The Fall of the City of Steel

Resurgence

Acridoidea crushed the crying boy to her chest, trying to stop his tears and her own. She promised herself that no one would ever know of the two arrows she had fired at Damon.

The weight of Damon's loss finally began to permeate Rico's mind, and he began to cry. Emilia followed, then James. Gravely, Vespoidea explained the tragedy to her baffled kin.

"What happens now?" Tony asked.

Everyone looked to him; he was supposed to know.

"We wait," Acridoidea resolved, not letting go of Jerry. "Keep listening to the radio. If they find us out and send a bomber, run. If they don't, we strike as planned."

"What's going to happen to Damon?" sobbed Jerry.

"I don't know," Acridoidea confessed. "I doubt that we're getting his body back."

Jerry hung his head again.

"We only heard one gunshot," Acridoidea mentioned. "It's possible that they spared your parents after... after they found him."

"You think so? Jerry asked, allowing his hopes to rise again.

"I don't know," Acridoidea admitted.

Vespoidea sat down and read her magazine, trying to forget the boy who had so quickly appeared and vanished. She could not.

"Brazen usually means brave, in a poorly thought-out way," she heard the dead boy recite, as she read. "But in this case, it just means 'made of bronze'."

"Velocity just means speed in a straight line."

"Adroit means skillful. In this case, it means that he did a good job of manning that submarine."

Vespoidea leaned her head back against the tree she sat against. It would be a long wait until sundown.

* * *

As the sun set behind him, James forced an errant bolt out of its socket with his wrench, pulling with angry force to extract the overly tightened thing. Next to him, a record spun slowly on its turntable as his phonograph sang him an angry rock anthem.

"You're supposed to be listening to the radio," Emilia reminded, walking up to him.

"A fat lot of good it did us last time," James grumbled.

"If they send a bomber, we need to know before it gets here," Emilia argued.

"They won't," James asserted, not taking his eyes away from his work. "They've sent a Dragoon flying over here maybe a thousand times by now, and not once did they find anything suspicious. A patrol plane from this direction won't change their minds about what's here."

James sighed.

"We're fighting a bunch of idiots," he mumbled. "Some gosh darn fool can fly an airplane right to their doorstep, and they think nothing of it."

"You never swear, do you?" Emilia noticed.

"Swearing doesn't solve anything," James justified. "You can't raise the dead by swearing at them. If you could, I could have gotten my mother back."

Giving up, Emilia walked away; she knew there was no use in speaking to James while he was in one of his grim spells. She saw Tony and Rico sitting against trees, across from one another, conversing in mumbles.

"Are you doing okay, sugar?" Emilia asked, placing a hand on Tony's shoulder.

"I'm surviving," Tony reported, placing a hand on hers. "There's not much else I can do. Are alright, baby?"