Rising Shards

I watched helplessly as Aira was carried away by rocket drone soldiers. I tried to think of ways my powers could help. Could I make a thunderstorm that would rain them out? Could I manage to make a precise lightning bolt, something I had only managed once before when I hit Ovie with one out of desperate anger?

“Zeta, take the wheel,” Laenie said, her voice deepening. I babbled something about being a row back and buckled in in response. Laenie didn’t hear me, as she quickly grew to her Exa beast form, leaping out before she would crush the roof with her massive size. I somehow got unbuckled and ended up in the driver’s seat, if only to quickly brake and stop the minivan cart. Which I did after some figuring out of which pedal was the accelerator and which was the brake, and then after some miscommunication between my brain and feet on which one to step on.

“You stopped? That’s weak, Zates.” Kalei said. “But that means I can show you how it’s done.”

“Sure, be my guest.” I said, hopping back to my seat as Kalei took the wheel.

Ahead of us, Laenie leapt upwards as the jet drones began circling around like vultures. She got pretty close to them, but they were still too high for her to catch. Aira tried to teleport away, but she couldn’t get far enough away without another jet drone grabbing her.

“Alright, sit back and relax as Kalei Koridia shows you what’s what.” Kalei cracked her knuckles.

She slammed her foot on the gas, then braked immediately.

“Wait. Hold on.” She said. She started and stopped again a few times. “Which is…the go one? The go pedal?”

“You’ve been hitting it, it’s the one on the right.” I said.

“Wow Kalei, you’re really doing better than Zeta with the whole cool thing,” Oka said. “This is way cooler than cutting a freaking warlord’s leg off!”

“Shut up,” Kalei said, starting and stopping again. “If you want way cooler, just wait until we find a ramp and I can do a sick flip.”

“How about we all just stop here and deal with rescuing Aira,” Lillia said. “And deal with Kalei’s complete lack of driving knowledge later?”

“Hey!” Kalei said.

“Lillia’s right,” Oka said. “There’s a bunch all around us now.”

The rest of us still in the minivan cart all grabbed our bloodsabers and got out. The drones near us marched forward, their weapons aimed directly at us. This group was a fair mix of the spider drones and the bipedal ones. Those didn’t all have the orange armor accents like the ones I ran into at the beach; this group had all sorts of colors which I assumed meant different things they were about to shoot at us.

“Remember, the bloodsabers are powered up from that crystal,” Lillia said. “So keep in mind that your powers might be stronger than you’re used to.” Lillia swung her ignited bloodsaber, which sent a wave of fire towards one of the spider drones, burning it into pieces. “Like that.”

“Should any of us try to help Laenie and Aira?” I asked.

“I think they got it,” Kalei said, as Laenie ripped another jet drone to shreds with her teeth as she continued to try to leap to Aira. “Any last-minute strategizing before they start shooting at us?”

“The ones with the orange masks shoot lava!” I said.

“Kalei, you’re on those,” Lillia said.

“Great,” Kalei said. “We’ll figure out the rest as we go, then.” She charged forward. “I’m gonna do something cooler than cutting that guy’s leg off, Zeta! Probably against these guys!”

“You keep telling yourself that,” Oka said, squeezing my free hand as Kalei started slicing at the front line of the drones.

“Alright, I know we’re in a big fight right now, but I really want to make out again,” I blurted out.

“Me too,” Oka said. “As soon as we’re back home, yeah?”

“Yeah,” I said, gripping her hand for a second before turning back to the fight.

I tried to think of the drone soldiers like the Elka monsters we fought. Some of those had metal parts swirling in them, and both melted into Elka puddles once defeated. Lillia and Kalei had powers that were more actively suited to fight the soldiers that were now firing lava, air, ice, water, dirt, stone, electric, and probably some other kinds of bolts at us. I watched Kalei figure out the timing of the blasts, so they weirdly weren’t too hard to dodge.

“Hey, Zeta?” Oka said as we got ready to fight a group of advancing drones that carried blades instead of element blasters.

“Yeah?” I asked, flinching as a lightning bolt came from my bloodsaber and fried through three of the blade drones with an electric chain.

“Thikning about what you were saying, the next time we’re making out, I’d prefer it to be just us there, you know?” Oka said as she tripped two drones into each other with vines, allowing us to slash at them together.

“Well, Lillia had her eyes closed at least.” I said as the halves of the drones fell to the ground beside us.

“I’m thinking about it now and…I don’t know if she kept them closed,” Oka said.

“Oh,” I said. "I didn't want to admit it but yeah I got that impression too."

Lillia passed through as she clashed swords with one of the blade drones. Unlike the ones with the element blasters, the blade ones were lanky, with a spiky tentacle thing coming out of their silver masks that looked like a long ponytail as they swung their swords around.

“Sorry, yes, I was watching,” Lillia said. 

"How much did you see?" I asked.

"Pretty much all of it." Lillia said bluntly. “But focus on the fighting!”

I zoned out a bit from the battle as I started to think about how weird it was that Lillia was watching.

“Zeta, watch it!” Oka said, grabbing my tail and pulling it out of range of the twin blades of one of the drones that slashed towards me. We blasted it away with a mix of storm and plants.

“Thanks,” I said.

“We have to protect the tail,” Oka said, still holding onto my tail. “The rest of you too, obviously. But…”

Oka suddenly had a quizzical look.

“What is it?” There weren’t any drones currently near us, so I had to ask.

“Have I told you how soft your tail is?” Oka asked, rubbing her free hand on my tail. “It’s really soft.”

“Oh!” I said. “Amara recommended a shampoo Kanibari use for their fur. Which I guess is the same as my...fur. That sounds weird. I have fur. Eesh. I made Stella get me a bottle. It’s even softer right after I use it.”

“Did I not just say focus on the fighting?” Lillia said, her sword duel coming back towards us.

“You watched us make out, let me have this!” Oka said. She wrapped a vine around the blade wielding drone, allowing Lillia to slice it in half.

“You said your eyes were closed,” I said. “Let her have tail.”

“Let me have tail, Lillia!” Oka said.

“Fine,” Lillia said.

“Hey, I think we got all of them!” Kalei said. “Or rather, I got most of them.”

Kalei spun her bloodsaber before sheathing it and returned to us.

“It was pretty sweet, I dunno if you guys saw,” Kalei said. “But I like totally did a backflip kick off of one guy then cut another dude with a like, a like big, uh, ice. Thing. Icicle.”

“Uh huh,” I said.

“Which I think is at least as cool, if not way more, as cutting a guy’s leg off, I dunno.” Kalei said.

“Sure, whatever,” I said. “All that’s left here then is Aira and—” I started before a still in Exa beast form Laenie landed by us with Aira cradled in one arm and three jet drones held by their necks in the other. “…Laenie.”

Laenie set Aira down gently, then chucked the jet drones at the side of the canyon, exploding them all at once. We all looked at each other.

“Well, I think that was cooler than my thing,” I said.

“I’m not surprised Laenie got the coolest thing,” Aira said.

“I…can top that?” Kalei said. “Maybe?”

I heard a horrible laugh.

“Atrians! I have you cornered now.” Lophor Hothon said.

“This friggin’ guy,” Kalei said as the titan lumbered towards us. He seemed to be on his own, and took his sweet time approaching.

“I’m afraid your efforts were in vain,” Lophor said. “And so close to your goal as well. A pity. But your journey ends here.”

“Zeta already cut your leg off once!” Oka said. “She’ll…probably do it again!”

“I hope not,” I said. “If we all group on him, I think we can beat him, though.”

“Group up on ME?” Lophor said. “As though you have the advantage of number?”

Right as Kalei was about to make a snarky remark, a haze appeared above us, descending down. It was a massive group of the drones, a jet trooper carrying either a spider drone or a regular soldier drone. They all landed with a horrible noise that echoed throughout the canyon.

“There has to be a hundred of them…” Oka said. “Can we fight them all?”

“I’ll answer that for you,” Lophor said. “No.”