Kaldalis was almost on target. Augmented Slowfall meant that over the 60-second duration of the ability, they only dropped about six inches. With his regular spear equipped, he had another charge of Jump ready to go when they suddenly started to plummet, and activating it spared them the fall damage of hitting the ground. While they didn’t land neatly on the Rambutan, they did land on the docks. Kaldalis had to admit that it was pretty good.

That didn’t mean that there wasn’t a group of guards closing in on them.

The winding streets of Baimer meant that they hadn’t been able to stay directly beneath them the whole trip, but they were still very close behind. The business of the port meant that they had to push their way through dockworkers and around piles of crates, barrels, and other goods, but they were quickly closing the gap.

It wasn’t clear why they were chasing them so fervently. Kaldalis wasn’t terribly familiar with how the justice system worked with respect to guards and hypothetical “wanted levels,” so it was possible that he was a marked man after the stunt he’d pulled at the courthouse. But he had to admit that literally flying through the air like a superhero wasn’t exactly a stealthy way to traverse the city. It might have been the Contender’s goons, chasing down reports of evil magic.

Once he got his feet under him, Kaldalis tried to use the Jump ability he had running to launch himself the few dozen yards to the boat, but with Bangen still clinging to him, he was unable to cover the distance without Nyxlas’s Augment. He only covered a handful of feet. And because Nyxlas’s Augment needed to be activated before activating the ability in order to be effective, he couldn’t do so now. His first instinct was to pry Bangen’s grip off of him, but he wasn’t going to leap away and leave her behind. While his mediocre Clout ability score meant that her weight wasn’t negligible, his high Vigor meant that he could probably haul her around all day without consequence. She didn’t slow him down that much as he ran for the ship, weaving through the dockworkers.

In accordance with his request to Big Mike, the Rambutan appeared to be loaded up and ready to go. Once Kaldalis pushed through the crowd around the docks, the pier beside the ship was a clear shot, with no workers clogging the way. At a dead sprint, Kaldalis made for the single gangplank still connected to the pier.

“Kal!” a voice called from above. It was Ess, leaning over the side of the ship. “What’s going on?”

“Start the fucking boat!” he yelled back. “Move the thing! And that other thing!”

“Shit,” Ess cursed, looking up the dock and seeing the guards closing in. “Guys! Captain!” she cried, looking over her shoulder. “We’ve got a situation!”

There was a bellowed order from the deck.

Big Mike’s voice was unmistakable, but his words were mostly jargon that Kaldalis didn’t understand. As soon as the order went out there was a flurry of activity. Ropes were cast off of the ship and onto the pier. Despite them still being a few dozen feet from the gangplank, the ship started to move. The end of the gangplank left a deep scratch in the pier as it was dragged along, filling the air with the din of wood against wood.

Bangen finally released Kaldalis and dropped to the pier herself and started running along behind him. Freed from her weight, he was able to pick up the pace, and since she was fresh from having been carried, she matched his speed easily. He could have just leaped up onto the ship without her, but he’d already left Gavinkim behind. He wasn’t going to abandon her, too.

“Stop!” demanded a voice from behind Kaldalis. “Stop this ship immediately or be bound by law!”

Kaldalis tried to run as fast as he could. He wished he’d leveled up any other weapons besides spear and sword-and-board. Even the bow’s passive move speed would have been better than nothing. He obviously didn’t want to leave Bangen behind, but if he could get onto the gangplank, he could grab her hand and pull her up behind him.

Though it seemed like the point of no return was fast approaching. The ship was picking up speed, and the end of the pier was getting closer. Eventually their way onto the ship was going to drop into the ocean, and the boat was going to be moving faster than they could chase.

“We’re not gonna make it!” Bangen yelled, panicked.

“We’re fine!” Kaldalis yelled back, even as the spatial reasoning skills in his head told him she was right. “Absolutely fine! Just run faster!”

“Stop!” the guard ordered again. “Stop right this second, or we will be forced to stop you!”

Panic seemed to give Bangen a little extra speed. Kaldalis allowed his fear to take hold. It was time to go for broke. The gangplank was so close, but the end of the pier was just beyond it. And the thundering boots behind him were getting louder so fast he didn’t want to look.

He set foot on the gangplank, and nearly fell as he tried to change directions at full speed to run up towards the ship. He had never been happier to have a tail than in this moment as it lashed unconsciously, balancing him perfectly and keeping him upright. If he was a normal human he’d have just eaten shit and fallen on his face.

Bangen’s feet hit the gangplank just behind him, and as a fellow Vathon, Kaldalis assumed her tail was maintaining her balance as well. Their combined weight, plus the pace of their running, made the plank bow and shake beneath them. They were over the water now, and one misstep would send them into the ocean. A misstep that was almost forced when the first guard got on the gangplank about five feet behind Bangen, his heavily armored boots making the plank shake even harder.

Reno was waiting at the top of the gangplank, yelling at them to run, though her exact words were drowned out by the panic thundering in Kaldalis’s ears. As he reached the top, she grabbed Kaldalis by the shoulder to pull him onto the deck.

Just then they passed the end of the pier, and the end of the gangplank dropped into the water, going suddenly vertical.

Bangen was falling.

Kaldalis turned and dove forward, reaching out to her. Reno’s grip on his other arm would stop him from plummeting into the harbor. She reached back to him, but it was too far. Just by barely a foot.

With a flick of her wrist, Bangen conjured her weapon from her inventory. Kaldalis’s hands closed around the haft of her spear just below the head, and she grabbed on to her end with both hands. The sudden weight nearly pulled Kaldalis and Reno down together with her, but Ess appeared at her side, grabbing onto her waist and adding her strength to the effort, holding them all fast.

She thumped against the side of the ship, but unlike the armored guard on the plank right behind her, she didn’t hit the water and sink. As the ship picked up speed, the guard was nearly twenty feet behind them when his head popped out of the water, buoyed by the world’s swimming mechanics.

“I’ve got you,” Kaldalis said. He grimaced as the edge of her spearhead was grinding against his forearm. “Don’t worry.”

Bangen was gasping for breath, almost too hard to speak, but she managed to gasp out: “I know you do… but you do things… like this without… thinking and… you wonder… why we trusted you?”

Kaldalis’s grimace turned to a grin at that. He had to admit she had a point. It was no wonder she had come down on his side when Onirioago had outed him as an otherworldly being. He’d just risked a lot to save her. Not only had he just thrown himself off the ship to catch her, but he could have jumped up to the boat at any point and left her behi-

“Bangen,” Kaldalis said suddenly. “Can you do me a favor?”

“I’m not…” she gasped, “in a position… to turn you down… am I?”

“You have a spear,” Kaldalis observed. “Obviously you don’t have Nyxlas’s Augment to have made the big jump from the courthouse to here. But why didn’t you jump up onto the deck of the ship from the pier? Why did you run?”

“Because-” Bangen began, and then furrowed her brow, falling suddenly silent.

Kaldalis was, for a brief moment, extremely tempted to let go of the spear and give her a dunk in the ocean for that.

“Listen, this is hilarious and all,” Reno grunted from above. “But how do we get you up?”

Kaldalis looked back and realized that it was taking a lot of effort from Reno and Ess to keep them from dropping into the ocean. He wondered why for a second - they were both damage dealers, and so had higher Clout for power - before he remembered that they were relatively low level. He probably had just barely less Clout than they did, and he couldn’t hold up two people.

“Don’t worry,” another voice said from behind Ess. Kaldalis couldn’t see where she was from his precarious position dangling over the side of the deck as a makeshift rope, but he recognized Myrin’s voice. “I got this.”

A small Suyon-sized hand grabbed Ess by one of the belts of her leather armor, and with a sudden tug, all four of them were yanked up and back. Reno and Ess almost fell over, while Kaldalis and Bangen were easily pulled up onto the deck like a pair of fish.

“Thanks Myrin,” Kaldalis said, as he flopped over onto his back to catch his breath.

“No problem, Kal,” she chirped cheerfully.

The deck was busy with sailors rushing about to get the ship maneuvered out of the harbor and onto the open ocean. It looked like another ship was trying to move to block their exit, but it had started too late. They were going to make it. Probably. It was the sailors’ problem, not Kaldalis’s.

What was going to be Kaldalis’s problem was the approach of Balrim, with Garyung and Big Mike in tow. He wasn’t going to enjoy this part.

“What’s going on?” Garyung asked immediately, looking around the knot of adventurers next to the dangling gangplank. “Wait. Where’s Gavinkim?”

Kaldalis really wasn’t going to enjoy this part.