at least.

{I’m fine! This Dick—is working! I think…}

“Grey?! Great!”

Another bolt of lightning cracks over me. I’m not knocked out somehow, but a shimmer of blue breaks around me like glass. Must be some magic shit. Ah, wait, we had a shield, didn’t we? Shouldn’t it be charged by now or something—

“Aghh, no, no, no! That was the shield! So useless!”

Ah. We had a shield.

{Margiee, I’m reeaal fucked in the head right now, so uh, I’m putting my all into flying, ’kay?~}

“What are you, drunk?! No, wait, that lightning attack must have done something—alright, you can count on me!”

Haha. How reliable. Let’s be besties~

***

No, no, no, no! Ya gurl’s stressed right now! Shut up!

[Would you like to reboot—]

No! Stupid prompts! All power to shields! That’s all I want, damn you!

Grey’s straight-up gone and I can’t find Sam! I’m not good with responsibilities! I wanna cry! To hell with it! Stupid high-tech control terminal! Running away from responsibilities is the only valid answer to 10 compile errors in a row!

W-who is that? Is that Sophia? Is that Sophia?!

“SOPHIAA~”

I throw myself around her waist while she’s finishing off a corner fire with a fire extinguisher and look up to her, shooting my damn bestest, biggest, poutiest puppy eyes.

“S-señorita?!”

While I still have tears in my eyes, I toss a bunch of instructions booklets at her.

“Get the mages who operated the magic cannons back then! (sniffle) Grey’s drunk as heck, I dunno where Sam is, and I’m really stressed right now! (sniffle)”

“P-por dios—este, here.” She hands me the firing extinguisher. “Please relax yourself using this.”

She runs out of the control room with the booklets. I’m still crying, but at least it’s drowned out by the sounds of fire extinguishing! See, it’s the sound of me not being useless!

… Greeeey, Saaaam, come baaaack~ (sniffle)

***

Señorita is such a señorita—sometimes reliable, but often a child. Maybe I just too often think of my daughter when I see her. She is not my daughter, I know—but there are some things I cannot be helped about.

The lights in the corridors are flickering between white and red, and some of them are dark altogether—but a Candle spell is enough.

I pass by scenes of men dragging long hoses in front of fire-choked corridors. They must be magical fire, as there is clearly nothing actually burning. They must have been lit by the attack that hit the ship earlier. There is no smoke, thank God, but the flames themselves are still hot.

Reaching the magitechnicians’ quarters, I find that the door is locked. I knock a few times. “My name is Sophia, assistant to Señorita Margarita Colada! Please—” “No way!”

What? Pendejos.

“You’re just another demon! We ain’t dumb!”

What?

Naturally, I turn around. Thankfully, the monster I expected is still far down the corridor. It is glowing with a crest of flames shooting across its back like a certain strange hairstyle. Walking on all fours and with a form and speed like a sloth, each step it takes leaves magical flames shooting out of the floor.

Furthermore, “Help!” it screams in a human-like voice. This must be why the magitechnicians refuse to open the door.

I can still run further down the corridor, and so my escape is not blocked. However, the booklets in my pockets say “Magic Cannon User Manual,” and the magitechnicians are the only ones with prior experience with the cannons. I think señorita’s intention is to get them to use the cannons.

If I escape now, the magitechnicians will never be able to come out. My only choice is to fight.

The sloth-shaped flamecrest demon—yes, it is apt to call it a Flamecrest Sloth—is very slow, so I take my time to look for the appropriate weapon to kill it with. Unfortunately, all that I have in abundance are spellcores in my pockets that I keep for emergency. I do not think detonating them in an enclosed space would be healthy for me.

Ah, I think I can make one of those.

I helped the señorita develop so-called shaped charges for her magic missile imitations of this ship’s screaming missiles. Well, my help amounted to correcting some documents, but the basic principle was simple enough for the señorita to carefully explain to me.

However, I do not need something excessive like a shaped charge. Rather, I believe that this demon will easily die if you kicked it hard enough—if you were prepared to be burned by it in the process. Therefore, I must still explode it in some way.

What is interesting is the fact that explosions can be directed. I only need to direct one small explosion into the demon and the demon only. Somehow.

Hmm. Okay, that might work.

Conveniently, I have a small steel block in my pocket. I am slightly sentimental to part with it, since it is a gauge block I use in the laboratory, and it was one of the first things that señorita gifted me as her assistant.

Never mind. I am sure she will approve my abuse of our tools. She does even worse things to hers, anyway.

I start etching a shitty magic circle on one face of the gauge block. It is not my best work, but señorita’s discovery that “chaos” in the circle structure amplifies the strength of explosion magic is convenient here.

I do not have the luxury of using up my mana to charge my new steel block spellcore, so I pull out one of my pebble spellcores and transfer its mana to the new one.

Funny that I am finally using spellcores for what they were originally intended—to store energy for something other than itself. I can’t imagine how disappointed their creator must have been to discover that they can be easily overloaded and explode.

Finally, to cause shrapnel, I wriggle a thin gauge plate over the gauge block. Through some sort of manaless magic, the plate and gauge block stick together. In general, gauge plates can be stuck together by wriggling them together. I like to think that I am squeezing the air out, but señorita says that is not how they work. I still find it amazing.

At this point, the Flamecrest Sloth has moved an entire 5 meters. It is still very far down the corridor. “Help! Help!” it calls on broken repeat.

Thank you for waiting. However, please shut up.

I throw the explosive gauge block underhand, and it slides like a hockey puck to underneath of the demon. As a Mexican, the action is very similar to throwing chanclas at my husband’s knees. Also, as said husband’s proud wife, I am equally as proud of my accuracy in doing so.

As soon as the gauge block is under the demon’s chin, I sever the thread of mana still connected to my fingertips, and the top of the gauge block explodes, but only like a ridiculously-strong firework.

I don’t know if the steel plate I added truly produced shrapnel. Anyway, the demon’s head is completely gone. Its body slumps, and the flames on its back all extinguish.

I knock on the door. “I have defeated the flame demon! Please, come out!” I hope they come out with this.

“Lies and misinformation!”

Gah! “Pendejo! Hijo de puta! Come out already! I will explode this door and put you in the infirmary for two months if you do not come out this instant!”

And now, the death blow. “Anton!” I know you are in there, idiot husband.

***

O-oh no, so it really is her!

“Friends, that is, no doubt, my wife.”

“Huh? You know what those demons can do! Y’can’t just—”

I put on my grimmest, darkest face. “Please. If you truly wish to survive, you will open that door.”

There are chances that you simply must never take.

My emotions are transmitted, especially in those who, themselves, are married. The young one opens the door, and I greet my wife with a smile and a face full of sweat.

“S-sophia! I- I can’t believe that you are—”

I am inflicted with a concussion, and I am suddenly on the ground. I don’t remember her chanclas being this powerful.

Hm? Wait, on my face, this is an… instruction manual? It says “Magic Cannon User Manual”

… Don’t tell me …

“Señorita Colada wants the magic cannons firing with your hands, useless husband!”

What? “Is not the ship the one controlling them—”

“There are many things I do not know, Anton, but one which I do is that I have never heard the cannons fire even once!”

Por dios, I’m such an idiot. My fellow technicians are nodding in agreement, as if they have heard my own private thoughts. This is, perhaps, the solidarity of dedicated husbands.

“Friends, you’ve heard my wife—‘Honestly, I kinda heard my own wife’s voice for a moment there…’ ‘Yea, yea, I get’chya’—if the guns do not fire, the ship goes, and we will all go with it! We must survive! We must live! Let’s go!”

"“Yeah!”"

Besides a few interjecting voices, my speech went relatively well. My wife looks about 60% impressed. I haven’t had many chances to impress her, and so this will have to do.

As I pass by her, she whispers, “Come back alive.” If only my colleagues were not around right now, I would recreate one among many impassioned scenes from movies we had watched over the years.

Initially, we found ourselves as idiots once again when we faced a small pack of Flamecrests. Some passing marines, gunned them down, however, and escorted us after we explained our mission.

 

We are all on the elevator—after a head count, there are 30 men of the magitechnical wing and 9 marines with us. The elevator is still rising, but the explosions and roars resonate through the shaft above.

What we see when we reach the top is frightening, but my wife is a talented commissar whose orders grip me even if she is not here, and so I still have the heart to push on.

The scene above-deck is pure chaos. Dragons of unimaginable size are zooming over and around us as they explode and emerge unscathed, all the while firing great beams that should be able to annihilate a city in two swoops, but those beams do no damage against the inverted pyramid fortress floating over the mountain.

Some of the dragons are attempting to approach it, but its defenses are so dense that the dragons are turned away with overwhelming power. Rather, it seems more like the dragons are just too annoyed to approach it. It is like being peppered by acupuncture needles, I think; the damage is small, but you still would not attempt it.

Meanwhile, I also see some wyvern riders expertly weaving through the chaos to somehow deliver their powerful weapons towards the fortress, but only to be caught by the defenses in the end. I do see some streaks of missiles impacting and making bright lights, but I think they are somehow exploding before they reach the fortress. What tough defenses!

It is also here that we realize the thick walls of the ship have been softening the sounds of the explosions this whole time. Now that we are here, everything, all at once, is deafening all the time.

Thankfully, we are magitechnicians of the maintenance wing who must dangle perilously close to the ship’s screaming engines, and so Hearing Protection magic is among the basics of basics. Of course, we have brought our maintenance equipment, including safety cords. The magic cannons in question are close to the edge, after all.

A lightning bolt arcs from the floating fortress and hits the ship. For a moment, I am afraid of being electrocuted, but that strangely does not happen. However, the Hearing Protection is overwhelmed. The boom comes through, and it hurts, but we are not bleeding from the ears, at least.

Rather than that, we’re all floating!

“The fuck is this!” “I think we’re falling!” “What?!”

After a few seconds and 10 feet of altitude difference, we all slam back onto the deck. Someone shouts “Adhesion! Use Adhesion!” and we all use Adhesion magic on our work boots. We normally use it so that we do not stupidly slip on a trail of soap—which can be fatal, depending on what you are doing—but we would very much like to stick to the ground no matter what in this situation! To whoever suggested this, gracias!

Another bolt of lightning streaks through the sky. It’s very close, so we hear the boom.

We all agree that the floating fortress’s lightning must be stopped. We very much do not want to slowly drop altitude per lightning strike to the point that we are forced to crash land.

Hayyy, Dios mio.

Our commanders are unusually unreliable right now, and the ship is probably not in its right mind all the same. W-well, I think being repeatedly struck by lightning would tend to do that to someone, but anyway—

We are not finished yet! For we, the Magitechnical Wing, are only now about to draw our cards!