The problem with having too much money and free time is that even the beautiful sunset view gets boring, it's still beautiful, but it's boring.
Sora was cruising at roughly eight hundred feet above the coast, one hand loose on the cyclic, the other holding his phone to his ear. Below him, the earth below was looking more like a toy set than a place.
"No, I'm serious," he said, "the guy just left it there on the dock, a whole crate of them."
His friend's voice crackled back through the speaker, laughing at something, and Sora smiled without really thinking about it.
The sea glittered to his right. He'd gone out on the water yesterday, and he'd probably go again tomorrow. No particular reason either way. There just isn't much else to do, ever since graduation everyday felt the same; he wakes up, find something to do with his hands, then sleep. He didn't hate it. Repetition was pretty comforting, actually. You always knew what you were getting.
"…So, man, are you coming? The contractor for Henry VIII will be there, they know their stuff alright, it's gonna be great!"
His friend was saying something about a party next weekend, Sora wasn't particularly interested, but it was nonetheless a time killer he could use.
"I'll think about it."
It's true, he will.
"Come on, man! Every time you say that you don't end up coming!"
Sora tightened his brows slightly.
"That's not true… Remember that party in March?"
"You left that one within 10 minutes!"
"Still went, didn't I?"
"You-" The friend paused, though it wasn't particularly clear whether it was poor signal or an act of resignation. "Whatever, man, screw you."
He hung up.
Sora lowered the phone and looked at the screen for a second, then flipped it shut and set it on his thigh.
He turned up the radio, but it was crackling instead of singing. Thinking it was probably just signal issue, he turned it down again.
He then picked the phone back up, flipped it open, and called back.
"I'll go," he said the moment his friend picked up.
Then he paused. Then something that sounded like disbelief.
He hung up before his friend could say anything else and snapped the phone shut again.
Sora set it on his thigh and looked out the window properly for the first time in the flight. It was pretty ordinary, until it wasn't.
In the far background of the sky, just beyond a skyscraper, something was there. It was a beam of light, but it wasn't the sun, and it wasn't a firework either.
It was pointed directly at him.
He stared at the screen.
"…Oh….I'm fu-"
The helicopter lurched.
The impact came through the whole frame at once, blasting through the vehicle, something fell, then the tail was gone and then a rotor blade fell too. The world tilted hard to the right and it kept going. His phone jumped out of his hands and into the sea. The cyclic started spinning and Sora just about managed to grab it, controlling it with both hands. He tried pulling against the spin, but there was nothing to pull against. The rotation had its own momentum and it didn't care what he wanted.
He tried the pedals.
Nothing.
He tried again, harder.
Nothing.
The altimeter was dropping. The city and the sea and the sky cycled past the windscreen in a blur, each pass faster than the last, the sun shining orange through the glass. He looked at the door. He thought about it seriously, and decided it was a worse idea.
His hand found the radio.
"Mayday, mayday, mayday-"
The spin took the horizon away again and the city came up in the glass and it was not a toy set anymore, it was buildings and roads and actual distance closing at a rate he could feel in his chest, and he pulled on the collective and got nothing and tried to remember everything he'd been taught and found that the situation had moved past the part where any of that helped.
The sea was right there.
It had been there the whole flight, glittering and looking pretty. Now it was below him and coming up fast and it looked like nothing so much as a wall.
He had enough time to think, and realised this was how he was going to go.
I wonder if father will miss me. He was coming home today.
Then the water came up to meet him and the world ended in white noise and cold and a pressure that pushed in from every side at once, and then it was quiet, and dark, and there was nothing at all.
[Lost in the sea]
There was a bell somewhere.
It rang clean, then it left, leaving a single note of peace to fade in the dark.
Then moments later, came a voice. A man's voice, it was low but charming, heavy but light, it spoke with strange sense of amusement, or was it pity, or was it something else entirely.
"Huh…" He said.
Then there was a long pause.
"Oh boy."
Then another pause, but it was shorter this time.
"…Let's get you out of here then."
[Later, Mid-night Beach]
"Holy shit."
The first thing that came back was his thoughts. It wasn't exactly shock, but it certainly was a sense of surprise.
Then there was the cold, which sat heavily in his chest and his fingers and somewhere behind his eyes, and it had clearly been there for a while.
Then the sound of water near him, its current calm and steady.
Sora opened his eyes.
The first thing he saw was the night sky, covered by stars, and a beautiful, shining moon.
He was lying on a rock. A large and uneven one, and he was completely soaked, his brown hair plastered and his shoes full of water. He stared at the sky for a few seconds, then at himself. His body ached but no blood covered it. He was alive and fine.
He sat up slowly.
He was on beach, not quite one he recognised but one similar enough for him to tell that's he's in the same city, and not some deserted island. No surprise there, it was a rocky beach, and Sora never visits rocky beaches, he finds them unpleasant.
But for this moment, its wasn't too bad.
Sora sighed to himself, then, sensing the presence of something else, he looked to his right.
A few metres from him sat a man, he was on the edge of a larger rock, also staring at the night sky.
He was wearing a bathrobe. A clean white one, belted loosely, looks like it's from a hotel. He was smoking a cigarette, holding it with two fingers with his left hand.
That image was already strange enough, but that wasn't even the weird part. Since on the man's back, were wings.
They were silver and mechanical, from hindsight they looked like intricate patterns of tiny metal feathers and carved shapes.
He noticed Sora was awake without turning his head and gave a sideways glance. Then he took a slow drag of the cigarette and breathed it out towards the water.
"Good morning," he said. Then he looked at the sky. "Well, or should I say good evening."
Sora looked at him.
Then he looked at the wings.
Then back at the man.
"…Who are you?"
Sora then shook his head.
"Better yet… What are you?"
The man considered both questions with the cigarette in his hand.
"You already know what I am…" The man shook his head, "In this day and age everybody does, right?"
Sora stared at him for a moment.
"You're a resonation."
"That I am."
"That means I'm a contractor."
"That you are."
"…Huh."
Sora sat with that for a second. Then he looked at the man properly.
"So who are you, really?"
The man took a drag of the cigarette again, and watched the smoke go.
"I'm a nobody, really," he said, then paused, then continued again. "But if you need something to call me." He glanced over. "Icarus works."
Sora looked in silence.
"That Icarus..."
"That Icarus."
They sat in mutual silence for a while, then Sora broke that awkwardness.
"So… the contract, can I see it?"
"Oh yeah… of course." He nodded, "but I don't have it, it's yours. Just think about it, and it'll come to you."
Sora looked at his hands again, it felt kind of ridiculous, and thought about a contract. There was a moment of nothing and then warmth gathered in his palms, spreading up from the centre, and a sheet of light formed between his hands, glowing in awe.
It was mostly blank.
All terms and conditions were empty. There was only the 2 names at the bottom.
"How do you know my name?" Sora asked. "I don't suppose I could've told you that."
"Don't worry about it." Icarus sounded unbothered. "The world informed me of who you are the moment you resonated."
Sora nodded, sounds about right to him
"Why are the terms blank?"
"You were unconscious, the contract wouldn't work otherwise."
He paused.
"Plus I was in something of a rush, and didn't think much." Icarus yawned. "You were sinking rather quickly."
Sora looked at the empty terms a moment longer, then let the thing dissolve back into nothing, which worked first try, which he noted.
"So since there's nothing in it," he said. "You're free to leave whenever you want."
"I am." Icarus nodded.
"So will you?"
Icarus was quiet for a second. He turned the cigarette between his fingers, watching the ember.
"I'd like to stay a while, actually." he said, playing with the cylinder. "It's been some time since I was last down here. I'm curious how things are."
"Well… suit yourself then."
"Thanks."
Sora stood up, slower than he would've liked, and took proper stock of where he was.
He patted his pocket. Nothing there.
He looked at the city. He looked at the silver wings folded against Icarus' back. He looked at the city again, then back at Icarus, who was finally finishing his cigarette.
"…Can you fly me home?"
There was small pause.
"I can," Icarus said. he threw his cig on the ground. "Though I don't know where-"
"I'll give you directions."
"Oh. Easy enough then." He stood from the rock. The wings adjusted behind him as he did, small mechanical shifts settling into a new configuration, silver catching the moonlight. Then his expression changed. "Actually, wait. Forget that."
Sora looked at him. "What."
"You're a contractor now." He stepped over and tapped two fingers against Sora's shoulder. "It's a good thing to try your powers out."
"…You don't mean-"
"Why would I carry you home," Icarus said with a completely straight face, "when you can fly yourself?"
Then he was gone, dissolved to mist, then his voice arrived in Sora's head, like it was always there.
Concentrate on the centre of your back. Brace yourself. It might hurt a bit.
Sora stood alone on the dark beach and looked at the water and thought about it and then decided that thinking about it further wasn't going to help, and focused on his back.
The pain arrived fast and it was specific. It spread outward from the spine in both directions at once, deep and wet and insistent in a way that made him twitch and his knee to buckle, and he grabbed the rock beside him and held on and groaned in pain.
Then the wings were there. Silver and mechanical and heavy across his shoulders, the same intricate feathers and carved shapes, and they caught the night air and moved in it like they already knew what they were doing even if he didn't.
"God," he breathed loudly. "That really hurts."
Way better than how it could've felt, let me tell you that, Icarus said. You'll be fine. Try flying.
"Way better my-"
Try flying.
Sora straightened up. Looked at the city lights across the water. Thought about going toward them.
The wings made an immediate and confident decision.
The ground left him fast. The rocky beach shrank below and the sea air that covered him was nice and breezy. For about two full seconds it was genuinely good. The lights of the city were right there. He was moving toward them. It was working.
Then the building materialised in front of him.
It was large. Well-lit on every floor. It had been there the whole time and had no intention of not being there, and Sora had not yet learned how to turn, so he went forward.
Which resulted in him being met with a nice window,
Then there was a desk and it broke soon after the glass, and Sora came to rest somewhere in the middle of it all with his face against the floor and the wing against the sharpened floor.
Everything was very bright and very quiet.
A nearby woman stared at him, then screamed in horror, it was a reasonable reaction, Sora thought.
So, Icarus said, from somewhere at the back of his skull.
Sora lay there.
We'll work on the landing.