Porter hummed a little tune to himself as he felt the somewhat familiar bumps in the air. He was getting used to the constant dropships, the same ones Sigma had stolen some time ago, always flying them across a similar path. Turbulence was a part of life for these machines, like it or not. His eyes passed over the rest of the group, their own faces etched with apprehension and fear, eyes darting around, barely making contact with anyone else's. There was tension between them, a tension that evaporated in front of Porter and his constant humming.

"How can you do that right now?" Ardwen slumped forward in his seat, looking slightly sick. He suddenly gripped tightly to the straps that tightly packed him into his seat as the rumbling from more turbulence began.

"Don't have anything better to do right now I suppose. Not like worrying gets us any closer."

"To death you mean?" Ardwen tried to glance upwards, but he was clearly struggling with a combination of motion sickness and nervousness.

"Been there plenty of times before and we somehow came out alright," Porter responded with a cheery smile, one that appeared quite out of place compared to the atmosphere around him. "Could always talk about what we're going to do when we get there if you like."

"We all know the plan, Porter, you told it to us a million times," Nami cut in, rolling her eyes in the corner.

"Except," Ardwen continued, "you never discussed what Rex was going to be doing." The group all turned to stare at the quiet teen riding along with them, who was handling the motion sickness the worst out of any of them. "I'm assuming that you'll want to keep watch over him during combat, if you read the report on his previous battle."

Porter's eyes wandered across the ceiling of the dropship, his humming shifting into whistling briefly as he listened. "No, that doesn't really sound like it will work. You're all familiar with him, I'm sure he's best in your hands."

Ardwen's mouth was agape, slightly from shock and slightly from the nauseousness in his stomach. He tried to close it a few times, attempting to form words, but nothing ever came out. "Fine, we'll watch him, but then that leaves you on your own, you know." Nami folded her arms across her chest, not impressed with the fact that somebody would be fighting alone.

"That is correct." Porter ended the conversation with a giant smile, nothing left for him to add or for anyone else to counter with. His confident leadership, since arriving back on the island, had dictated the pace of everything that had happened since. "Besides, I'll never really be alone." Porter's eyes flicked down to his palm before returning to the rest of the group.

"Sigma won't always be around to save you, you know," Raul said, throwing his thumb over his shoulder to indicate where the android was thought to be flying along.

Porter's grin didn't waver for a second in the face of Raul's criticism. "I don't intend for him to ever have to." The entire dropship groaned and shook as it touched down on the ground, its descent as bumpy as the flight itself, making it impossible to distinguish between travelling and landing. A variety of sounds began to erupt, from the clicking of the locks on the seats, to the pneumatic hiss of the doors shifting to open. The blinding light from the sun outside burst through the first cracks in the ship's hull as the doors moved, forcing hands up from the students to keep themselves from being blinded. "We're as close as possible at this point, "Porter continued. "Obviously we can't fly straight into a warzone with our Goliaths, so it's on foot from here."

"Why didn't we just land there?" Rex's voice cut through the growing tension of the group as they braced to disembark. Everyone's necks nearly snapped collectively as they twisted to stare at his unassuming expression.

Ardwen sauntered over to the younger pilot, kneeling in front of him and placing a hand on his shoulder. "You're...an idiot," he stated, before walking away.

"Rex," Nami began, picking up from where Ardwen had attempted to start, "you do understand we're actively part of a rebellion that wants to specifically knock out the government powers showing up here, right? That broadcast message was the reason you even came to join us. You wouldn't know about us if it wasn't for that."

"Really?" Rex's face held genuine surprise, and the rest of the group groaned. "Aren't you guys just like, a special forces kind of group, doing all that training and being expert pilots."

"No," came the unanimous response.

"Look, Rex." Porter stopped at the doorway, looking over his shoulder to address the junior. "Just try to survive out there." The young teen suddenly tensed at hearing the words, his carefree expression melting away as Porter hit upon the key concept that drove a different side of Rex.

Ardwen rolled his eyes as he passed by his comrade in the doorway. "You just live to make this harder on me, don't you?"

"He'll do fine out there. Just let him kill everything, and give him a clear path ahead."

"Why thank you, master strategist. Yes, let us all attempt to craft plans around berserkers."

"Wasn't there an old-timey race that just had entire armies of them?"

"You mean vikings? You didn't even try to study in school did you?"

"One of us has the swords, the other one can figure out world history." With that, Porter leaped out of the shuttle, his feet landing softly in the grass. "If you don't mind me, I'm going to kill a lot of Jahari now. You'll have to manage the rest Ardwen."

"Right, same as every time ever." Ardwen rolled his eyes. The Goliaths were nearby, their hulls glimmering in the sunlight. They had been dumped prior to the arrival of the pilots, kept hidden as best as Sigma could from scans and satellite networks. The only thing they couldn't prevent was somebody stumbling upon the warmachines, and had held faith in the idea that nobody would be coming to the fringes of the Breach if they weren't commanded to, and any farmers who worked out in these fields would have already fled.

The youths quickly clambered into their battlesuits, systems booting up as the cockpits became occupied. Viewscreens began to appear in front of their faces, connecting with each other before tapping into the new central server of information the former students had started using: Sigma. The android had to use himself as a database now, bridging the gap between the new rebel group, as they had had to rapidly disconnect from the Enian Federation upon announcing themselves.

"How are you feeling Sigma?" Ardwen checked in with the cyborg as he went through the usual start-up process for Mother Gaia.

"It comes with a buzz, but it doesn't mean much to me." Sigma's voice came in through the communications system on-board each Goliath. He was up above in the clouds, hovering over the battlefield so he could inspect what was down below him. Massive, bloated warships drifted past him, some of which were already entangled with the living worm-ships that the Jahari employed. Tiny dots roamed the earth beneath, with larger, lumbering specks in between where Bahari and Goliaths wandered. All of them mingled around the enormous hole in the ground, the gaping maw of war now known as the Breach, and all of this information was forwarded through to the pilots, displaying on their viewscreens to give them a glimpse of what they were approaching.

"Good to know you're not inhibited at least," Ardwen said, continuing his preparation work. "Everyone else is doing well then, operations normal?"

"Check."

"Normal."

"Good."

There was a long pause as everyone waited for Rex to catch up and remember what he had to say. They had been constantly working with him in an effort to get him to memorize the specific things he had to say before, during, and after operations, but he was a lost puppy at best. "Uhm...it works?"

"Close enough." Ardwen gripped his controls tightly and settled into his seat, releasing a large breath as he attempted to relax slightly. They had some travel time before they would reach the Breach, and so he knew his anxiety would only increase from here. They still did not know how they would be greeted, either by the Enian Federation they had fled, or the Artisan Confederate they had intercepted, and they knew already they weren't exceptionally welcomed by the Eastern United States. It could be a rough welcome that resulted in their instant evisceration. It wouldn't take much to order a few special squads and generals to turn and fire. "Then we move out."

* * * * *

Porter and the White Storm zipped along, covering ground in the blink of an eye. The teen could already feel the electrical buzz across his skin, the surge of chi coming out from within him, accelerated by the machine around him. He continued his humming, tapping his finger along as he travelled. Viewscreens shifted around him, projecting his time of arrival, calculating the best route, and identifying potential targets and areas to attack.

"You don't have to do all that you know," Porter chuckled. "Maps are fine and all, but best angles of approach? Ideal targets? I can fight you know."

"Consider it a brother's wariness," Sigma replied from the sky. "I'm just looking out."

Porter leaned his head back slightly in his seat. "The Goliath can calculate a lot of information I need, and I still think I'll be alright either way. The last person I had to train under would have whipped me senseless if I tried to rely on a machine to figure out how to fight."

"He seems to have done a lot of things to you in a very limited period of time. You're feeling very confident from the looks of things."

"I know you can read biometrics, Sigma. You and I both know that isn't true, but the last thing my friends need is to think that I'm terrified. If they believe that I'm ready to saunter into war, then they will follow behind me."

"You do think you're better than you were before though, do you not?" The screens within Porter's cockpit changed, moving away from battle reports into key communications between the many leaders at the upcoming battleground.

"Maybe." Porter inspected his hands, looking over them in detail. He followed the little lines along his skin, the tiny indentations that cross together into organized chaos, patterns that came and went depending on how he looked at them. His eyes flowed along to the individual hairs, to the veins he could see just under the skin, and to the nails at the tip of each finger, with the little cuts along them from his combat training. "I needed to be a better me. All this training I have ever received before was about ability and things beyond what a normal soldier could do. It was chi and mastery over the energy it could generate. It was about flow and control. But it was never about who I was as a fighter. Can I be better than others just because I can force myself to move faster?"

Porter paused for a while, and Sigma never cut in, letting the silence linger between them as Porter continued his inspection. The teen was well-aware that his brother could see the interior of the White Storm at all time, and would know that Porter was thinking. "I couldn't beat Sigmeund before, and he could not grasp chi beyond operating his machine. I wasn't able to avoid a Bahari strike, and Chase had to sacrifice himself to do that. No amount of meditation or control would ever bring me closer to winning those fights, would it?"

"I wouldn't know this. I can only tell you what the data would indicate and provide, but you are speaking out conditionals with a lot of different variables. No computer could ever calculate a what if statement so complicated. The past is the-"

"Bullshit, you can calculate that, I know you can."

"Would you let me give you some brotherly advice?" Sigma exclaimed, before the two burst out into laughter. "Just, don't get hung up on what you could have been. Just look forward to what you still can be with the life you have. Otherwise you end up like me, and your future is in someone else's hands."

"And yet, you're taking it back right now."

"No, I'm taking orders from some brat sibling of mine."

"Well, you can watch this brat sibling of yours then, and see if he is any better than he used to be. If breaking my body every day made me any better at fighting, it will be worth it now. So long as nobody else is dead on my watch, I will have achieved my goals."

"Along with destroying the government, pushing back the invasion of an entire race, and being able to ask Riya on a date."

"One step at a time," Porter replied, snorting at his brother's final point. "Besides..." Porter drifted off for a moment, his eyes wandering and staring past the viewscreens around him, taking in the environment around him as it flew by. "Who knows what will happen to the government. Destroying it all might not be the answer. People need some sort of rule to stay alive. But...I just want them to understand what it is that is ruling them. I want them to choose if that is right for them. But they will never have that opportunity if they are constantly being told tomorrow is another war. They will never think about what the government does in order to win those fights if they believe we are under threat. And they certainly won't discuss why we're even in the fight to begin with. That can only happen after everything is done and over with.

"But if a war goes on long enough, it becomes commonplace," Porter continued. "It is what you wake up to every day, it is what you fall asleep to every night. Once it becomes a mainstay, you no longer fear it, and then you can discuss it. That's why I sent out my message. That's why I will fight the Jahari next to the government today, and rally against these organizations tomorrow. And we will see what the people choose. If they are still afraid, we will come no closer. If they feel comfortable, maybe we will see a new horizon in the future. Perhaps a day when there will be no war."

"And a chance to ask out-"

"Stop it you. Let me have my grand moment of philosophical musing, without you pointing out all my flaws."

"But that's my job."

"You're taking this brother thing way too seriously already."

"Well why don't you just silence me with your awesome skill instead."

"Well maybe I will, and you can watch me single-handedly defeat the Jahari."

"I was talking about Riya."

"Shut up." A ping went off in the Goliath, ending the conversation. The approach was finalizing for Porter. The others would be some distance behind, nowhere near as fast as the White Storm. They would still be a while before they got into combat, and Porter wanted to make sure they were guaranteed a safe arrival. If that meant he would draw all the attention instead, so be it.

"Ready then?"

Porter flexed his fingers and wrapped them around his controls, shifting his weight in his seat as he settled in. "So very ready."