Rising Shards

Kalei rushed towards the big brute robot guy Lophor Hothon. She wasn’t sure if he was technically an Exumi too since he was so much larger than the villagers, but the more important thing was that she was gonna kick his ass because he was really annoying, and because she had to do it cooler than Zeta had. She was formulating some ways to be more badass about fighting than cutting Lophor’s legs off. She hated to admit that was a pretty high bar to climb, a bar set by Zeta of all people. What she wasn’t anticipating as she ran was the flowing orange haired girl running up beside her.

“Mind if I join you?” Nikki asked.

Kalei almost tripped and fell instantly, but recovered, impressed that Nikki could keep up with her. She told herself to have a cool response back.

“I’d personally. Yes, like to, yeah yep.” Kalei said. She coughed. “If you want to. Fight with me. That’d be. Not like, fight against me! Just…fight. This guy.”

“Sick,” Nikki said.

The two raced towards Lophor, who was in the middle of another monologue as he lumbered around, not seemingly targeting anyone in particular as he lazily swung his scissor blade after every few sentences. The other studends attacking the drones seemed to distract Lophor a bit, not enough for him to stop giving a speech, but enough for Kalei and Nikki to approach without him noticing.

“Alright, we probably have a few seconds before he stops talking and sees us,” Nikki said. “Maybe a bit longer. He really likes talking.”

“Hey, I didn’t ask before,” Kalei said. “What’s your Cani gift again? Mine’s ice, so I dunno if you wanna like combine them or something? Like a strategy or…yeah.”

“It’s kind of on brand, but my power’s sound waves.” Nikki said. “My dad thinks that’s why I’ve always liked music, like I’m always in tune with it and stuff.”

“That’s awesome!” Kalei said. “I liked popsicles a lot growing up but I dunno if that has to do with ice, but like—"

“Who dares approach Lophor Hothon with idle chatter?” The titan yelled, finally turning his attention to Kalei and Nikki.

“Alright, guess we’ll have to pick this up later.” Nikki said.

Lophor immediately swung his shield toward Kalei. She braced herself to block the shield with her shoulder, holding back the beast’s attack with her leg strength, but the hit was harder than she expected, and she fell backwards.

On the ground, she felt rumbling, like the feeling of being at a concert.  She luckily wasn’t dazed from the shield strike so she leapt back to her feet to see Nikki had stabbed her bloodsaber into the ground, sending vibrations through the ground. Lophor looked confused at his feet, then a shockwave careened upwards, rattling all his metal parts. Slowly at first, the attack increased in speed, until everything loose on his armor whipped back and forth on him. The attacks knocked him backwards.

“Atrians with their simple tricks…” Lophor said as he shook his head. “They’re no match for my blades!”

Lophor closed his scissor blades and stabbed forward towards Nikki. Kalei dashed forward and braced herself for an even stronger attack as she raised her bloodsaber in an attempt to block the attack.

Lophor strained against Kalei’s bloodsaber, which out of luck had been placed right at the point the scissor blades connected. The titan pushed forward, but Kalei’s blade opened the scissors. Nikki stepped beside her as Lophor tried to clamp down on the two. Each managed to keep the scissor blade rushing towards them at bay long enough for Nikki to send another sound wave through the metal, which knocked Lophor away.

“Bah!” He yelled, striking them both with his shield. “You can block blades, but not my blunter attacks, curious!”

Kalei groaned from the pain of the strike as Lophor loomed over the two.

“I didn’t get to squash the other Atrian like a bug, but maybe the disk giants smile upon me now to grant me two Atrians to crush instead.”

Kalei had hoped this would be going better. Or that she’d at least have some more cool moves to show Nikki. Even though they avoided getting sliced, it seemed like getting squished wasn’t a much better fate.

How the hell did Zeta beat this guy?

Lophor limped for a split second on his repaired leg.

Oh yeah, the leg thing.

Kalei gripped her bloodsaber as she was trapped in an internal debate. Would it be cool to just repeat what Zeta did? Probably not. But Nikki wasn’t there when Lophor was yelling about how Zeta cut his leg off so would it be a repeat for her? Also, it’d probably help them survive, which would be good too in addition to Kalei getting to impress Nikki.

“Hey,” Kalei whispered. “His legs are weak.”

Nikki nodded as Lophor raised his non injured leg. The two were perfect teammates as they hurled their bloodsabers together. Kalei’s hit first, still charged up. It cut through most of Lophor’s leg, but there were still a few creaking support joints that were still holding on. Those were quickly taken care of by Nikki’s bloodsaber. With his leg removed again Lophor wailed, and began to fall over towards Nikki and Kalei. Not wanting to get squashed by a giant robot guy, Kalei instinctively made an ice ramp beneath them. She grabbed Nikki as they slid backwards, safely avoiding the landing. Kalei felt a chill at her fingertips. She channeled it towards Lophor, shutting her eyes as she let out more Cani power than she ever had before. When she opened her eyes, the titan was silenced as he was encased in ice. Kalei wasn’t sure if he needed to breathe or anything being a robot, but he was still rattling around a bit so Kalei added another layer to keep him contained.

Nikki grabbed her bloodsaber and stood behind the big block of ice. She wound up like her bloodsaber was a bat. With a soundwave charging it, she swung her bloodsaber, which let out a tuba-like sound on impact as she hit the ice. Lophor was propelled across the battlefield, fortunately away from any of the other students, mostly smacking through drones before ping ponging against the sides of the canyon until he was out of sight.

“Yes!” Kalei said. “Now we don’t have to hear that dumbass ramble anymore!”

Kalei held her hand up for a high five, and when Nikki smacked her hand back, Kalei felt a slight tremor of Nikki’s sound energy course through her. Even if she didn’t have sound-based powers, Kalei still would have felt the butterfly-like feeling throughout her body.

“How was my form on that swing?” Nikki asked.

“Pretty good!” Kalei said, putting her hand down so it didn’t look like she was staring at it. “It’ll be different with a beam chasers staff, but…awesome work.”

“Sweet,” Nikki said. “I wish that last attack didn’t come out so fart-sounding, but eh.”

Even though there was still some fighting around them, Kalei found herself laughing, and even harder once Nikki joined in. It was a mess of a day, but she had burst out laughing twice so it couldn’t be all bad.

“Hey, this may be kinda corny since you have ice powers,” Nikki said. “But that was really cool.”

“Coolest thing all day?” Kalei asked, wiping her eyes from laughing so hard.

“By a lot.” Nikki said.