Rising Shards

I wondered if I’d made the right choice of group. A few seconds after Caya stormed forward, attempting to stop Ovie and 09, the two were enveloped in a crystal that looked kind of like a tent. Caya tried to smash it in, but even with her powers she couldn't leave a scratch on it.

"Maybe try kicking it really really hard?" Mahina suggested. "That worked enough times today that it warrants another—"

The crystal glowed for a second before dissipating with a loud bang. You'd think after the fifth explosion in the last hour I'd be slightly more used to them, but no, I screamed and immediately cowered on the ground despite the lack of crystal chunks flying at us. My cowering helped me out here though, as two beasts rose from the smoke, looking like something straight out of my nightmares.

They were covered in spines and teeth and eyes, their white fur glowed like it was radiated, and was mixed with slimy patches. Their overall shapes were like wolves, but wolves that had been mutated by deluxe toxic sludge. I saw myself in these monsters, the glimpses I had of my body when I almost succumbed to beast tendency.

The two beasts howled, a ragged, pained sound. They weren’t used to their new bodies and were stumbling about.

“We shouldn’t have listened to Diast,” Ko said. “It was dumb as hell to go slow now, now we have giant…wolf…fish…alien monsters!”

“No, Dr. Diast was right,” Caya said, remarkably calm given the two giant monsters in front of us. “Making sure everyone was safe was priority.”

"Well they're clearly not safe." Ko said. "That's them, isn't it?"

I knew from the instant they appeared who they were, but it still hit me right in my tummy hearing it out loud.

“Yes, Ovie and 09 must have stabbed themselves with the daggers,” Caya said. “They haven’t lost themselves completely to the beast tendency, so we have a chance here.”

"That's not complete Beast Tendency?" Ko asked.

“This is like…a tiny bit of beast tendency,” Kitty said. “Twust me, if it was full you’d all be like. Super dead. Or super in that recovery place, whatever.”

“So what do we do now?” Oka asked. “How do we stop this?”

“I think a good ol’ fashioned ass kicking is in order.” Mahina said.

“We don’t even have bloodsabers.” Kalei said.

“Did that stop us earlier?” Mahina said. “We fought just as hard, just with powers instead of swords.”

“We didn’t win that fight, Ma.” Kalei said. “And now 09’s…”

“We just have to find the daggers on their bodies and remove them.” Caya said.

“That’s a lot of body to search.” Ko said.

“And removing them will reverse this?” Lillia asked.

“It’ll incapacitate them, at least.” Caya said. “They haven’t noticed us yet, so we can probably sneak up and—"

“So much talking, let’s fight already!” Kitty said, charging ahead.

“Idiot!” Caya said as Kitty rushed in front of Ovie and 09. The two monsters began to growl, swiping at Kitty with fierce claws, each slash sending a wave of energy our way. Oka pushed me out of the way of the blast, both of us landing on the ground.

“You good?” Oka asked.

“Yeah…” I said. If it wasn't a panic moment, I would have taken more time to relish Oka kind of in the like pinning me down pose. “You?”

“Uh huh.” Oka said.

“Alright, everyone be careful!” Caya said after Oka helped me to my feet. Caya joined the fight by firing a blast towards the beast with a blue mane, which I assumed was 09. Caya managed to chain down 09 for a second with her energy, but the tether was quickly broken. Kitty joined her and the two fought together. The one with a pink mane, likely Ovie, roared again, her teeth rearranging within her mouth as she yelled.

“I guess that leaves the other one to us, unless any of you want to join the Kilanders.” Mahina said.

Caya deflected a splash of energy from 09’s mouth, knocking it to the side where it obliterated the tracks in the distance, a display of destruction on a scale I wasn’t used to seeing in person.

“I have a feeling we’d just get in their way.” Oka said.

“Though if blue hair’s the clybrid, I do kind of want a rematch…” Mahina said.

“Whatever, can we just go?” Ko asked. She picked up a rock chipped off from a loose piece of the flooring. “My power’s precision so I bet if I chuck this it’ll be right on target to the dagger!” Ko threw her rock, which bonked Ovie in her forehead, which just seemed to make her angrier.

“Way to go.” Kalei said.

The last time I had a big fight with Ovie, she wasn’t a gigantic nightmare creature, but despite that I managed to conjure a big lightning bolt against her, one bigger than pretty much any other attack I’d been able to do since my fangs came in. I decided starting with that could be good; maybe I could really impress Oka finishing this off with the first strike. Channeling my powers without a bloodsaber was a lot harder, like the difference between turning the volume up on a TV with a remote versus getting up to walk over to the TV itself to do it. Still, I had a lot of pent-up anger ready for Ovie. 

I felt electricity crackle in the air a second before a bolt came down. It wasn’t as big as I’d hoped, but it still kind of zapped Ovie near her face a little bit. The singed spot on her neck healed quickly, with scales swirling about in it, which was hypnotizing and really gross to look at.

While I was distracted by that particular grossness, a new form of grossness slithered at me. It looked like a bunch of ghostly snakes were being launched our way before I realized they were more like tentacles.

“I hate this a lot, just gonna say!” Oka said as she kept the tentacles at bay with her vine whips.

We each used our powers the best we could to block the attack, jumping around when we couldn’t stop them.

“Alright, my turn!” Mahina yelled. Her attack looked a lot more spectacular than mine as giant icicles formed over Ovie, slamming down on her and pinning her in place. The beast groaned, sounding like twelve horrible voices all at once before breaking free of the ice. Mahina tried again, with more this time. Kalei joined in as well, grimacing. I knew Kalei to know that grimace; it was her disappointed in herself look. I saw it plenty. I assumed that this particular disappointment stemmed from her not being able to shape her ice powers to be as sturdy or as sharp as her mother’s.

“I think I’m going over my one hit, but in a case like this…” Mahina said as she kept attacking. Her ability to be so casual even now amazed me.“Big monster makes it less morally bad to hit a teenager, so win-win for Mahina Koridia!”

As they attacked the front, I ran with Oka, Lillia, and Ko to see if we could find any sort of weak point.

Ko stopped and grabbed Lillia’s arm.

“Not now, please…” Lillia said.

“I was gonna show you later but…” Ko reached into her shirt and pulled out a little seal plushie and held it out to Lillia. “I dunno if we’ll get another chance. I swiped it back at Kitty land or whatever.”

Lillia immediately looked like she forgot there were two rampaging transformed classmates like ten feet away from us as she hugged the plushie. “How’d you sneak this all this way?”

“I’m pretty damn talented.” Ko said.

Their little moment was interrupted as 09 stormed past, with Kitty and Caya holding onto spines on her back as they attacked.

“You have to pay for that!” Kitty yelled as she passed through.

“No way I’m paying for—” Ko started.

“Look out!” Oka screamed.

I didn’t realize it until Oka’s shout. The way one of the roads got destroyed made almost a ramp that curved toward us. Time seemed to slow down completely as a Sharai car drove way too fast at the ramp, rocketing into the air. Rocketing, where else, straight toward us. 

Luckily, despite my slow reaction time despite my constant anxious jumpiness, Oka was quick on the draw, wrapping her vine around my waist to yank me out of the way, a very Buckshot Leaf moment of her. Ko and Lillia had a much easier time dodging, and after the car skidded to a stop on its side, we all readied ourselves to fight some Sharai on top of fighting Ovie and 09. Sure enough, five Sharai rampaged out, bursting through the metal easily. Before we could do anything, Ovie swooped down and ate four of them like they were candy, her wolf-like jaws easily dispatching them. 

Ovie had me in her sights now. I froze, staring into her eyes as her pupils shifted like ink blots. One of the slot machines from Chumblerosa tied to the car fell down. It was on wheels and slowly scooted toward us. Oka and I looked at each other and had the same stupid idea. We moved it in front of Ovie.

“Hey, look at this!” I said, pulling the lever.

“Ooooh, sparkly glowy,” Oka said, gesturing to the spinning slot wheels like she was a game show assistant. “Big Ovie like sparkly glowy!”

“What the hell are you doing?” Ko asked.

“Distracting her?” I said.

“Or trying to.” Oka said.

“It’s…working.” Lillia said.

Ovie tilted her head as she looked at the slot machine. We got some kind of win and gold tokens started pouring out. Ovie squinted, then growled. We barely jumped out of the way as Ovie chomped down, eating the slot machine. She coughed a bit, with chunks of metal and coins falling out of her mouth.

The last Sharai that landed with us, apparently not one for fighting, reached down and grabbed a handful of the tokens and decided he too wanted to eat them. As soon as he gulped some gold coins down, he started wheezing and fell to the ground, immediately turning into void monster ooze.

“You know what, whatever.” I said, stepping backward to avoid the rapidly growing puddle spreading at our feet.

“We’re gonna take that,” Oka said. “That’s a win for us.”

“That’s a win for Buckshot Leaf and the Kid!” I said.

“While you two are flirting, maybe the Koridias could use our help?” Ko said.

"I didn't say anything about you and Lillia flirting a bit ago." Oka snapped back.

"Yeah!" I said.

"Whatever." Ko said.

"Whatever!" Oka and I said.

"Stop 'whatevering' and just help Kalei and her mother already!" Lillia said.