Alkalians (69 page)

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.

Following the breeze is a clashing
sound from nearby, and a few seconds pass before Rose opens her
eyes again. Matt still stands over her, but he has turned around,
his sword resting on his right shoulder. Too amazed to feel
grateful at the moment, she looks out in the same direction Matt
was to find a gathered group of men far away across the field. The
group consists of the school officers, led by Professor Malkia, the
maiden biology teacher, Professor Kaloss, the grim runes
instructor, and Professor Kaystone, the college’s principal, who is
in battle morph. His armor suit is dyed magenta, and a half-circle
arm blade gleams from both of his fists. Rose then understands that
he must have launched an attack at Matt, who had retaliated by
deflecting it with his dark sword.

Kaystone yells, “Matthew Calamos!
Surrender at once, or you will be severely punished for your
transactions by force! However, if you give up now, you may receive
a lighter sentence!”

Matt shows no sign of hearing what he
said as he brings his sword arm back down to his side and the black
blade disappears. He walks forward a few yards, apparently
forgetting Rose, and stares across the field at the officials.
Noting his body language, Kaystone nods to his squadron, who join
him in battle morph. Most of the officials are basic Swordsmen,
Gunners, or Panther Beasts, except for Malkia and Kaloss. Malkia
wears thin green armor with a yellow robe, while Kaloss has opal,
shell-like armor encasing his body from the neck down. Kaystone
turns back at Matt and warns him, “If you want things settled the
hard way, very well! We will not show you mercy. Whether you
demorph or not is now your concern alone.”

Stretching his arms forward, the
crescent arm blades spin around his hands at increasing speed like
propellers, their edges almost touching each other in the space
between them. They then fly forward off the arms and begin orbiting
at high speed around the center space, becoming a massive,
helicopter’s propeller blades that rush toward Matt, grazing the
ground beneath them in their velocity.

Matt continues his menacing stare of
intimidation, seemingly oblivious to the formation of blades racing
toward him. But he isn’t when he brings his right arm across his
chest, gathering energy for a dark spell in it. When the propeller
is about to reach him, he waves his arm forward, whipping out a
gale of black wind. The two cyclones collide in opposite rotations,
grinding the other to allow wind shear to spill out between them,
before the black cyclone widens over the white one and swallows it.
The enigmatic winds disrupt the propeller of blades, and split it
by scattering the original two sickles within the
funnel.

The officers and professors,
especially Kaystone, look startled by what happened, none having
predicted his powerful technique could be countered. While they are
moonstruck, Matt adds an extra command to his whirlwind by another
spell, and it rushes forward, spreading out into storm winds and
dragging the wildly twirling blades along. Someone among the
officials screams look out, and they all duck down and cover their
heads. The gusts blow through and over them, some being slashed by
the black breeze and others severed by the reckless arm
blades.

After glancing at their injured once
the winds die down, the professors look back at Matt, who raises
his left hand up to the sky. A quick spell glows from it like a
beacon, and then he points its open palm at the group of officers.
Summoned from out of his hand, another legion of his black clones
emerges and sprints toward the group.

“
Hold your ground,
people!” orders Kaystone. “Stay together and fight them as they
come!” The officials establish their closed formations, allowing
the clones to wash over them, and a vicious battle ensues as the
opposing forces mingle. The officers, whether with swords, bullets,
or fangs and claws, try to eradicate the clones, but the price for
their efforts is receiving heavy damage from striking blades,
piercing shots, and exploding spells.

Professor Malkia, meeting several
clones converging upon her, lets thin, golden threads unwind from
her fingertips. The threads wiggle through the air to lodge their
ends into the shadow Matts, which lose function and are pulled
about by Malkia like puppets on strings. Guiding the threads, she
tosses her ensnared victims about through the air as they are
changed into large, shining spheres of gold energy. In conclusion,
she whips the strings all around, and the spheres wreck surrounding
clones, including some more from blasting flashes.

Turning, Malkia encounters another
bunch of shadow clones, marching toward her in close file despite
the mayhem all around them. Thinking they would be simple, she
releases more threads to connect with the clones and lift them
upward. However, more clones then rush in and slice through the
strings with swords, releasing the first troop from Malkia’s
control to move in mid-air to snipe her with rifles. The bullets
shower her, and in her temporary flail she has no chance of
escaping the second clones, their blades stabbing through her and
bathing her in bloody red energy.

***

Professor Kaloss, surrounded by
enclosing Matts, feels ready for any number of them. Dealing out
spells from his hands in a fast manner, he devastates the clones
through ordered, chained attacks. Runes glow a pale blue across his
armor, and in response a blizzard blows around him, slicing through
the closest clones, while peculiar lines of frost branch out from
where he stands. Springing up on air balance to avoid gunfire from
further clones, his runes flash to violently disperse the blizzard,
its icy winds filled with shards seeking and smashing them. When
Kaloss descends back to the ground with more clones coming at him,
he then takes his hand and crouches to touch the frost, which turns
out to be a giant rune around him, and it activates to instantly
germinate a field of icebergs, catching and impaling the clones in
its vicinity.

In the middle of the glacial circle,
Kaloss strokes the ice, setting up more runes inscribed into it for
another technique, before seeing though it the distorted image of
one of the clones facing him. Looking beyond, he sees part of the
officials’ posse being hassled by more clones, and decides to
assist them with his next move. He activates the runes, and the
glacier groans, cracks, and crumbles, rapidly moving like a fluid
to become an avalanche rushing across the field.

Kaloss directs the avalanche to go
through the one clone on its way to rescue his allies, but to his
shock it doesn’t get there. The single clone, casting its own
spell, catches and reverses the flow of the avalanche, its icy
debris painted black like onyx, and he is too startled to respond
before it flows over him, bashing and burying him before the
compressed cold rapidly darkens his wound energy showing through
cracks in the pileup.

***

Professor Kaystone, with his
crescent-moon arm blades, doesn’t wait for Matt’s copies to find
him, and instead comes to them, slashing and thrusting through many
of them by one arm, both arms, or spinning blades. When some clones
are about to shoot him, he counters by flinging his arm blades,
gliding like discuses through them. He forms another pair of blades
and continues shredding through the foes around him, and at one
point connects his weapons into a large ring to parry and cut
through a group of sword-wielding clones and then roll through
another bunch lined up near him.

After rearming himself, Kaystone looks
around to find a peculiar scenario of two clones opposing him, one
far off to his left and the other on his right. Figuring it is a
trap in which if he goes for one clone, the other would attack him
from behind, he throws both of his arm blades away in a quick
rotation, each one hitting their marks in the clones’ chests. Proud
of his feat, Kaystone almost doesn’t notice something important as
he forms his arm blades once more.

Instead of vanishing, the clones
revert into energized spheres around the crescents that chopped
them. The sense of being in deep trouble hits him, and as he
realizes what may happen the spheres jolt forward as thunderbolts
to collide through him in a thundering boom.

The shocking volts rebounding through
both sides of him splatters darkened yellow wounds all over
Kaystone, and he almost falls over backwards. When he looks forward
through narrowed eyes, however, he wishes he had. One more shadow
clone is in front of him, and it points its left-armed rifle at his
face. After cursing his misfortune under his breath, the rifle
fires a single bullet that enters between his eyes and exits with
spraying red out the back of his skull.

***

After hitting the ground, Professor
Kaystone demorphs, and he groans with a splitting headache as he
forces himself to stand up. Staring around him, he sees he wasn’t
the only one who had a rough time. Malkia and Kaloss are both
demorphed while the rest of the officers are exhausted with orange
or red wounds streaked over them. The good news is that only a few
of them had demorphed, there are no casualties, and all the clones
are gone. The bad news is, if this was what it took to defeat only
the clones, how are they going to stop the original
Matt?

Malkia, slowly getting to a slumping
posture, says through gasps of pain, “This is, unbelievable. So
much fury, and carnage, from one person, a mere
student.”

Kaloss, his knees trembling in his
effort to stand, also groans, “How, could that one boy, be so
formidable, all of a sudden?”

Kaystone, after an
irritated hiss, answers, “I know nothing about him, except he’s
ticking me off.” Truly, he was
scaring
him, but he couldn’t show
weakness in the dire situation. Turning his head around, he spots
the real Matt, still standing where his squadron had first
challenged him. In their current state now, they have no chance of
dealing with whatever form of wrath he could throw out next. In
fact, he asks himself, could
anything
stop Matthew
Calamos?

Matt keeps his heartless stare in the
direction of the officials unaltered, a Terminator with dark red
eyes and a stone frown. Then, his right arm becomes a thick cannon,
which he levels to point forward. Inside it a bright, ominous glow
of charging energy appears and grows. At first, the professors and
officers don’t notice the cannon, but the shining light soon gives
it away. Innocents before the gallows, most of them step back in
fear and denial as they all sense Matt is going to use a very
powerful attack, possibly his Ultimate.

“
Everyone,” Kaystone
commands, “separate and scatter, as quickly as you can! Let’s hope
he won’t be able to aim at all of us!” They all spread out in
random directions, desperation letting them move fast despite their
vital wounds. Kaystone turns back to see what Matt would do, but
gets a strange surprise. He seems to have ignored their flight
response, his energy cannon not moving its aim an inch. Confused,
along with his companions, Kaystone can’t guess what Matt was
doing. Following the direction of the cannon’s targeting, he has a
grim revelation.

Matt has his cannon aimed towards the
stands of spectators further away, many of them awe-stricken by the
turn of events to that point. As they notice this, the officials
are stunned, Malkia gasps, Kaloss scowls, and Kaystone finally
shows fear on his face, falling to his knees. From still behind
him, only a few yards away, Rose has watched it all with growing
despair, tears in her eyes as she slowly stands and whimpers, “No,
Matt. Please, don’t do it. No…”

As the violet energy of enormous power
swells and bulges out from the cannon, Matt doesn’t have any trace
of superego in him. He shows no sign of reluctance, hate, rage,
excitement, discipline, or pride. There is only one impulse, one
instinct flowing in his mind, controlling his body and enhanced
abilities ever since he remorphed.

Destroy everything before
him.

* * * * *