Subject to Study (Naga!Brothers x Reader)

Chapter 52

I had somehow maneuvered around the mountain range, borrowing some knowledge of a flight simulator game of how to generally pilot an aircraft, and now I was trying to steady the helicopter enough to land on the chosen rocky area near the cliffs. It was a lot larger than the clearing where I had taken off from, but the wind from the open sea was creating hard-to-manage updrafts that collided with the cliffs.

Whenever there was a break in the wind, I managed to lower the helicopter towards the ground, but the gyroscope never let me drop down very far before the updrafts hit the helicopter once more, lifting the craft back up into the air.

I felt like an albatross trying to land.

The beeping in the cockpit was loud and annoying, just what was needed to grab the pilot's attention. It was excelling at its job, and I had no clue on how to turn it off or even what was setting it off in the first place.

The three nagas near the area just kept watching as I must've looked like a damned idiot in the cockpit, struggling to make the helicopter drop altitude while fighting against the safety measures that kept it from crashing into the ground.

Pressing the flight stick forward towards the ground, I pressed the rightmost foot pedal, feeling the helicopter respond by swinging to the right with its tail as it lowered a little more to the ground.

"Just go down...!" I yelled at the machine through gritted teeth, moving the flight stick further forward until I felt the pit of my stomach fly up to my throat. The helicopter dropped the last several feet onto the ground as the wind died down completely, slamming its belly onto the rocks and sending more alarms blaring in the cockpit. The drop was jarring, and my hands started to turn everything off on the console before I realized what I was doing.

"(Y/n)!" One of the doors was ripped from its hinge, the reticulated naga leaning in and grabbing me as a worried look settled on his face, "Are you all right? You're not hurt?"

"No," I gently shook my head as the alarms faded into the distance, "A little shaken, but I'm okay."

"Please don't do that again," Jyushi pressed the bridge of his nose against my cheek, lifting me up before I managed to somehow get out of his arms. He didn't appear to be offended as he focused on the helicopter behind us, "We just need to move that over the cliff, right?"

"That's about it," I stretched my back a little, groaning lightly as I focused on the helicopter laying flat on its belly, the skids collapsed under it from the harsh landing. Ichi and Todo had moved closer to it, peering around the far side for something, "I don't know how heavy it is, but the three of you should be able to handle it."

"Jyushi could probably do this by himself..." Todo muttered loud enough for me to hear, glancing at the mentioned naga with a look of disdain.

"I could, but Oso said that we needed to work together," Jyushi focused on Todo's form, the youngest brother meeting his gaze and standing to his full height with a frown on his lips, "We don't need to like it."

"No," Ichi cut in before Todo could respond, "We don't. We just need to push the helicopter over the cliff, and then the two of you can get the hell out of my territory."

A tense silence filled the air after, the relationship between the younger three brothers becoming more clear to me as the quiet dragged on. The familial problems were deep, and I wasn't going to fix them at all when none of those involved really wanted to do anything about what had caused the rift in the first place.

"Please," My voice was quiet, "I'll help push this over."

My words seemed to focus the nagas' attention, the three of them gathering on either side of me as I placed my hands on a passenger door of the helicopter, grunting as I started to push against the metal frame. Within seconds, the hull creaked and groaned as it scraped across the ground before it was pulled by gravity over the lip of the cliff.