Quest for Justice (32 page)

Kat saw what Caesar was trying to do, and with a kind of blind, intense panic taking over her body, she made a desperate attempt to stop Caesar's impending attack. Her diamond sword spiraled through the air toward Caesar just as Caesar drove his diamond sword from his side and severed
the fishing line, freeing himself. Kat's plan was halfway successful. Just as Caesar was about to thrust his sword through the stomach of the utterly unprepared Bob, Kat's sword struck Caesar in the back of the head. His eyes slipped out of focus, his sword jutting out at an odd downward angle. He had already made the forward thrust, however, and the sword still traveled forward with enough speed to shatter Bob's kneecap and sever his entire lower left leg from his body.

All of this happened within the space of about a second, a second that lasted an eternity. A dreadful sense of helplessness, combined with a surge of adrenaline, caused time to stand still for Kat within the space of that one second. Caesar's grunt of disorientation, followed by Bob's awful howl of pain, registered enough with Kat to snap her back to the real world in time to see that Caesar had whipped around to attack Bill, who was armed with nothing but a stick for self-defense. Kat ran directly into the thick of the fray, hatred doubling her swiftness, ready to defend Bill from the attack, but she was beaten to it by Ben, who appeared in an instant out of nowhere to force his sword toward Caesar's face.

Caesar sidestepped the attack, the sword doing nothing more than opening a light cut on the side of his neck. With too little room to launch a sword attack, Caesar punched Ben in the face and then spun to the side, pitched an Ender Pearl far into the distance, and re-drew his diamond sword
in a defensive stance. Ben hopped back to his feet, and his features contorted in rage, he swung his sword overhand onto the spot where Caesar's helmet was, which disappeared in a cloud of purple smoke so that the sword only struck air.

Kat didn't let herself worry about Bob. She knew that his brothers would take care of him. Sure enough, as she ran over to join DZ, Bill and Ben rushed over to heal their brother on the ground. Kat, meanwhile, still had a task at hand as long as Geno, Becca, and Leonidas were still alive.

“What just happened?” exclaimed DZ as he looked over and saw Bob lying on the ground.

Kat sensed the danger before she saw it, and somehow intuition told her it was her turn to yell at DZ to duck. He did, and not a moment too soon. The diamond blade flew forward into the spot where his head had just been, and Kat took the opportunity to thrust her own sword firmly into the attacker's face. She didn't bother to retrieve her sword from the flesh of the player called Charlemagne whom she had just killed. Instead, she snatched the glowing diamond sword that he had been holding in his hand. This one, she knew, was enchanted with Fire, far better than the sword with Sharpness that she had.

DZ stood up and glanced around wildly back and forth between Bill and Ben, desperately treating their brother, and Charlemagne's body, which had just vanished, sending Kat's
sword clattering to the ground.

“Did you . . . how did he . . . what the . . . ?” DZ sputtered, his eyes deeply infused with perplexity.

“Caesar stabbed Bob in the knee and then Ender Pearled away, and then Charlemagne tried to kill you from behind so I stabbed him in the face,” Kat said hurriedly, her instincts on overdrive as they stood in the midst of the battle. To Kat's surprise, DZ's face fell at the news. She had expected him to be at least a little happy that one of their most dangerous adversaries had just taken a sword to the forehead.

“Figures,” he spat out with a dark look and a grim chuckle, turning around and drawing his bow.

“What's that supposed to mean?” asked Kat in annoyance. She felt extremely vulnerable standing still and was itching to get back to the battle.

“That's just the way it goes, isn't it? You killed Charlemagne, so do you think Caesar is ever going to forgive you? And Caesar probably just took away Bob's ability to walk, and do you think Bill and Ben are going to sleep well while Caesar's still alive? Of course not! It's a vicious cycle is what it is!” DZ looked legitimately infuriated now, and it couldn't be at a worse time.

“DZ, honestly,” yelled Kat over the chaos of the fighting. “If you want to have some sort of moral-epiphany thing, can't it wait until after we've done what we're supposed to do? I
still have an entire team of assassins to kill!”

“You know, stuff like this is the reason I went out to live in the desert in the first place. Why do you have to kill them? Because they want to kill you? You realize that if you just put aside your differences, you're really not—”

“Oh, for God's sake, I don't have time for this!” bellowed Kat as she sprinted off, leaving her morally confused friend in the dust. She had just spotted one of her prime targets, and she was not going to let her leave alive.

“Hey, Becca!” shouted Kat, and it almost seemed planned as a clearing opened in the group of people and Becca spun around to face her. She had seen better days, Kat noted. Under one of Becca's baggy and bloodshot eyes was a cut that indicated a sword wound. When the two girls' eyes locked over the clearing, Kat was stunned to see that Becca's were full of a terrifying quality she had never seen before. It was a sort of mix of desperate desire, incessant hatred, and ill-suppressed fear. This insane look made it exceedingly obvious that the demolition expert of RAT1 wanted nothing more than to impale Kat's flesh with the diamond sword in her hand.

Kat heard a growling at her side, and she looked down and was instantly filled with joy. Rex had rejoined her. Immediately after the start of the battle, Rex had gotten into a tussle with a tamed wolf of the Elementian side, and Kat had left him to his own devices, trusting that he would be all
right and that he would find her if she needed him. Indeed, the dog's sudden appearance at Kat's side convinced her that both of her assumptions were correct.

Becca made the first move. Her face breaking into the unhinged grin of a killer maniac, she threw an Ender Pearl and teleported to Kat's feet, into the deadlock of her waiting sword. The two warriors pushed into each other and were thrown back, and then they pounced into heavy combat. Kat soon realized, to her dismay, that she had seriously underestimated Becca's skills with the sword. Although her expertise was in demolition, the girl was nothing short of a sword master. Kat ground away on the offensive, but Becca blocked each attack effortlessly, laughing and not even breaking a sweat. Kat knew that it was only a matter of time before Becca took the offensive, at which point she would be in deep trouble.

Kat, remembering her training with Sally, went out of her comfort zone and drew her second sword, fighting Becca with the dual blades. However risky this move might have been, it worked. Becca was totally unprepared to take on somebody of even Kat's modest skill with twin swords. Before long, Kat's left sword had sent Becca's single sword spiraling in the air, and Charlemagne's sword in Kat's right hand cut Becca across the chestplate, melting through the armor and creating a trail of burn marks as it went.

Becca's eyes bulged as she gave a very
sudden, very powerful scream. Kat was knocked off guard, which gave Becca enough time to rip off her chestplate and rush in to engage Kat in close combat. In a flash, Becca knocked Kat's swords out of her hands by hitting two pressure points on both wrists.

Kat was utterly unprepared. She had never been trained in hand-to-hand combat before, as Becca so clearly had. Try as she might to resist, Becca had Kat pinned to the ground and was undoubtedly about to do something horrible to her when an arrow pierced the ground, inches from Kat's head.

Both girls looked up and saw Leonidas standing in the clearing, his bow raised, ready to take Kat out at a moment's notice. Or . . . was he? As Kat focused on his brown face, which was screwed up in concentration, there was a tangible amount of tension in his eyes. His eyes kept almost changing focus between Kat and Becca, as if—and Kat's eyes widened as the thought occurred to her—he was trying to decide which of them to shoot.

But why? Why was it that Leonidas, whom Kat knew to be a great shot, was not immediately putting an arrow through her skull? Was it really because he was contemplating shooting Becca? What was going on? Why was it that she, Kat, was still alive?

Kat felt a jerk around her navel. She had been so intensely focused on Leonidas's hesitancy to shoot that she had not noticed Becca putting her into a full nelson, and she was
now being held up in prime position for shooting.
I should have known
, thought Kat bitterly,
he was just stalling for Becca to get me into the right position.
Or was that it? Even as she sat here, captured, more immobile than Leonidas could ever dream of finding her, beads of sweat were still tumbling down Leonidas's forehead like miniscule waterfalls, representing what Kat thought might be suppressed conflict.

She never got a chance to learn whether or not Leonidas would have shot her. Kat felt herself fall forward and slam to the ground, and as she looked up, her jolted vision caught sight of Rex flying over her. The dog had knocked Becca off Kat and was now charging down Leonidas. Kat saw Rex tackle the archer to the ground, Leonidas's arrow leaving his bow in a random trajectory.

Recognizing that her time for escape had come, Kat elbowed Becca in the face, kicked her way out from beneath her and snatched up her glowing red sword from the ground nearby, proceeding to slash the recovering Becca across the chest. Becca's entire body burst into flames, and she couldn't even scream in pain from the injury to her mouth. Kat squinted her eyes in repulsion as Becca flailed around, trying desperately to escape the inferno engulfing her body, finally succumbing to the inevitable and collapsing facedown onto the stone courtyard—but not before she pushed a small stone button on the ground that Kat had not noticed before.

Kat realized what had happened after Becca pressed a button. She glanced over at Leonidas, who seemed to be in a state of shock that his partner had just essentially betrayed him. Even Rex's ears perked up, his animal instincts picking up something horribly, horribly wrong.

The entire world seemed to become a three-part combination of light, sound, and heat as the TNT trap hidden beneath the stone blocks of the courtyard went off. Kat covered her head with her arms, and she felt her armor completely blown off by the sheer force of the explosion. A sensation of flying upward overpowered all of Kat's senses, and she willed herself to open her eyes to view the scene around her.

The blackened corpse of Becca spun through the air, spewing items like blood. Leonidas was absent from the world, which had become composed of white pillars of energy.

Then, all at once, the white pillars disappeared and Kat found herself hundreds of feet above the ground, burns covering her arms. She looked down and saw the giant hole of blackness that the blast had opened in the center of the battlefield.

As the falling began, two final thoughts rolled through her mind: Becca is dead . . . and Leonidas . . .

Then Kat's head hit the dirt and her mind stopped.

S
tan was two-thirds of the way to the base of the castle when a massive explosion shook the center of the battlefield. He was cursing himself for taking so long to confront the King. It wasn't entirely his fault. When Jayden had been ambushed by the Griefer with the ski mask who had killed Crazy Steve, along with two of his goons, was Stan really going to stand there and let Jayden fight three-on-one? Now that one of the Griefer's friends was dead by Jayden's hand, the other taken down by wound from Stan's blade, and the Griefer himself left to the mercy of Jayden, Stan was feeling that the whole ordeal had taken entirely too much time.

As Stan finally reached the lava moat at the base of the castle, he was momentarily deterred by the sight of Archie and G engaged in raging combat with the giant beast-man, Minotaurus. Stan wasn't worried about them—he was sure that they could take him on. What did unnerve him a bit were the looks of supreme rage upon both of their faces. Indeed, the only time Stan had seen them look that angry was back in the Adorian Village right after Minotaurus had killed Adoria.

Praying that nobody else had died, and remembering that completing his own task was the only way to ensure that nobody else did, Stan pulled
out his last Ender Pearl. With an almighty toss, the green orb flew up to the castle bridge. Stan closed his eyes and allowed himself to be consumed by the rushing flow of teleportation, opening his eyes only when he felt solid brick beneath his feet.

Stan found, to his relief, that his aim had been true. He now found himself standing on the bridge of the King's castle. The green below him was punctuated by small, multicolored dots that were his battling friends and foes. Knowing then what he would find, Stan took a deep breath, assured himself one last time that he was ready, and turned to face his adversary for the first and most definitely the last time.

He stood there, on the other end of the bridge, staring Stan down like a hawk eying a mouse. Slowly, the King reached across his body to the sword hanging at his left side, and, grasping the hilt, pulled it out and pointed it at Stan. Stan could see a second sword dangling at his right side and a bow slung across his back. As the sun glinted off the diamond covering his chest and head, and the sword now fixed with unwavering confidence toward Stan, there was no smile on King Kev's face as he gave Stan a look that clearly offered him the first move.

Stan had planned for this, and in response, he reached for one of the two iron axes strapped onto his back. King Kev's eyebrows twitched in surprise for a moment and then fixated back into a scowl. Stan was not surprised. Had the
King pulled out any but the highest tier of weapon, he would have been surprised, too.

Keeping his game plan in mind, Stan held the King's gaze for a few moments, those remorseless blue eyes erasing all doubt he had about the battle he was about to undertake. Then, the fates of Adoria, Crazy Steve, and so many others forced their way out of his throat, manifesting themselves in a war cry as Stan charged the King.

King Kev's expressionless face morphed into a slight hint of a smile at Stan's apparent foolishness for charging him head-on, but Stan had a plan. A few blocks before he would have come into the range of the King's sword, Stan threw the iron axe with all his strength at the King. The King had clearly not been expecting this, but he managed to dodge with a dive roll to the side. His diamond sword rose just in time to counter the diamond blade of the axe Stan had pulled from his inventory.

The King thrust upward with his sword, regaining his footing but still giving Stan the offensive, which he pressed with pleasure. It was becoming very obvious, very quickly, however, that the caliber of King Kev's sword fighting far surpassed any that Stan had seen, any that DZ possibly could have demonstrated to him. In the midst of the battle of his life, Stan was at the top of his game, but it still seemed that the King was only toying with him, his blade fluidly moving through the air as if he could predict the motions of Stan's axe.

Sensing that his current approach would get him nowhere, Stan tried a new one and cut to the side, slamming the wooden handle of his axe across King Kev's chest, hoping to knock him off the bridge and into his demise below. The contact of wood on diamond reverberated in the form of a shock wave through the King. The unpredicted offense momentarily stunned him, but it was not to last. As Stan was about to drive him over the edge, King Kev placed his hand onto one of the battlements and in a showcase of incredible upper-body strength, he pushed off his hand and sailed into the air.

It was with implausible agility that King Kev positioned his bow and fired five arrows in rapid succession at Stan. The King was clearly an exceptional archer as well, for despite the fact that he was in midair, the arrows still found Stan, bouncing off his armor. When the King hit the ground, his features were twisted with a fresh wave of fury. He wasted no time making it clear that he had the offensive now.

There was nothing Stan could do. The King was now fighting with a technique of the sword that Stan had never seen before, and despite his best efforts, it was less than ten seconds before Stan's axe lay far from his reach, having clattered across the stone and stopping less than a block short of falling from the edge of the bridge.

Stan could barely breathe. His chest moved, but only
slightly, as it was pinned under King Kev's foot. Stan could not think clearly. His mind was thrashing between two trains of thought, one panicking over his impending doom, the other scrabbling to formulate a plan to escape his cruel fate.

“I don't like people who try to kill me, Stan,” said the King, his voice shaking with rage, and it occurred to Stan that it was the first time he had ever heard the King speak in person. His voice was considerably lower and more menacing than it had sounded projected over the courtyard. “I tend to find them, rather unpleasant, you know? The kind of people that cause problems. The kind of people”—and his voice went steely, his face ugly with hatred—“that I don't want in my kingdom.”

The King jammed his knee downward into Stan's chest. The pressure seemed to increase tenfold. He half hoped now that the King would kill him soon, before his organs collapsed. It seemed he would get his wish. The King drew his bow and notched an arrow. Desperate to go down fighting, Stan aimed one last defiant jab upward at the King's face. Feeble as it might have been, the King still had to weave his head to the side to avoid it. With a look that said more than any insult ever could, King Kev pulled back the string. Stan closed his eyes.

When the weight lifted from his chest, Stan knew that it was over. The arrow had entered his temple, and he had gone the same way as Crazy Steve. It was odd though, he
realized—he hadn't felt a thing.

Stan opened his eyes and saw with a start that he was not, in fact, dead. He could see the body of King Kev flying backward and away from him, his diamond helmet spinning about in a lopsided pattern beside him. But by what force? Stan looked up, and his immediate reaction was that the pressure on his innards must have impaired his thoughts, because he could not be seeing correctly.

The figure standing over him, holding Stan's axe in a stance of attack, was dead. Stan had watched him die. And if he had been alive, there was no way that he would be here or that he would have saved Stan's life from the King.

But as Stan's vision came back into complete focus, he saw that this truth against all truths was true, and that the armored form of Mr. A was indeed reaching down, offering Stan a hand up.

“Are you all right, Stan?” asked the Griefer, and Stan heard unmistakable, genuine concern in his voice.

Sure that something was wrong, it was only tentatively that Stan answered, “Yeah,” and grasped Mr. A's hand, letting himself be pulled back to his feet.

“Here's your axe,” Mr. A said, and he held it out to Stan, who accepted it gratefully but cautiously. A small sound of “Wha—” escaped Stan's lips before Mr. A cut him off.

“Stan, I'm sure you have a million questions, and I would
call you an idiot if you completely trusted me right now, but I want you to know two things. One: I am not going to hurt you. Two: I'm going to help you kill the King. I'll explain everything else in a second.”

Indeed, questions were exploding inside Stan's head like TNT, but he focused himself on the form of King Kev, who had wasted no time regaining his footing and retrieving his helmet, and who was now looking at Mr. A with surprised fury. Stan decided to let things play out, trusting that he would understand everything within the next couple of minutes.

“Who are you? What are you doing here?” barked the King in wild rage.

Mr. A smirked. “You don't recognize me, do you, Kev old boy?” he responded.

The King's eyes widened, his mouth dropped open, and the grip on his sword tightened. Obviously something about this phrase sat ill with the King.

“That . . . that voice . . . ,” said the King, growing white, as if he had seen a ghost. “Is that . . . are you . . . is that really you, Avery?”

“What, not happy to see me, Kev?” Mr. A asked. “That's okay. I wouldn't be, either.”

Stan's mind was working in double time, trying to process what he had just heard. Had the King just called Mr. A “Avery”? But then . . . that couldn't mean . . . what?

“How are you here, Avery?” asked the King, a tangible element of fear in his voice. “You're dead. I killed you. There's no
possible
way that you're alive.”

“I'm . . . kind of thinking the same thing, Mr. A,” replied Stan, his voice shaky. “What I mean is, how are you alive? And why,” Stan's head hurt even saying it, “does he keep calling you Avery?”

“I'm sure you both have quite a few questions. Before I kill you, Kev”—to which he gave a chuckle and King Kev shook in rage—“I will give a brief summary of my life, which I think should put to rest any questions that either of you may have.

“After you killed me, Kev, I found myself unable to ever return to Elementia again. I was miserable. I had done so much in this place, and it was gone. I decided that it was my duty to return, and to do everything possible to make sure that what happened to me didn't happen to anyone else here ever again. That was when I created a new account, and I rejoined Elementia again under the name of Adam711, a name not too dissimilar to who I feel I always will truly be, Avery007.

“I played the game of Minecraft from the beginning, gathering all my necessary resources and eventually building myself up into the warrior that I was when you killed me, Kev. It wasn't enough, though. I wanted so desperately to take you
down. I quickly learned of a settlement composed of players that you had banished, Kev, and who were living in the Southern Tundra Biome. I knew that if there was anywhere that I could start to raise an army to destroy you, it would be there, seeing as the Adorian Village was still in its infancy at that time.

“I arrived at that settlement, and it was miserable. The snowy wasteland of the tundra had no trees, barely any animals, and those poor players were struggling to survive. That settlement is probably dead by now, not that you'd care, Kev, but I was sure that, at the time, they would join me in my plan. They did not, however. They must have been extremely paranoid from living in poverty for so long, for the moment I tried to enlist them to my rebellion, they beat me down with their stone tools, calling me a dangerous monster that they couldn't afford to deal with. And just like that, Adam711 died the same way as Avery007.

“I became twisted, dark. The same way you are now, Kev. As a matter of fact, I started in a cycle of dark thoughts, and I eventually tricked myself into believing that the lower-level players of this game who didn't join me in my plan—which frankly must have sounded deranged to them—were the reason that the server was in the state of decline that continues to this day. I now know that it is because of you, Kev. But at the time I was in a bad place in my thoughts.
Determined to extract my revenge, I rejoined the game a second time, this time with my current body and name, Mr. A.

“It was not long after I rejoined that I ran into you for the first time, Stan. I had already killed a number of new players, and that golden sword was the best weapon that I had found. I now deeply regret all those actions, and I realize there is nothing worse in this world than attacking the innocent. But regardless, you three escaped me. As the first ones to ever do so, I found myself unable to want anything except for you, Kat, and Charlie dead. As you know, I hunted you down, gaining better materials for myself as you did the same, and it all culminated when you knocked me into that lava pit over the End Portal.

“I believed, and I now know, that you supposed that I had died in that burning pit. I would have, too, had it not been for the Potion of Fire Resistance that I had in my inventory. As I lay there under the lava, I heard what you said, Stan. I thank you for what you said, because I came back to my senses after that. I realized, for the first time since my reincarnation as Mr. A, how very corrupt I had become. I hated myself for what felt like forever as I floated there in that burning pit. I realized then that the only way I could redeem myself for my actions was to help you. You had told me that you were plotting to overthrow Kev, and I swore right then and there that I would do whatever it took to help you. He's the corrupt
one. He's the reason I died. He's the reason everyone's been dying.

“And so now, I'm here to kill you, Kev,” finished Mr. A, or Avery, with an almost amused smile on his face. Stan was incredulous, but as he thought about it, fitting all the pieces of the story together in his head, it made sense. Mr. A had not been friends with Avery007—he
was
Avery007.

King Kev had not moved throughout Avery's speech, but his face now showed obvious fear at the fact that his best friend–turned–enemy had returned from the grave not once but twice. Then, slowly, King Kev's face broke into a bemused sort of grin.