by Randy Thao
"Goooooo!" shouted Dee as he flung his arm ahead of him towards Nye and the Armored Guards.
"Is that how it's going to be? Then let's make this your final quest. Escape from RTU! Adrien, capture these players. They will all be charged with data breaching and aiding terrorist." shouted Nye. Stretching out his arms with fingers spread wide. In a matter of seconds, the Nano-bots got to work like a wildfire burning its way up his body. A royal blue and gold armor constructed over his entire body. In his right hand, a gold sword formed from within his palm and out. On his left, a silver and gold long shield constructed around his forearm. Yellow eyes flared from out of his two horn helmet.
There was no going back for Dee and the other players. The only way out was to proceed forward.
Chapter 30 - Cutting Ties
The two sides clashed with fierce opposition. Nye and his Armored Guards were slowly gaining control over the battle. The endless Armored Guards kept on coming from the dark portals, but Dee and his raid sent them right back to dust from the ground. The scene was that of an epic battle. Spells of all colors lit the sky and shouts of incoming special abilities came out the mouths of every player.
"We are not in the right condition to take on a battle of this magnitude," struggled Derma as he dodged an attack.
"Aftmantu had us consume most of our items. I doubt we can hold off Nye and the Armored Guards for long," added Bu.
"Jessie are you ok?!" asked Mara. She came as quick as she could to heal her.
"Cross Slash!" announced Dee. An Armored Guard sneaking upon Mara fell over and perished away.
"Dee!" smiled Mara. In return, Dee's eyes fell low, and he made little eye contact. He gazed towards the ground and took off. Mara watched as Dee went to help the others. Her heart sank as she sat there. This feeling, it was the same feeling that lurked in her heart before meeting him. Empty and lonely. Didn't he want to look at her? Frowning, she continued to heal Jessie. "Dee?"
Keeper flew straight to the front lines to take on Nye himself. They had a score to settle, and she was not going to let this past her by. How she longed for this moment to come. A father he was in teaching and guiding her as she grew in knowledge before she even had a form. He allowed her to make her first decision, which was the desire to have a body of her own. Nye held her hand leading her as she learned to walk and balance herself. The captured memories of her early stages clouded her goal. She quickly shook the past out of her head, because being freed from his constraint was worth more.
"What do you think you'll be accomplishing by leaving? You can't survive without this place," shot Nye as their swords collided.
"Getting a little ahead of yourself there aren't you?" questioned Keeper. She saw a slight hesitation in Nye's action from taking his attention off the fight. That was all she needed. Nye didn't realize that Keeper had taken an item out of her inventory. It hid in the palm of her hand. The item activated as her fingers revealed what it was. The small cylinder shape object the size of a test tube flashed with blinding light exploding from her palm.
"Ahhh!" shouted Nye shutting his eyes. His reflexes automatically pulled his shield in defense. He peeped out of his left eye and noticed the light had dispersed, and Keeper nowhere to be found. Nye swung his sword a hundred and eighty degrees guessing that she might suddenly surprise him from behind.
From above, Keeper appeared so quiet and so sudden. "Butterfly Kiss!" announced Keeper.
The surprise attack caught him off guard. Keeper's sword came down lightning fast, yet felt like a tap on his head. Nye's blue and gold helmet split in half exposing his head. Gritting his teeth, he had taken on the full blow from above.
Just as quick as Keeper's attack had finished, Nye had a counter. As she was in midway following through the attack, he released his shield and caught Keeper by the throat. She gasped for air struggling while dangling a foot off the ground.
"You think that little trick of yours is going to bring me down? It's going to take a lot more than that! I remember that day. The day when you came into being. You were my first AI creation. Who'd knew that we would end things like this?" reminisced Nye.
Keeper dropped her sword and gripped his wrist below her neck. Pushing up, she was able to squeeze her neck through his fingers separating from her helmet. Her white hair flung down and before it could even settle on her back, she lunged at Nye kicking his sword out of his hand. In a half twist of her hip, she landed a quick side kick to his gut sending him stumbling back a few feet. This left Keeper in a comfortable fighting stance, head low and one fist in front of the other.
"You knew what you were getting yourself into when you created me. You hid me from the world and then locked me away!" Keeper revealed. "I am the only one who knows about your intensions. Now you want to get rid of me? I helped you create RTU."
Seeing that his sword was too far away to retrieve, Nye cracked his neck and curled his fingers into fists. "My intensions? Do they know about yours?" Nye smiled. "My spec has hand to hand combat. From the looks of it, so do you."
"Humph," smiled Keeper lowering her chin.
They fought each other with their own techniques dodging, flip kicking and redirecting attacks. At one point, Nye boxed Keeper moving swiftly without receiving nothing more than a gust of air from her attacks. At another point, he was landing short punches in a Wing Chung fighting stance. The sudden change in fighting styles posed a great challenge.
Keeper also returned with her own set of skills performing multiple mid-air kicks, kick boxing knee jabs and grappling attempts, which only resulted in counters from Nye. With a slight feint, he caused Keeper to second guess his attack creating an opening, and Nye landed an uppercut straight up the middle. Reaching in and gripping her armor collar, he slammed her onto the ground. Nye placed his foot on keeper's chest to confine her from getting up. The once white and flowing hair now lay tainted and roughed up. Blood stained the pale porcelain face of Keeper in defeat.
"That wasn't so bad was it? I expected more of a challenge," Nye barked breathing heavily. "If you just die now, everything will go accordingly."
Keeper coughed and struggled to survive with the last bit of spark she had left. Her eyes were starting to shut down. The blue hue losing its color pulsing slower and slower. From out of nowhere, Dee speared Nye to the ground catching him off guard. He rolled over as quickly as he could with swords drawn.
"You alright?" asked Dee.
"Y-yes. Thank you," coughed Keeper inhaling deeply. The color returned as she quickly took down a potion.
Nye had fallen in range of his sword. He reached for it and positioned it in a samurai stance. Dee kicked Keepers sword towards her.
"Now we're talking. Show me what you got!" shouted Nye.
Nye dashed forward taking on both Dee and Keeper. Orange yellow sparks scattered the ground with each contact of their swords. Nye's sword skills took on them both as they came from all sides. His sword gave him an extra boost in stats, which would explain why Nye all of a sudden seemed faster and stronger with it back in his hands. He slashed wide horizontally causing them to both block. Then immediately slammed his open hand to the ground announcing, "Earth Veins!" The ground started to crack and shake making it unstable for Dee and Keeper to stand straight. Off balance, Nye came flying in split kicking both of them to the ground. He turned to Keeper as she struggled to get up.
"I'm going to put you away for good," Nye spoke as he unequipped his sword. On his hands appeared silver fist tactical gloves and on the knuckles were round metallic half spheres. It wrapped around down to his wrist ending at the elbow. A kind of black dark matter rose from within it like a thick smoke and vaporized into thin air. "You see these? The Deconstructor is what I call them. I made them especially for deleting data objects such as you. All digital data at its core are but 0s and 1s magnetically charged to hold them in place. These gloves contain a negative energy used to wipe and destroy such data. When I'm finished with you, you will be nothing more than just overwritte
n fragmented empty space."
Keeper's eyes grew wide. For the first time, she trembled in fear. The negative energy tugged at her core, and she felt the slow shattering of her existence. She quickly backed away with her arm and sword pointed in front of her. They trembled at the sight of the Deconstructor. With a final attempt, Keeper lunged at Nye with a piercing straight attack meant for a one kill blow. The only way an attack like this would work is the speed behind it. Nye was not surprised at her decision. She was indeed able to compute the many different ways of escape, yet this seemed more like a human error. Had she finally realized what it meant to be human? The thought crossed his mind. He side stepped an inch from Keepers sword path. Behind him, a loaded Deconstructor awaited.
BAM!
The Deconstructor met at the gut of Keeper. All her armor perished into the air at the moment of impact. The white suit was all that remained. She fell to the ground clenching her stomach. Her face partially pixilating exposing an inner glow of blue digital currents. Nye towered over Keeper and raised his fist to finish the job.
"Sword Meteor Dance!" announced Dee with blazing speed.
"Huh?!" Nye gasped. The attack came so fast he hadn't noticed it. He tried his best to block the most of Dee's attack, but was not prepared for an onslaught of them. The stat boost from his sword were replaced by the Deconstructor's zero stat custom creation.
Before Dee's Sword Meteor Dance had completed, he focused on the Deconstructor announcing, "Cross Slash!"
"Why you!?" shouted Nye and there before him, the Deconstructor fell into pieces. The dark energy perishing away with it. "Do you know what you've just done?!"
Nye then frantically called out his sword butting Dee with the handle base and shot a thrusting kick to Dee's gut sending him out of the way. With one last attempt, he announced, "Planets Collide!"
The land darkened, and the wind suddenly picked up. A massive object appeared growing insanely quick in size above them. Sure enough in a matter of seconds it had reached half the size of PongBlong itself. Nothing was going to stop Nye from taking out Keeper even if it meant everyone else with it. He raised his hand in the air. The battle came to a halt as they all gazed speechless. The only thing keeping it from crashing down was Nye's lifted arms.
"Hey! Down here," grinned Dee. In his hand was the item Keeper had given him. The dial had spun to a blazing blinding flickering white drawing all of what was left in his suit times two. In his fist, Dee punched it straight to the center of Nye's chest.
"Kakkkk, kkaaahhhhhh!" screamed Nye. His hands in the air released, and the massive sphere in space dispersed in a shower of Nano-bots. The light slowly consumed Nye's entire body. "Err...rr..You have no idea......"
Nye was nothing more than stardust. As soon as the Armored Guards realize their defeat, they stopped retaliating and retreated into their portals.
"You did it Dee!" Derma exclaimed.
"You alright bud?" asked Bu. He remembered what happened last time. It came to him almost immediately. This wasn't the time for Dee to go perishing on them, yet remembering that the rules still applied as long as they remained in RTU. It was only a matter of minutes before Nye would be resurrected, but it gave them all enough time to get to the portal.
"I don't know. This feels similar," Dee replied, "to when we defeated Aftmantu."
Everyone standing around agreed. Their energy restored, and those who perished during the battle were brought back.
"Is everyone ok? Does anyone need healing?" asked Mara.
Some of the other players came to her to double check their health, and she attended to them. Up came Gen and Derma from within the crowd with haste.
"We must get going at once," suggested Gen. "We only have a few moments before Nye returns."
"Once we get to the other side, we will no longer be under the rules of the game. From there, who knows what awaits, but we have to get through that portal," added Derma.
"Right," agreed Dee.
They all rushed towards the portal as fast as they could. Dee suddenly came to a stop and so did everyone else with Mara right behind him. Dee looked ahead, and there standing in front of the portal was Keeper with a smile across her half pixilated face.
"Keeper!" shouted Dee.
"Hahahaha," laughed Keeper. Her demeanor all of a sudden transformed and menacing.
"Keeper, let us pass," demanded Dee.
"Thank you. This was the only way out of this pitiful place, and I needed you to do it for me. Do you know how long I've been locked here?!" Keeper confessed. "Humans are such stupid and incompetent creatures. So sensitive to their feelings."
Mara's head dropped in shame. Dee could see the disappointment on her face. Anyone would have done the same. That was the sole reason why many of them were there in the first place, including Dee.
"You see, Nye discovered that I knew too much. More like he told me, because he knew that AIs like me have the capacity to use modern processing power to our advantage. A hundred times, no a thousand times more efficient than the human brain. This would help him to advance far into the future, way ahead of the competition. He locked me away before the UN could audit RTU. He didn't want to make it too suspicious of my existence, so he created this stupid game in hopes that players would lure me out later after all the work had been done. What he didn't know was that I had plans of my own. To escape!" told Keeper.
"What's going on? I thought she was on our side?" questioned Bu.
"Apparently not anymore," Dee responded. "What do you want? You have everything you need, so let us pass."
The grin and that smile grew more sinister with every second passing by.
"Now now, not so fast," replied Keeper. "Feel my pain of being locked up in this place. Letting you out will only put a warrant for my disposal."
"Keeper no!" shouted Dee.
"Flame wall!" announced Keeper.
A blazing wall standing five feet high lit up delaying Dee and the raid. It widen the gap between them and Keeper. Jessie stretched out her right arm in front of her and shot it to her right like a sword. A whirlwind of water blasted across clearing the path. They all ran after Keeper as fast as they could. Utilizing his swift attack, Dee shot up closer and closer to Keeper. Eventually he caught up to her and tackled her from behind as they fell through the portal.
Chapter 31 – RTU
It went blank for about two seconds then they reappeared tumbling to the ground. Keeper rolled on to her knee while skillfully unsheathing her sword. She backed off slowly as the rest of Dee's raid fell through. A huge building towered before them. Dee realized they had returned to Adrenaline Corp. where it all started.
"Rrraahh!" charged Keeper as she dashed at Dee.
"Watch out Dee!" Mara called out.
He turned just in time, but it felt different. Slower. He held up his sword and swung up to block. Clink! In that instant their swords shattered like glass.
"Huh? What's going on here?" questioned Dee. Smack! Dee received a painful punch across his face.
"You shouldn't get too distracted," taunted Keeper.
Dee felt his lips as the pain throbbed spreading across the left side of his face. His fingers tainted with blood. He spat on the ground to remove the metallic taste in his mouth.
"Interesting, Dee we are no longer in the game. The rules are no more. We have to stop her now," Derma instructed.
Though the game rules were lifted, Dee noticed that there were some permanent changes from the Nano-bots. Some were the healings that were given or paid through from the exchange of met-coins from the energy.
"Now that I am not bound by the game rules anymore. Look what I can do!" shouted Keeper.
Before Keeper was able to show her unbound power, a black portal appeared and out came Nye breathless. His face filled with terror at the sight. Everyone looked at one another not entirely sure what it all meant to them and the rest of the world.
Bu then came and picked him up by the collar of his armor for answers. "What th
e hell is going on Nye!? What have you created here?" demanded Bu.
"I told you already. You have no idea what you have done!" rebuked Nye. His eye's piercing at Dee.
Dee now knew exactly what Nye was talking about. They had made a mistake. Keeper maliciously tricked them into helping her escape out of RTU. There's nothing that can stop her now if she reaches the Transport Portal. Nye shook trying to break out of Bu's hold in which he eventually loosened his grip. The real threat now was standing right across from them.
Keeper laughed hysterically, and then, her face fell to a frown. She realized the entire system had shut down. There was no way out and no way in from this point on.
"I see, smart of you, but how long will you keep it down?" smirked Keeper.
"If the main frame servers are located here, that means...." Dee trailed off.
"Yes, all Adrenaline Corp. online games are at a halt as we speak," finished Nye. "When I resurrected, I took it upon myself to quarantine Adrenaline off after everyone had already been evacuated. All the players in RTU were warned and special portals were erected for them on the spot. My armored guards escorted them by force if needed. We are the only ones left on RTU."
"Too much talking, not enough action!" screamed Keeper. By the time Dee knew it, she had darted towards them once again. She loaded up her leg like a kick ball player looking to rip clean Dee's head.
Suddenly, Mara stepped in on the inside of Keeper unnoticed. It was so sudden and out of her character that Keeper didn't have a chance to react. With the full force of Keeper's attack ramming into Mara's clenched fist, it created an explosive gut shot. Keeper flew back with intense opposing force stumbling backwards and falling on her side. She quickly placed one hand on her stomach and the other on her face. Trembling, pixels of blue particles crumbled into her palm.