Alkalians (29 page)

Unprepared for such a specific
question, Matt has to think on it before answering, “Um, he caught
some guy smuggling blacklist items, or something like
that.”

“
Okay. Can you name one or
two of the items?”

Matt finally snaps. “I’m sorry, Rose,
but where are you going with this?”

Startled a little from his outburst,
she apologizes, explaining, “Sorry, I was just, ah, curious. One
more question, okay?”

“…
Okay.”

“
Thanks. You’re a Dark
Warrior, right?”

Confused from her question, Matt nods
yes.

“
And you’ve never heard of
the Shadow Core terrorists being Dark Warriors, until you came
here?”

Matt says yes again. Did they not talk
about this before? “Anything wrong about that?”

“
Well, I, I hope not.” She
continues shyly, knowing how dumb it will sound at first, “You see,
I learned for myself something important today. Something you may
need to know, too. Have you heard of sabotage?”

Matt has some idea of the term. “Yes,
I’ve heard of it. Why?”

“
Because that may be the
newest terror tactic of the S.C. They take one of their operatives,
one nobody has a record on, and plant him in a small community. The
insurgent acts like a friendly and strong-standing guy, winning
respect from about everyone who meets him. Then, he starts throwing
around concepts that rival the community’s general ideals, causing
division and confrontation throughout it. Finally, when everyone
bitterly opposes one another, the insurgent summons his terrorist
allies, and they fall upon the community in its state of confusion.
The person who everyone thought was noble turned out to be just
manipulating them into their own demise.”

Matt flounders from her chilling
description. “You don’t think, I would do that, do you?”

“
That’s what I need to
know from you, now,” grimly replies Rose. They both stop walking,
about two hundred yards from the cabin sites. “Are you a Shadow
Core terrorist or not?”

“
Of course I’m not!” Matt
tells her, thinking her suspicions are becoming ridiculous. In
fact, Matt still suspects her, so he remarks, “And what
about
you
?”

“
What about me? I’m not a
Dark Warrior.”

“
Yes, but you are a ninja.
The prime reason for a ninja’s existence is to assassinate, and
from what you just told me, I see you could do it quite
easily!”

In turn, Rose is shocked
by the accusation. “
Why
would I want to kill anybody? And how could I get
away with it?”

“
Well, you are from
Riaquen, the only state that is always thinking, always prepared,
for war, and I could imagine they could have enlisted you for a
mission or something. All you have to do is get someone of great
importance around here, or even me, alone somewhere
and…”

“
Matt! Why would I
kill
you
!?” As
she says this, Rose already knows why.

Matt realizes the answer, too. If she
thought he was a terrorist, and there was no way to prove or
believe him otherwise, than the only other choice she had was to
take care of him herself.

Rose, in her frustrated emotions,
barks at Matt, “Well, I’m not the only one who could have a motive!
Since I just figured out you could be a terrorist, trying to bring
about the destruction of the school…”

“
You don’t know
anything
about me!”
counters Matt. “And
destroying the
college
!? Why would the S.C. want to do
that?”

Once again, they both know the answer.
They are trapped, confused, and paranoid by their implanted
suspicions of the other. There is no way to prove who was right and
who was wrong at that moment, their stress preventing them from
thinking clearly. They look at each other with pale expressions
before Rose slowly says, “Matt…”

Matt, his voice rasped and strained,
says, “Rose…”

After several seconds pass by, silence
between them except for the thumping of their hearts, they both
morph and clash.

***

After being carried across the field
several yards, Dante and Sean jump back from and look at their twin
foes. They both have bird wings coming off the back,
strong-appearing legs with raptor talons as their feet, thin armor
suits, and a large, reaping scythe for each James. What makes the
twins different is one has white hair, wings, and armor, and the
other is his opposite, with black hair, wings, and armor. The
James’ stare back at Dante and Sean, their blue eyes filled with a
cold ambition.

The Reapers begin the fight by rising
into the air, floating off to opposite sides on a few wing flaps,
and swooping down toward Sean and Dante, the scythes raised to
attack. Adrenaline kicks in as they react, and Sean dashes away,
avoiding the white James and leading him on a chase, while Dante’s
sword parries the black James’s scythe and swipes at his legs. The
slash connects, leaving green bands of damage, but James is
unflinched and jabs Dante away with the raptor claws on his left
foot.

As Dante begins a swordfight against
the black James, his katana increased in size between his hands to
better match the reach of the scythe, Sean continues accelerating
from the pursuing white James, who keeps pace behind him. Sean
makes a wide loop, the white James following the same path, and he
heads back toward Dante and the other Reaper.

Dante, despite his fierce
concentration on dodging James’s slashes and kicks from sickle or
claws, notices Sean coming, and quickly understands his plan. With
both James’ distracted, Sean would attack the black one, and Dante
would strike the incoming white. When Dante delivers a cutting
offensive against the black James, however, he sees a devilish grin
forming on the Reaper’s face, and he realizes what it means too
late.

As Sean closes the shrinking gap
between him and Dante’s battle, the black James turns and swings
his sickle in the direction of Sean, launching a sphere of blue
energy at him. The sphere collides with Sean in his high speed,
bashing his armor, knocking him off-course, and stopping his air
balance so that he tumbles past Dante and James and crashes into
the dirt.

When Dante watches Sean’s tumbling for
only a second, he forgets about the second James, and turns back to
see him glide past him, the scythe’s blade slicing into his gut.
Dante, cringing from the low blow, is keel-hauled by the white
James’s momentum, the drag slowing them to a stop, and the blade
rips from his body when James swings him around, revealing a bright
yellow wound and flinging him a few feet away.

At the same time, Sean attempts to
stand in a daze, his chest armor smudged with a green wound, when
he looks up to see the black James before him, his scythe raised
above them, the blade glowing with red energy. He watches in terror
as the scythe falls like a hammer, and he’s crushed by the outburst
of magic on impact. As the sparks and dust clear, Sean is visible
in a small crater, with multiple gashes of yellowish energy across
him and his face in a twisted grimace. The black James smirks,
turns around, and leaves him, flying back towards Dante.

Dante aggressively slashes at the
white James, hoping the relentless attacks would somehow connect
with the Reaper hopping around and parrying him. However, he soon
catches in the glint of his vision the blade of James’s sickle
pulsing with electricity. Wondering what kind of spell he was about
to use, he then gets a bad feeling and whirls around to find the
black James, his scythe’s blade also imbued with electricity. Once
again, Dante knows he has been outmaneuvered and curses before two
bolts of lightning lash out upon him from the scythes, connecting
like a chain of energy through him.

Dante is trapped and crippled by the
chain of lightning going through him, the current shocking him and
blurring him in darkening wound energy, before the black James
lifts his blade to increase tension on the chain while the white
James mimics his movement. Dante doesn’t know what they are doing
until they both tug away from each other, and the chain breaks with
a crash of thunder. Speared from both sides and pulled apart at the
same time, bright red wounds, gleaming like streaks of blood across
his armor, bloom all over him. Almost torn apart from the rupturing
attack, his sword fades out and he slumps to the ground, his body
trembling to move despite the numbing damage.

The James’ leer down at Dante’s broken
form, proud of the success of their coordinated spell. However,
they soon pay the price for double-teaming against Dante. Out of
nowhere, the black James is slammed from behind by Sean’s high
speed tackle, snapping one of his wings in a flash of splattered
green-and-red energy, and is grappled by him to fly extra yards
through the air at the white James. Before he could react, Sean
hurls his counterpart at him, and the collision flattens the two
Reapers and rolls them across the ground in sprays of wound
energy.

While the James’ are sprawled out on
the ground, Sean runs back over to Dante and helps him to his feet,
asking, “Hey, you alright?”

“
Not really,” he replies,
indicating the red wounds upon him. “Even though the potential
strength of James is cut in half when he’s divided into two, he can
still deal a lot of damage, it seems.”

“
Hmm, yeah. How did he
know what I was up to, when I was leading his white self back at
you and his black self?”

“
It must be that the two
can sense whatever the other is sensing. In other words, the black
James saw you coming at him through the white James chasing
you.”

“
Ah. Well, that’s not
fair!” Sean looks back to the twins, seeing green glows from them
and the red aura of the black one’s broken wing. “But hey, at least
we hurt him. Er, them!”

“
No,
you
hurt them, while I was the dummy
for them to be distracted by. My sword can’t reach them, and
they’ve brought me down to the brink of demorphing. Therefore, I’ve
got nothing to help us in this fight.”

“
Pff, what are you talking
about? You’ve still got
me
! If we use a little teamwork like
they have, we’ll force those Reapers back together, I’m sure of
it!”

Dante can’t help but chuckle at the
paradox. If James fuses himself back together then, he’ll
definitely defeat them in their condition, from what he knows about
his whole morph. “Well, it was an honor to fight at your side,
Sean.”

“
Hey, you say that like
it’s a bad thing!” Sean jokes while watching the James’ stand
up.

***

Matt and Rose connect when their
attacks catch the other with Matt’s vertical cut from his sword
stopped by Rose’s leaf daggers grinding against his arm. They both
struggle to follow through, the edge of Matt’s sword touching
Rose’s shoulder while the leaf daggers dig green wounds into his
arm. Rose guesses that Matt’s greater strength is about to win, so
she slides past his right side, letting the sword chop into the
ground, and turns to strike his back. Matt feels the pain as she
stabs repeatedly into his lower spine, leaving shallow spots of
green in his black armor, before she delivers a kick into the
wounds, sending a splash of lost health out of them and him to the
ground face-first.

He gets up quickly and turns around to
see Rose increase the gap between them and throw small leaf
shurikens at him. To evade them, he divides into dark clones, which
are shattered when the shurikens hit them. One of the projectiles,
though, finds the real Matt, forming a small, yellow-green wound
just below his chest.

As Matt sees more leaves coming from
Rose, he tries something else as his arms turn into guns, and with
burst shots stops the leaves and fires at her, but she dodges and
ducks the black bullets flying at her. As she side-steps the
firing, she keeps throwing more shurikens, but Matt shoots them
down before they reach him. When he realizes this was going
nowhere, he prepares to charge at Rose, a black blade forming from
his left hand.

Suddenly, Matt is hit from behind and
at his right arm, and he blinks in shock. In the midst of throwing
the small leaves, Rose had snuck in two large shurikens, which spun
toward him out of peripheral vision and landed in his wounds. Dark
yellow energy marks the wounds in his back, and Matt finds his
right hand missing, meaning he couldn’t get a sword or gun out of
it anymore.

Rose, seeing she had flinched Matt,
decides to rush him. With her fists clenching leaf daggers she
dashes toward him, but he sees her coming, and as she does one last
leap to reach him, spiraling like a spear thrown at him, her
daggers the spearhead, he releases built-up air balance to thrust
away. Then, reversing his air balance, Matt thrusts back at her
while preparing a magic spell.

Upon missing him, Rose rolls a few
times to get back on her feet, and sees Matt coming at her. She
changes her knives into small, green seeds, and before he is upon
her she flings them all around her. The seeds scatter and, as soon
as they touch the ground, germinate into tall grasses, hiding Rose
from view.