Rising Shards

Rain groaned on the ground. Dr. Diast smashed the device that had Rain under its control just to make sure we were clear.

“Rain?” I asked. “You good?”

“She’s gonna be dazed for a bit,” Diast said, checking Rain over to make sure she wasn’t severely injured mentally or otherwise by her induced state inflicted upon her by the….whatever a Queceilitrex was. “But seems to be OK otherwise.”

“So Caya and the others are probably dazed too?” I asked.

“Probably,” Diast said. “I’ve seen Caya bounce back quicker from worse though so she’s probably already back to her feet.”

“At least we put a stop to this casino nightmare, right?” Marmalade asked.

“Right,” Lillia said. “I prefer my games to not include predatory gambling and microtransactions.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Oka asked. “Was that one liner attempt in an alien language or something?”

“I got it,” Marmalade said. “It’s a gaming thing, because some games have what are called microtransactions—”

“Marmalade, while I appreciate you understanding my incredible one liner, I don’t know if we have time for you to explain all of the intricacies of pay to win mechanics and the like to Oka. Who still doesn’t know the difference between an eGame 2 and an eGame 3.” Lillia said.

“I can play Farty Karty real good, I’ll have you know.” Oka said.

“And my favorite game is always gonna be Raina Starlight’s Farm Adventure.” I said proudly.

“Ah.” Marmalade said, her tone suggesting that she didn’t think Raina Starlight’s Farm Adventure was all that exciting a pick of a favorite game.

“Well, anyways,” Lillia said. “How do you feel, Oka? After the slap, I mean.”

“My hand hurts,” Oka said. “And I feel kind of cruddy. I’m wondering if the stuff I said before smacking her was a bit much.”

“Well, I liked it.” I said.

“I don’t think anything you said was inaccurate.” Lillia said.

“Still, revenge wasn’t what I envisioned it to be,” Oka said. “I’m wondering if those musicals I watched about revenge maybe kind of had a point.” She nursed her hand, which was already red. “Also, nobody tell Amara and KJ I did that or they might actually murder me,” Oka said. “Or the Novu royalty…”

“Wait, why Novu royalty?” Marmalade asked.

“Rain’s a princess of Novu.” Lillia said.

“Wow…” Marmalade said. “You got to smack a princess of Novu across her face.”

“To save her.” Dr. Diast said.

“Right, to save her!” Oka said. “That was like, a good chunk of my motivation for the smack. So if any Novu spies are listening in…”

“I’ll protect you from them,” I blurted out. I was swooning from Oka in a suit already, but her harboring a desire for vengeance from some random thing Rain did to me that I had mostly forgotten (well, that kind of undersells it, it was pretty messed up that Rain barter with some bullies via stomping my tail, but I was too much of a doormat to properly deal with that) had me in full “If we weren’t in a high stress situation with our friends’ safety on the line I would absolutely pull you aside to try and make out with you” mode.

Even from our walled off room, we could sense the rumbles outside. The hypnotic spell had worn off. Whatever was out there was angry and probably ready to crush us.

“Alright, we should probably run really fast out of here.” Diast said. She quickly scooped up the dazed Rain.

“Attention, Zeta Manure and company,” Ovie’s voice rang out through speakers I couldn’t see, but I still rolled my eyes that she was still on the Zeta Manure nickname. “The Sharai Daggers are back in my possession, as are the Sharai army themselves. Your friends are captured. I’ve defeated the pathetic ‘Chumbler.’ Surrender now, just to make it easier on yourselves, you know? There’s no way out from whatever hole you’ve crawled into, so you might as well get it over with, you know? If you don’t…you’ll regret it. Especially for what I’m going to do to to your dear friends…”

“I hate when she’s cocky,” Oka said. “Which is like, all the time.”

“What do we do?” I asked. I didn’t want to surrender to Ovie, but I didn’t want her to hurt the others. There was only one door out, and on the other side was probably Ovie and her new army.

Rain coughed. “There’s…a secret…way out…here.” She pointed weakly around before falling back asleep.

“What was that?” Diast asked. “Alright, you heard her. Tear this room up and see if there’s an escape route.”

We didn’t hesitate. Oka, Lillia, Marmalade, Dr. Diast and I all ripped everything we could out of the room. We tore the mirrors off the walls, we ripped posters down, smashed up the countertops around it, but no luck.

“Wait, what’s this?” Marmalade asked. She pointed to a button pinned to the wall. It looked like a regular pin, with a down arrow on it. She pressed it, and with a ding, doors opened in the wall. A small chamber lay behind it.

“Holy crap, Marmalade,” I said.

“That’s amazing.” Oka said.

“Heh,” Marmalade said.

We dashed into the compartment, which seemed to be an elevator. Diast was carrying Rain, so I took it upon myself to hit the ground floor button. We waited as chill elevator music began to play as we descended.

“It’s kinda catchy,” Oka said, tapping her foot to the music.

“It’s not really.” Lillia said. “At all.”

“It kind of reminds me of the music that plays on that weather app,” I said.

“Yes!” Marmalade said. She imitated the robotic voice of the app. “And now…here is…your weather…on the sixes…”

“Blegs Spicy Honeyjack Barbecue Brothers Blend Wings is/are the spiciest and beefiest wings you can/could imagine.” A voice that sounded a lot like Chumbler doing a wild west accent interrupted the chill music.

“What’s with the weird use of slashes?” I asked.

“I’ve given up trying to understand anything here.” Diast said.

The elevator descended for what felt like a full fifteen minutes. When the doors finally opened, Diast started to plan out loud, mentioning something about making a stop back home to regroup. 

But those plans were interrupted when we saw that in the wrecked city past Chumblerosa’s escape route, we were surrounded. A grinning Ovie held up the Sharai Daggers. 09 stood next to her, looking pensive. Behind them was a vast group of Sharai in Exa Cani form, so much that they looked like a sea of hatred filling a canyon.

“That’s not even fair.” Oka said.

We didn’t get a chance to say anything else, as we quickly were snatched up by Sharai and dragged into darkness.