The Sword of the Earth

I held a screwdriver by my teeth that I had found. I slowly crawled onto the back of my plane. I weighed myself equally. Slowly very slowly I reached my hand towards the engine. I slowly prised the piece of metal out of my engine. Slowly… I hadn’t noticed the wheel starting to turn right. My plane crashed into the bell tower of the church. The jolt sent me flying into the air. This was it. My first mission and I was already going to die. At least Ruby would be able to do the mission without me. Then I hit a hard metal thing, and I remembered no more.

I was in an apartment. There was black girl tending to my leg. It was twisted in the wrong direction. Great, one broken leg. But how was I alive. I wanted to say something, but my throat was sore so it sounded like a croak.
“You don’t need to say anything.” The girl said when she heard me. “My name is Destiny. I work for MI5 too. Don’t worry; I’ve known Ruby too long to forget her. She told me everything about her nasty fall.”
“She told you?” I managed to struggle.
“I know sign language,” she explained. “My mother was always deaf, from when she was born. I’ve been living out here in this bungalow for all my life with her, but she recently went. She didn’t die, just went to a house where they keep all deaf and blind people. I’ve been waiting for a mission, but MI5 obviously don’t think I am good enough. Not having any powers I guess.”
“You could come with us.” I said, after two attempts.
“Really?!” she exclaimed, looking over at Ruby to see if she agreed. She nodded smiling. They seemed like good friends. Now I would be the only one not knowing them so well. At least Destiny was a way of communicating between Ruby. It was a bit odd with only silence.

We spent a while there, while Destiny tended to my leg and throat. I quickly learnt what had happened to me. When I had fallen Ruby had swooped down to catch me. I had hit the tail of the plane, and Ruby had lost a bit of control. The police arrived, wanting to know why a plane had fallen out of the sky. Ruby apologised, in sign language and luckily no one was hit. When she had paid for the damage to the church (she had just let it be sent to MI5) she snuck away carrying me to Destiny, who she remembered lived nearby, before they ushered me to hospital. Maybe it was a good thing I hadn’t been doing this mission solo.

My leg wouldn’t be healed for a few weeks so it looked like I would be on this mission with a broken leg. I struggled with the crutches at first, but I slowly got used to them. We couldn’t wait around any longer; we had to start the mission.
“We’re terribly off track!” I sighed, as I looked at the map. “It could take weeks to get back on the route, or we could take a short cut and go through the places with the horrible names instead of going around them. I say we take the short cut.”
“Me too!” said Destiny, who was ready for an adventure, after waiting so long.
Only Ruby shook her head, very uncertain. She made all these funky moves with her hands.
“It may take a long time, but it sure is safer, trust me. I’ve been that way before and almost died. I made the right choice of turning back,” Destiny translated. I wasn’t listening to Ruby though. I was thinking, I seriously need to learn how to do that sign language thing. It would make me feel closer to Ruby I guess. When Destiny leaves… if she leaves it would be a lot harder to communicate if I didn’t.

“Short cut it is!” Destiny yelled. “Sorry Ruby, but you were outvoted.” So it was settled then, we were taking the dangerous short cut.