Alkalians

by Caleb S. Bugai

  While Buster also takes evasive action, his wide thrust on air balance pulling his share of the flames after him, Rose is too surprised to react as fast, and when the other two trains, the one meant for Sean then converging upon her, close in she throws herself to the side. The most of the rushing flames flow past her, but a few tongues lap at her legs, and she groans in her rolling as the new wounds spread up to her torso and burn red. Clear of the trail of fire, she manages to kneel, refocus herself, and put her palms together and close her eyes, channeling energy to heal her wounds.

  From his side of the field, Dante peers through the flames that passed by him, spotting Rose beyond them. When he sees what she’s doing, he moves to stop her, rising on air balance and surfing over the flames towards her. He clears the firewall and swoops upon her, his sword between both his hands for a swift strike, but before he reaches her Rose snaps open her eyes, her wounds then a shade of green similar to her battle suit, and from her palms she sprays a swarm of leaves at him. Disoriented by the leaves, Dante clumsily swings, flips past his target, and comes to a stop on the ground, more of the leaves already surrounding him in a blinding blizzard.

  Caught within the blizzard, Dante remains calm and enters a stance with his blade before him and his eyes closed. Focusing on feeling through air balance, he extends it around him, ignoring the countless leaves tickling it as they fly through it and waiting for something bigger to disrupt it. Once it does, sneaking up on him from behind, Dante’s eyes open and he lashes out in a spin, barely missing Rose’s neck when she ducks back and retreats. Sighing, he closes his eyes and resumes his defenses, and after a few of the leaves flying by scratch or sting him he reacts by using his own air balance to blow away the leaves, keeping them from reaching him.

  Meanwhile, on the farther side of the battlefield, Cynthia had been watching her fires at work, the flames burning across the grass shining in her eyes, and was wondering whether to direct them at Rose’s leaf blizzard when Buster drops in near her, both his arms grenade launchers aimed at her. She whips around to him, a streak of flames she casts intercepting the blasts of the grenades shot at her, and she adds their explosions to her own fire to create a burning dome over her, shielding her further against Buster. He backs off on his air balance, glowering at the flames as his gun mounts change into a peculiar pair of barrels, and when Cynthia flips the dome over as a tall wave of fire at him he uses one of them like a vacuum, sucking up the flames and storing them in both barrels through a pipe connecting them.

  Surprised by the new function of his gun mounts, Cynthia isn’t worried by it. With her mental or sonar command over fire magic, she can make the energy overheat and explode out of his gun mounts and all over him. When she goes to do so, preparing her violin, she is again surprised when Buster gestures with his hands to wait. Curious, she sees him point across the field, back to Rose’s leaf storm, and when she looks back to him in wonder, he winks before aiming his other gun mount in that direction and expelling the fire as a massive flamethrower.

  In the blizzard of leaves, Rose, who was preparing another way to attack Dante, is able to see the flamethrower coming, gawking at its approach. Glancing back to Dante through the leaves, she then figures she won’t have to attack him and instead runs out of the blizzard, turning to fling a large leaf shuriken back into it at him. His air balance tripped by the shuriken, Dante whirls to slice through it, but instead only parries it when something stops his legs from moving. Looking down, he sees constricting plants growing up beneath him, rooting him to the ground, and he frantically cuts at them to free himself until a burning leaf passing by him turns him to a greater flame, his face paling in the heat’s light.

  The flamethrower crashes into the leaf storm and ignites it into a swirling inferno, incinerating whatever is caught within it. “Hah, now isn’t that a pretty sight!” exclaims Buster to a nodding Cynthia. When his zoomed-in vision locates Rose beyond the inferno, and someone else tumbling out of it, he adds, “Huh. It seems I missed Rose, but got Dante.” He looks back to Cynthia, his eyes gleaming. “What was that about you protecting your prince, earlier?”

  Cynthia turns on him with a glare, fire magic burning in her hands, and as he propels away backwards she casts a flurry of fire bolts after him, his shotguns stopping some of them and his rapid hovering dodging the others. He returns fire with his gun mounts as gatling barrels, but Cynthia puts up a special defense to such an attack. Superheating the air around her with her fire magic, the aura splits the energy bullets into sparks that sting her, rather than piercing through her, and she counters by mentally stopping more of the broken bullets, combining the sparks into a focused point, and launching it into the air where it explodes, its own sparks raining down like arrows at a further retreating Buster.

  ***

  At that moment in the fight, with Rose and Dante escaping the inferno and Cynthia and Buster engaged, Sean has a bird’s eye view of it all. High above the field through his air balance, his armor bleeding red with the vital wound in his chest, he sighs and complains to himself. “Look at them, still going at it like pros. And where am I? Hiding in the sky, like a critter under a rock! There must be something I can do!” He observes the others, considering their conditions. “Rose’s wounds are healed, a fresh green, and Dante got flame-broiled, so his armor’s scathed a hot orange. Cynthia’s got green scratches, but Buster’s leaking health, his wounds a deep orange. And me? I’ve lost so much health I’m in the red zone, and I can only last maybe a minute more before I should demorph!” He shakes his head, disgruntled. “And here I was hoping to win this thing, or at least go down in, er, flames. Now, it looks like I’ll have to sit myself out. Heh, so much for my gamble on who to…”

  While the fight had been going on over the past minute or so, Matt, his human form unconscious on the ground, has been forgotten by the others. At that moment, in the middle of the battlefield, while Sean speaks to himself, his eyes open, and instead of deep purple in color are now a dark red. He suddenly morphs, and the black flash is immense in size and power, its shockwave rocking the others on the field around it and reaching the audience in their stands far away. As startled as everyone else, Sean gapes below at Matt, his battle morph fully healed, and exclaims, “Whoa, whoa, what the hell? Why is Matt back in morph!?”

  The others can only gape as well, staring at Matt from their four corners of the field around him, and the audience, having had their share of surprises so far in the fight, are most surprised by this. A voice rings out across the field from the loud speaker, “Matthew Calamos, you have already demorphed and been defeated in this contest. Demorph now, or you and your partner will be disqualified.” Matt, meanwhile, is oblivious to the warning as he stares back at his fellow students, his red eyes like a predator’s containing deadly calm.

  Buster then calls out, “Hey, Matt, what’s wrong with ya? You heard the announcer, you lost, fair and square. Now demorph and let us finish this fight!” This seems to reach him when he turns towards Buster, glancing between him and Cynthia, before he raises his hand to charge up a spell. The others only watch, bracing themselves, unable to believe he’s serious, and Matt casts the Blastion spell across the field.

  At first, to Buster and Cynthia’s confusion, it isn’t aimed at either of them, instead gliding towards a spot on the field between them. But when Matt clenches his hand into a fist, the black sphere crackles with volts and splits, thunder booming as lightning bolts simultaneously strike Buster and Cynthia. Buster hits the ground hard, knocked off his hovering air balance with his wounds a searing red, while Cynthia staggers back with a jagged yellow wound upon her chest.

  After the opening attack, Rose, Dante, and Sean are shocked by Matt’s decision while he follows it with a large troop of his shadow clones, dividing up to go after his two targets. Quicker to recover, Cynthia faces down the clones approaching her while casting intricate spells. From the charred grass and ground her fires left behind, which the clones trace in their advance, she rai
ses glowing embers, letting them drift through the air or stick to the clones like dew. Before they reach her, brandishing their large black swords, Cynthia sets off her trap with a spark from her fingertips, and the embers instantly ignite into a conflagration, wiping out all of the clones against her.

  On his half of the assault, Buster struggles to stand up while his gatling guns mow down the clones coming for him. As he manages to stand on his crippled legs, his guns stop firing, their cores needing to cool down, and only a few more clones are left before him, armed with their dark blades. Growling, he readies his arms into shotguns, and as they leap the last few yards at him he shoots them down in order. Just as he takes out his share of them, he notices the flash fire obliterating Cynthia’s, and glances to her before they both focus on the real Matt, still standing where he remorphed.

  Before either of them can return fire against Matt, Buster and Cynthia notice something happening before each of them. The particles of black magic that made up Matt’s clones, rather than vanishing after they had been destroyed, linger in the air as they gather and condense into two separate energy masses. To Buster and Cynthia’s dread, the masses unfold into new forms, and they find themselves looking at dark reflections of their own morphs. Cynthia’s clone is black except for her fiery hair, colored a dark blue and violet instead of red, orange, and yellow, and Buster’s clone has red mechanical eyes that glare back at him.

  While their models are transfixed by seeing dark versions of themselves, the clones attack. Cynthia’s clone casts a huge boulder of shadowy flames, blasting and disorienting her, and then readies an invisible guitar between her hands and plays wicked music, causing the flames lingering on Cynthia to rapidly flare and consume her, making her wounds quickly descend to red in color, until she demorphs and extinguishes them in the flash.

  Buster’s clone fires both his gun mounts as cannons, hitting Buster’s own gun mounts and bursting their barrels, sending him staggering. With his gun mounts’ cores also broken, and his health already low, Buster knows he’s as good as done while his clone aims grenade launchers and fires a volley upon him. As the grenades go off, he demorphs, negating the most of the blasts, but while dazed by them he spots with horror one last grenade sphere drop near him before it explodes.

  ***

  After defeating their models, the clones of Cynthia and Buster fade away while Matt still remains where he stands, his stare over and beyond them. From behind him, a fair distance away, Sean drops in behind Dante, the two of them covered in red or orange wounds, and yells, “Hey, Matt, have you gone mad? You already demorphed, you’ve already lost, so why are you cheating? You should demorph, right now, before you get into big…”

  Sean comes up short when Matt whirls around, his left arm a rifle aiming at him through Dante. Both men blink before a single black bullet hits them, piercing through Dante in a burst of red and smacking Sean in the shoulder, and they both demorph before Matt shoots again, collapsing unconscious on the ground.

  Unlike the others, Rose, the last one left in morph, is calmer about the situation in her worry over Matt’s actions. Approaching him slowly, she calls to him, “Matt, can you hear me? You did it, Matt, you defeated them, they demorphed. You can demorph now, it’s over, and we can…” The rifle arm turns on her, and she stops, bracing herself.

  Rose is oddly not surprised. Ever since he had remorphed, she could feel something was wrong, something was ominously different about him, and when she sees his eyes, red rather than purple, she understands. The Dark Warrior Paladin before her is not Matthew Calamos, not the one that she and others knew.

  Matt fires the gun, and Rose barely dodges the bullet, bending back to have it scrape past her shoulder and leaping away in retreat. Matt improves his assault by sending shadow clones with their swords after her, keeping his rifle fixed on her to try and snipe her while they distract her. Desperately defending herself, Rose has to fend off the clones by throwing leaf shurikens or striking back with leaf daggers while constantly moving, avoiding their blades and Matt’s shots.

  She gets a close call when some of the clones circle around to flank her from behind as one of the shots pierces her left side, her wound energy bursting orange, and its impact twists her around to them as they lunge at her. Reacting quickly, Rose dodges the chop of one clone, spins to slice through the few others, and grabs it from behind to use it as a shield against the next bullet, its form shattered by it and the impact knocking her over.

  As Rose lies on the ground, more of Matt’s clones move in while he exchanges his left arm rifle, its core overheating, for his right arm, aiming the gun in Rose’s direction to pick her off when she reacts to his clones. Dazed on the ground, Rose gets the feeling she’s in trouble and needs to do something fast. As she wonders over what ability in her arsenal to use, she then remembers how Matt had used one of her abilities earlier in the battle. Does that mean she could use one of his, in turn?

  She focuses upon her right hand, to form an energized blade from it, but no blade appears. Rose switches to her left hand, willing it to twist and turn into a gun, but all it does is flex her fingers and knuckles. About to give up and resort to one of her techniques against the incoming clones, she then feels it, faintly but surely flowing in her body through veins. Knowing she has the internal system that allows one to charge and cast magic spells, she would have panicked over what spell she should use if she doesn’t suddenly recall a conversation she once had with Matt, during one of their showers together.

  Matt, I’m curious about something, she had said to him. I’m already aware of how you use your spells, that you need the vein-like system to charge and expel the energy. So, how do you do that for making your clones?

  Chuckling, Matt asked, What do you mean?

  Well, for most spell casters, it takes at least a few seconds to prepare and cast a spell. But with your clones, you can make one instantly appear, within a second. And not just one, but many at once! How is that possible?

  Oh, heh, it’s simple. It’s kind of like, uh, breathing.

  Breathing?

  Yeah, like, you take a quick inhale, and then exhale. In my case, that means I surge the magic through me, outlining my whole figure to copy, and then, well, breath out, letting the clone come out of me. For as long as I could exhale, then, that’s how many clones I can make in order.

  Half way through the memory, Rose is already following the instructions, feeling the magic energy flush through her, and as Matt’s clones converge over her, their swords raised to fall upon her, she breathes out, deep and long. In brilliant flashes of green, clones of Rose spring up and clash with Matt’s, blades from both sides cutting through ethereal flesh while Matt, his red eyes searching, aims and shoots randomly at the clones, unable to tell them apart from the real Rose.

  The green clones, outnumbered by the black but faster than them, carve through them before their brutal bouquet is broken by Blastion spells, the explosions blooming to consume all the clones and clear a path to the real Matt. The source of the spells, the real Rose, sprints down the path, and before he can get a shot at her she collides into him, the leaf dagger in her right hand thrust deeply into his chest.

  Time seems to stand still after the impact, and Rose, panting, looks up to Matt’s face in their near embrace. To her dread, it’s not Matt’s face she sees, but yet another clone’s, its glowing red eyes glaring down at her. Whirling around, she spots the real Matt a few yards away, preparing a spell as energy crackles in his hand, but before she can retreat the clone grabs her arm, locking her in place. Wincing from the grip, Rose glances back, knowing her moment to flee was gone, as Matt casts black lightning upon her, the bolt striking her and his clone. The clone is shattered, and Rose, her body torn with red wounds, collapses upon the ground.

  Lying on her back again, Rose has a harder time moving as she tries to sit up. With her heavy trauma and spell system crippled by the wounds, she doesn’t have time to recuperate before Matt is looming over her, the ba
rrel of his right arm gun pointing between her eyes. Unable to blink, unable to breath, she can do the only thing that suddenly comes to mind, and demorphs in a flash of red.

  In her human form, her eyes are clamped shut as Rose braces for the kill shot, but when it doesn’t come she slowly opens them. The gun is still on her, but Matt briefly shows surprise in his stony expression, his red eyes glinting as they stare down at her. Staring back into them, Rose gasps with a shudder as something about them unnerves her. They are not like any Alkalian’s eyes she’s ever seen before. Their blood red irises, jet black pupils, and crackling veins reveal an ominous, alien presence behind them. In those eyes, she sees only blood and darkness. Cunning and cruelty. Fire and ashes.

  Looking into Matt’s red eyes, Rose sees only death.

  ***

  Matt’s rifle arm contracts, then sprouts the large, black sword, its razor-sharp tip touching Rose’s face to cut open a small, bleeding wound. He lifts it up high above his head, the sunset’s rays shimmering along its surface, and Rose is stricken with terror, realizing this would be the end of her. As the sword swings back down at her, she closes her eyes, praying it will be swift and painless. A breeze swoops past her, and her body spasms, expecting the blade to enter it.