Mishil (미실), the captain of the Korean turtle boat from 柿 Tales.
She sits on the beach, near starved, drinking from leaf. Sea battle distant, Chinese temple warships fight Korean turtle boats, she watches. In passes between her bed preparation, leaves, decks are shattered by cannon, she extinguishes her shoreside fire, ships are boarded.
She sleeps to a deck battle's fight uncomfortably.
Slaughter by sword and fast gun, powder ignites suddenly and burns them all through. Thunder and lightning, rain.
She wakes in terror to the scorched Turtle Boat's dragon headed bow perched high over her. Staring up as it appears to stare down at her, she smiles tears streaming.
Mishil - Laughing loud, "Wake up !"
Her fellow banished lounge up from the beach and woods past, staring at and surrounding the intact vessel. Beached, burned, a crack across it's back shell.
Mishil - "Wake up !"
미실 ~ a persimmon tale
('Sympathy for the Devil' by Rolling Stones)
Nocturne
wakes in a hammock hanging from the cockpit dome, sounds of the shore
waves lingering to the rockets acceleration, turn adjustment over
Jupiter's eye, heading in. The rockets shut extinguish.
~ Mishil and her crew strip the dead, gearing up, taking rations.
Over Jupiter's eye, the ship's side panels lift, plates overlapping, forming over the shoulders as classical samurai war armor. A hand slides out.
~ The bodies splash from underwater view ~
The hull section supporting the four boosters opens in sections, unfolding, the boosters levering upward toward shoulders. Arms and legs unfold from the hull beneath the shielding while protective caps extend over the rockets for glide entry.
He falls into the outer atmosphere over the eye.
~ The sails spread, dragging the turtle-boat out.
Solar sails parachute out from beneath the booster supports at the shoulders as he enters harsh atmosphere. Colorful and combustive gasses linger together, trails of fire like lightning, electrical in the distant, igniting all around it in a swirling wave.
~ In storm canvas sails fill hard, paddles work, closing distance toward a western merchant vessel. Smoke exhales from the dragon's head for attack.
Hector pulls in sails (controlled venting at the bracer points) and drops through the outer atmosphere, splayed for air-drop, fluffing the sails to slow, wing-suited to turn, in to drop harder.
His head is unchanged it's the transparent dome, Nocturne and Nix seen inside, no mouth. The gun flaps a little bit sometimes when he talks.
~ Merchant merc bodies splash in from underwater.
Leaving spiraling gasses in his wake, Hector breaks to inner atmosphere, thick with storm, he wings for a clear stream of calm singular gasses. Entering, all becomes quiet, he turns back to ship, sails still extended, following the current through a curve.
(Sails extended would look like a single sail with the ship at center, rockets at the corners, supports extended to, from hull at fore, mid and aft, 3/4 to fore)
In the clearing and passing gasses, the hidden moon is seen dragging through the thick atmosphere, it's own sub-atmosphere trailing.
~ Olympos ~
~ The turtle boat turns for a nearby inlet, distant village light.
Seen as they follow the arc around it's wake, time and chemical gasses wear at it's structure, embedded within the moon, the remains of a massive city, exposed regions corroding away with it.
The city encompasses and fills the moon through, rapidly eroding. Pillars and towers crack from the edges, disintegrating behind. The release of oxygen from the layer of city taken combusts into a ribbon of flame, whisked away then extinguished in the storms.
The moon-city's chaotic rotation spins on an axis over the planet like a slow wobbled wheel off 15-22 degrees, shaking off structures, the spinning guiding the storm, storm guiding the spin. The eye.
Tornadoes within it sweep debris and the sands of dissolved temples into the sub-atmosphere. A wisp of sediment ignites in phosphorous flashes before a chain reaction across the surface, destroying more, all scored in the storm's after burn.
The sails twist, they escape from slipstream and back to storm, making approach to the flash created platform, the half decayed inner structure of a massive temple.
Nix - "You ever notice the concept of an artificial gravity field never actually gets explored ?"
Nocturne - "Totally."
Hector - "What ?"
The sails flap shut with the boosters to hull, sending Hector soaring toward a clearing, the inside of the half wearing away structure trailing it's sediment.
Nix - "Or like sound in space ? Seriously. Physics."
Nocturne - "I know !"
Hector - "Who are you talking to ?"
~ A bumper sticker on his foot ~ 'Nix is my co-pilot' ~
Hector crashes tumbling hard, still only patty-cake sounds.
Inside they they play cross-legged on the cockpit floor, view all around spinning.
Nocturne - "And why do space ships always line up with each other !?"
Nix - "Like it's some kind of 'space manners' ..."
He crashes through another structure, skidding to a bouncing roll, a rush of sound with the escaping air, then exploding to silence behind (sound is treated according to atmosphere).
Nocturne - "Fuck that. Find me creeping three o-clock sideways underneath their engine burn."
Nix - "Mm-hm. Hot dog rollin' ..."
They laugh ...
A stop through another temple wall, collapses.
Hector - Springing up from the rubble, "I fucking love space !"
He kicks over a pillar. Debris and structure collapse fill in the vacuum behind to a sound growing from dull to succinct, oxygen igniting behind in the closure, suction slamming it.
Hector - "Where the hell are we !? Why are we here !?" He punches his palm stomping forward. "I wanna kick space's ass."
He storms through the tunnels to temple, to monolith, all enclosed, deeper within, the gravitation is more variable. A hop through a thinly streamlined corridor, gravity light, laid downward leads closer to surface.
The sound of storm growing, violent shake of ground, already weakened pillars and structures fall.
Hector looks up to a ceiling corner, seeing a string of wire and explosive, a few bulb lights hanging along the way (when he looks or turns his head, it's the turning of the of the cockpit inside it's glass sphere).
Inside through the dome, readout highlights as the bulbs glow vacantly pulsing, direction of electrical flow. A closer look shows powder at the bottom of the bulbs, the red from the storm, another the pale yellow.
Ahead, a megaphone speaker hangs from splice taped wires.
Megaphone - Squelching on, "Gravity shift."
A shake of the ground turns with a spin to the gravity leaned along the wall. Another spin, it settles, the wall the floor. They crash to the new ground, recovering.
He leans down to inspect the holes drilled through at various spots, a gas pushing through, some ancient, some new. A mist of varied color exhales and dissipates with the open air.
Megaphone - Laying now on the floor, "Follow the pretty lights."