Alkalians (30 page)

Matt had anticipated her trying an
evasive move, and casts his spell in response. He divides into
magic clones again, but this time the clones are wielding a large
broadsword each. They do sweeping strokes through the cluster of
grass, mowing it down in the attempt of hitting Rose hiding within
it. But upon clearing the grass, they stand there as a group,
wondering what happened to their target when neither of them had
found her.

Rose lunges upward, hidden
from laying low to the ground, and starts attacking the clones, her
blades slicing and stabbing them as she spins in and out of
adjacency to them. However, in a quick glance while she deletes
them, she gasps at the unexpected. The real Matt is outside the
group of clones, his left arm a rifle, aiming at her. Her trap had
become
his
trap.

Matt fires, and the sniping bullet
smashes into her chest, wound energy bursting from its
entry-and-exit holes, blowing her over and laying her out across
the ground. Her wound color skips green and goes to yellow, and it
gets darker from pulses of energy, like heart-beats, spitting up
more lost health. Grimacing, Rose reflects on how her wound is
vital, putting her in a bad situation.

***

Sean, Dante, and the twin James’
face-off from opposite sides of their battlefield. Sean and Dante
glow yellow or red from their wounds respectively, while their
opponents are only green with a dash of red on the black James’
wing. The Reapers, after glancing to each other and nodding, turn
to have their backs against each other and raise their scythes
above them, the blades aligned into a crescent-moon shape. With
their wings flexed and the poles held up, they look like mirror
reflections of each other. Then, as they both hover into the air,
they start spinning around the line of reflection rapidly, and
strong winds rise and blow around them while the sickle blades glow
with an ominous energy.

Dante looks on at the Reapers’
formation and says, “That’s not good.”

Sean asks, “What? What is he about to
do?”

“
He’s about to execute his
Ultimate Attack, for when he’s two of himself. See how his forms
are spinning like that? They’re going to charge at us, and those
blades will shred through us.”

“
Really?” Sean looks
closely at them before shrugging. “I thought he was going to fire a
laser at us, or something.”

The James’ tilt down the head of their
combined sickles in mid-air, pointing it at Dante and Sean. The
energy collecting in the blades radiates outward, and the swirling
winds bring the energy to flow with the vortex. Thanks to the
energy, the wind becomes sharp enough to tear through the ground it
blows across, tossing out dirt as it raked it up. Dante then says,
“They’ve aligned themselves toward us. Now it would be a good time
to run.” Without another word, he turns around and dashes away on
air balance, and Sean, after brief hesitation, follows.

The James’ fly forward at tremendous
speed, pursuing Dante and Sean. The wind shear from their movement
becomes luminous with the radiating energy, and a trail of slashed
ground marks their path. As Dante air balances like he’s on a board
and Sean skates along with him, their two foes come after them as a
massive arrow. Despite them being at high speeds, the Reapers are
getting closer.

In the midst of the chase, Dante tries
to think of how they are going to survive the Ultimate Attack. At
these speeds, they’ll soon reach a campus border and be forced to
turn around, right into the wind blades. As he’s thinking, it takes
him a moment to realize Sean, once beside him, is slowing down. He
whips his head back and yells at him, “What are you doing!?” He
sees Sean merely smile a toothy grin, give a salute, and fall back
further, allowing the wind to visibly flow into him and decrease
his speed even more. The James’ deadly turbine is only a few yards
behind him, coming closer.

Then, in a fluid motion, Sean spins
around and floats in the air, becoming level with the center of the
energized vortex. After yelling, “NOW IT’S REAPER-KILLING TIME!!”
he shoots forward at neck-cracking speed into the vortex. The
following happens in about five seconds, the chain reactions
brought about at hyper speed:

First, Sean hammers the top of the
scythe union with his fist, sending sparks flying into the wind
shear. He flips forward off the smashed blades and gets caught in
the spinning of the poles, but he kicks at them in a flurry, and
the force from the high-speed collisions break the poles in half.
Despite the fresh wounds to his limbs, Sean keeps going in his
thrashing, being carried to the James’ and crashing into them, dark
colors of wound energy flashing like firecrackers. After the
furious slams, one more hit from him separates the two, letting
them be blown into the energized wind with him. The monstrous
blades shred all three, and as Sean demorphs after producing red
energy, the James’ are covered with huge wounds of dark
orange.

Watching the three tumble
across the ground in different directions, and the vicious winds
fading out, Dante can’t believe what Sean had done. But he
is
very
glad he
did, and he drifts a turn-around and accelerates back toward James’
morphs, his sword reforming between his hands.

The Reapers slowly get up, feeling the
deep wounds on their wings and torsos, absent their broken scythes.
However, they don’t panic or get upset, and by focusing some energy
between their hands they form fresh sickles for themselves. The two
are distanced apart by about twenty yards, and are about to move
towards the other when Dante slices through them.

Without any sign of slowing down, he
rips through the black James with one slash, then dashes to the
white James and makes another slash into him. Once he passes the
white Reaper, he brakes on his air balance and grinds to a stop. He
doesn’t have to look back, knowing what would happen. The single
cuts, delivered at such high speed and into the gaping wounds,
splash scarlet health energy out of the James’ as their bodies are
split in half.

***

Rose forces herself to stand up, the
glowing wound thumping from her chest as she moves, and she glares
at Matt several yards away. Feeling the darkening light pumping out
of her, she knows that all he has to do now is deliver another
direct attack and place it in her wound, likely turning her health
red and assuring her defeat.

Matt figures this out as well. But
hitting Rose with one shot was hard enough, and she had already
done enough damage to him to cause worry, especially by chopping
off his right hand. So instead of attempting a final attack against
her, he thinks of another way to get her off-guard.

While her foe is occupied with
tactics, Rose collects energy in front of her, and a bright green
sphere forms between her hands. She then converts the energy into
leaves, and they fly out from the sphere like a swarm emerging from
its hive. They blow all about her, and when the energy sphere
fades, she is immersed in the blizzard of leaves.

Matt watches as the leaves formed
around Rose, wondering what she could be doing. While he’s looking
at her, he suddenly loses sight of her. He blinks a few times,
looks deep into the swirling leaves, but he still can’t find Rose.
The blizzard blows toward him, and then Matt understands. It was an
illusion technique, making her completely undetected to his
vision.

The leaves engulf Matt’s position, and
he soon stands in the middle of the vortex. Searching with his
eyes, he catches not one speck of Rose. The leaves perfectly hide
her, looking exactly the same and flying fast enough to make a
cloud of green. Suddenly, Matt flinches from a slash made across
his face, the scratch flashing with damage, followed by a rapid
barrage of stabs and slices, fresh scars and holes forming all over
him, turning to orange in color. The wounds appear so quickly he
could have guessed more than one person was attacking
him.

Hidden among the blowing leaves, Rose
makes the quick and accurate strikes upon Matt, but she has to stop
after a few seconds into the barrage as the chest wound spits more
health energy out. She did open enough wounds, however, to perform
her finishing link of the combination offensive. Harnessing control
over the automatically moving leaves, she sends them into a raging
cyclone, and the leaves converge upon Matt. Like a swarm of bees
the leaves sting and slice through Matt’s wounds, stitching and
stretching them bigger and darker. Once the leaves disintegrate
after serving their purpose, Matt is left in open view, his armor
painted red-orange instead of black.

Wracked from so much numbing pain
caused without break, Matt can barely stay upright, but he forces
himself to endure. He looks about and finds Rose several feet away
from him, her orange wound resembling a shining breastplate to him.
That glowing spot may have just saved his life, for the
moment.

***

Two big flashes of red signal James
demorphing, and he appears as only one human, clasping to his side
where Dante’s sword had gone through him. As Dante demorphs in
response, he hears Sean skipping over to them, cheering “Oh yeah!
Who’s bad, who’s bad, I am! Who’s not, who’s not, James is!
Yahooo!!”

James ignores Sean’s whooping and
dancing, forcing a smile as he dusts his suit off. “Well,” he
calmly says to Dante, “I guess I underestimated you both. I could
never have foreseen not only my Ultimate Attack being trumped, but
also having it turned against me. Theory states that’s usually
impossible.”

Dante returns a half-smile, saying,
“Yeah, I’m beginning to see that you never know what will happen
with Sean fighting. His crazy tricks might just be his
advantage.”

“
You bet they are!” Sean
agrees. He then leers toward James and says, “All right, you
high-classed, care-free punk. Unless you want to become the newest
senior reject, you better tell us what you did with Matt and
Rose!”

James glances between the two, and
says with a sigh, “Very well, I’ll give you what you want. I was
doing an espionage assignment for Cain. All I had to do was tell
Matt about ninjas, and Rose about the S.C. I figure they walked
away with a little more understanding of the topics.”

“…
That’s it?” Dante is
skeptical of how little conversations like those were meant to harm
Matt or Rose. “What, and how, did you exactly tell them? And how
does this benefit Cain?”

“
Oh, we might find out,
sooner or later. I merely informed Matt of Rose’s martial arts
style and gave Rose a history lesson, that’s all. I myself don’t
know for sure why Cain suggested I tell them those facts. After
all, he has been unwilling to disclose all the details of his
plots.” James yawns, peering across the horizon. “In fact, I was
also instructed to keep you guys busy, in case you two noticed
something was up, but I had not intended on getting into a fight.
The only thing that’s certain here is Cain owes me for this favor,
big time.” He then walks off, leaving Dante and Sean alone in the
field.

Once the senior gets out of ear-shot,
Sean asks Dante, “Was this a big waste of time?”

“
Cain must have thought
so.” He pulls out a cigarette with a small rock, lights it up with
a flame from the rock’s rune, and smokes a deep breath. “But at
least we know a little of his plans, and we’ve got dirt against
James, so he won’t be involved anymore.” He turns to Sean. “Let’s
go look for Matt and Rose. They can tell us what James said to
them.”

“
Good idea,” Sean says as
they head off toward the student cabins. “Besides, what could have
possibly gone wrong? It’s not like whatever James told them made
them get into a fight!”

***

Matt heavily breaths, the orange light
radiating from him as if his armor is yet molten from a forge. Rose
has labored breaths as well, her vital wound gaining tinges of red.
They stare back at one another, the gap between them a wall keeping
them apart. They are impressed by the other’s skills and endurance,
but they can’t admire for long. Each feels they have to win at all
costs, being pushed on by the instinct to protect themselves and
the school. They both believe this battle won’t end until one of
them can’t fight any more.

Rose shatters the wall between them by
summoning another blizzard of leaves. Determined not to become
defenseless again from that, Matt prepares a spell as the leaves
gather around her. Rose vanishes behind the storming leaves, which
approach and surround him once more. Expecting it, Matt raises his
left arm and releases his black magic:

“
Aeros
Twistor
!”

A large, ebon cyclone launches into
the blizzard, and the dark wind erases the leaves. Rose correctly
assumed Matt would counter another blizzard as she is outside the
leaves’ area, out of reach of the cyclone. When Matt sees her, he
rides toward her on air balance at high speed and prepares another
spell while Rose builds up elemental power before her.

They unleash their charged energies at
the same time, right before collision. Matt casts his Blastion
spell, and Rose materializes a thick, wooden log to shield her. The
black magic explodes through the log, sending smashed timber into
the air, separating Matt and Rose as it sends her rolling from its
force. After he touches down on the ground, Matt watches Rose
kneeling a few yards away, seeing the red wound on her
chest.