Chapter 22
When my vision cleared, we were standing in the midst of a vast prairie -- nothing but grass and scrubby undergrowth as far as I could see. Bill released his grip on my arm and stepped away from me. "Where's the monster, Wizzit?" he asked.
"Soaring high above you," was the reply. "Up near the sun, from your viewpoint. Let's see if I can adjust your optics to pick it up . . ."
There was a flash of pink light off to my left. "Hi, guys!" my sister said brightly. "How can I help?"
"Not sure yet," Bill said tersely. He was looking up, shading his eyes. "I don't see it, Wizzit."
"What's he looking for?" she asked me in a whisper.
"The monster," I replied. "We haven't actually spotted it yet."
"My guess is that it's going to be a thunderbird," Bill commented, "based on how the rest of today has gone."
"Whoa! You guys are being attacked by flying cars?" Angie asked incredulously.
Bill laughed. "By storm gods," he said. "The thunderbird is a mythical creature venerated by native Americans in the Great Plains. It's supposed to be able to shoot lightning from either its eyes or its talons, depending on who's telling the story, and the beating of its wings creates thunder."
We stared up into the sky for the longest time, trying to spot it. To pass the time, I asked Angie how the play had gone. "Fine," she said. "I saw Wizzit's message on my phone just as we came in after curtain calls. Everyone must have thought I was a lunatic, the way I grabbed my Junior Prime Pink badge and ran out so I could activate in private."
"You mean, you're still in costume?" I asked her.
"Uh huh. And makeup. I told one of my friends to tell Mom and Dad that I'd gotten a call from you, so hopefully they'll know what I'm doing and will bring my clothes home for me."
"The monster is starting to lose altitude," Wizzit suddenly announced.
"Yup, it is," Bill agreed. "I can see it now. Looks like it's trying to dive-bomb us. Blasters out, everyone!"
"Better get behind me, Pink," I told my sister. "If this guy really can shoot lightning bolts, I don't want any of them to hit you." I went down on one knee. "Here, brace your weapon on my shoulder."
I could see it now myself, diving toward us. The thing looked like some sort of gigantic hawk, with a golden beak and glowing red eyes. There was something weird about its talons, too, although from this distance I couldn't tell just what, exactly.
I whipped out my blaster and started firing as fast as I could. Angie did the same; I could feel the repeated kick of the triple-blaster against my shoulder. Beside us, Bill stood with his blaster gripped in a standard two-fisted grip, taking deliberate aim before snapping off a shot.
Despite Bill's measured shooting, I think I was the first to hit it. Of course, the regular-strength blasters are not as powerful as our hand weapons, but even so, I sent more than a few feathers flying. The thing screamed, and I saw little flashes of light shoot out from its eyes. These streamed towards us even faster than the thunderbird was diving; they felt like grape-sized pieces of hail that burned as they struck me.
"Stay under cover, Pink," Wizzit warned her. "Those are clusters of static electricity, much like the thunderbolts that the Zeus creature was throwing out, but far weaker. Blue and Black, your force shields should protect you without any special grounding, but Pink would get some nasty burns if hit."
"Better get behind me, Pink," Bill ordered. "I make a bigger shield than Blue."
See, now, Bill does that kind of casual dismissal of me a lot, and normally it gets my goat. Not today, though. In fact, I had been about to suggest Angie do that very thing. Not because I thought he made a better shield than me, but because I had just had an idea. Something dangerous and crazy and hopefully unexpected. Something that I couldn't do if Angie were hiding behind me. Something fun.
"Do what he says, Pink," I said when Angie hesitated; she darted across the narrow gap that separated us. "Black, if that thing swoops down low, do you think you're strong enough to throw me up to intercept it?"
"Yeah, of course I could." Bill sounded doubtful, but I had purposely phrased my question so that he couldn't say no without sounding like a weakling. Which he would never do.
"Good. Let's get ready, then, because here it comes!"
The monster was streaking in for the attack; it was close enough that I could see its fanged beak open in an angry scream. (Yeah, you heard me right. It was a bird's beak. With fangs. Enclave always makes with the fangs, for some reason. Go figure.) The lightning pulses from its eyes had stopped, thankfully, but its talons were glowing. And . . . wriggling around somehow. Weird.
I wasn't sure exactly how it was planning to attack us -- I thought maybe a talon strike or something -- but whatever the monster's plans were, they got derailed when Angie scored a triple-blaster shot straight to its chest. The impact visibly shook the creature, and it tumbled straight down for maybe a dozen feet before finally catching the air under its wings again.
I realized that this was my chance. "Throw me up there, Black!" I yelled, holstering my blaster as I rose up from my crouch. Bill formed a stirrup with his hands. I stepped into it, and he heaved me high up into the air.
Trina used to do this maneuver a lot with Shelley, and she had always made it look easy. Padma, too, had once had Toby throw her into the air like that, with pretty good results. I don't know whether Bill was a bad thrower or I was just a bad human projectile, but regardless, it didn't work so well for us. I'd had visions of myself soaring smoothly aloft, maybe even landing on the thing's back and riding it like a horse. As it happened, I felt as if I were just a tangle of arms and legs spinning out of control through the air. Yeah, I was nowhere near as graceful as Trina or Padma had been.
Bill must have gotten me on target, though, because the next thing I knew, I was bumping against something large and hard and feathery. I flailed around, trying to grab anything I could get hold of. I eventually found myself dangling beneath the stupid monster, gripping a huge thunderbird drumstick in each hand. Not quite the Trevor Eagle-Rider I had pictured myself as, but hey, I had grabbed hold of it, and could feel my anti-Enclave sap gloves sparking against its leathery skin, causing it all kinds of discomfort, I'm sure.
"Good work, Blue," Bill called from below. Far, far below, I realized as I looked down. The monster was rising again -- slowly, to be sure, with labored beats of its huge wings, but rising nevertheless. "Just be careful of the snakes."
"Snakes?"
"Yeah, sorry, I was a little mixed up earlier. In some versions of the legend, the thunderbird carries a snake in each talon, and it's the snakes that shoot out lightning, not the talons."
Muttering under my breath, I looked up, and it was then that I realized why its talons had looked so strange. Each of them was gripping a golden, glowing, wriggling, sparking snake.
I'm no ophidiophobe; I don't have an irrational fear of snakes. Still, if you were suddenly face to face with two of these weird-looking things -- each as long as my arm and as thick as my wrist -- you probably would have done the same thing I did, which was to yell (to this day, Angie insists that I "shrieked", but really, it was just a manly yell) and try to slap them away.
I did have enough presence of mind to try to slap them away one-handed, while retaining my grip on the thunderbird's leg with the other hand. Slapping didn't work very well, though, so after a second or two, I snatched out my blaster and began shooting. I got one of them point-blank, right in its snaky mouth. Its yellow glow died almost instantly, and it dissolved into powder before my eyes. Heartened, I turned to shoot at the other one.
Unfortunately, fate conspired against me. My first shot went wide and struck the thunderbird across his side. He jerked, I fired again, the snake struck . . . and somehow my blaster was knocked from my grip and fell spinning to the ground maybe a hundred feet below.
&nbs
p; We were none of us very happy at that moment -- the bird, the snake, and I. The snake's eyes began to glow more brightly, and I had a sudden hunch that I had better do something fast. My free hand shot out, and I grabbed Mr. Glowing-eyes just behind his head. I forced the head to one side just as a blast of lightning -- not those little beads of electricity, but real, honest-to-goodness lightning -- shot out from his eyes.
"Blue!" I heard Angie cry out. "Blue, are you all right?"
"I'm fine," I assured her. "Not even singed."
"We can't shoot with you so high," Bill said. "Try to force it closer to the ground."
"Good idea," I replied, doing my best not to roll my eyes. "I'll see what I can do."
The snake's glow had dimmed a little, which told me that maybe it wouldn't be able to shoot any more lightning for a while. Hoping that was the case, I let go his head and began trying to pry him loose from the thunderbird's talons. He had a strong grip, but I had my sparking sap glove, and with a bit of effort, I was able to persuade him to let go.
The snake almost fell from my grasp then, but I managed to snag it by the tail. It tried to wriggle free, but I was good and mad now, and I wasn't about to let go. I began swinging it around in a circle. When centrifugal force had finally made it stretch out, I swung it up, trying to smack the thunderbird with it.
My aim here was to distract the bird so that he wouldn't keep climbing higher, and it worked for a little while. I slapped him with the snake one, two, three times, and then my improvised whip got stuck. Puzzled, I looked up to see what had happened. I couldn't really tell from my vantage, but it looked like Mr. Glowing-eyes had impaled his fangs into the thunderbird's feathery chest and was stuck there. He looked seriously ticked off, and worse, his eyes had once again begun to glow more brightly.
"Better let go, Blue," Wizzit advised me, adding, "Don't worry, I'll catch you."
"Thanks, Wizzit," I said, releasing my grip. I began falling, the thunderbird shot up into the sky, and a few seconds later, he was destroyed by a blast of snake-lightning just as Wizzit teleported me to safety.
Attack Doll 4: Primes Emeriti Page 23