Rising Shards

Like our fight with the drones, we struck together like perfect dance partners, even though we hadn’t prepared to fight anything like Jeans. Oka landed a lucky shot right at her hand, and her sword flew out of it. Jeans let out a guttural scream, and ran for the sword, and she tried to dive for it, but stopped suddenly, her hair caught.

“Kalei!” I said.

Kalei had an intense grip of Jeans’ hair that stunned her for a crucial moment. 

“Forget about me?” She asked, leaning close to Jeans' ear. Kalei looked a bit disheveled from getting chucked into a pile of wreckage, but that seemed to just make her more ready to fight.

“I have been waiting to kick your ass for so long,” Kalei said.

She smashed a knee into Jeans’ side. Before Jeans could strike back, Kalei slammed her face first onto the ground.

Jeans started to crawl away as Kalei called her an impressive string of swear words.

“Starlight Despair!” Jeans yelled suddenly. “Return to me!”

Oka yelled and suddenly conjured a vine. She quickly lassoed Kalei and pulled her back to us. An intensely bright light burned above us. From the blood moon a burning light beamed into the mask, and from that came tendrils of darkness. Elka swirled within the ropes of darkness, metal robot parts inside of them. The mask rose in the center of the storm. It peered down on us as the tendrils slammed into the ground, sucking up more Elka from the ground.

“It’s over, Zeta,” Jeans said. “This is the source of my Harmony, the heart of the world I wanted to create. This is the Starlight Despair!”

Jeans sneered. “Don’t you like that name, Zeta? I named it for our favorite, Raina Starlight.”

I didn’t answer her, but she kept talking like I did.

“The Starlight Despair is strong enough to bend this place to its user’s will,” Jeans said. “The Starlight Despair is filling up with Elka now, more than you can possibly imagine. All from your classmates and from all those suffering on this island. The Harmony is practically complete, all that’s left is this. Once it’s finished, I’ll be strong enough to truly rule my greatest work. My finest creation! My grand design, my masterpiece!”

“She really likes to talk.” Kalei said.

“I wanted you by my side for this Zeta,” Jeans said. “But now all the pain you’ve put me through is helping to fuel it. Pain creates Elka. And you’ve brought me more pain than anyone has.”

Jeans held her hands out, and the tendrils brought the mask to a resting point above her.

“Is that it, then?” I asked. “You’re just want to feed us to that thing?”

I locked eyes with Jeans as she froze fingertips away from the mask. A beam of dark energy shot down onto Jeans from it. Her eyes seemed to change, looking more like a monster’s. The mask was clear now like a bloodsaber, filling up with Elka gradually. Her sword flung back to her hands. Jeans writhed as the energy surged through her.

“If that fills up fully,” Oka said. “I don’t want to think about what she could do…”

“We just have to like kill that mask, right?” I said.

“Right, same plan as before then!” Kalei said, pointing at the mask. “That’s still our target!”

My heart started to pound in my ears, and I tried to just focus on what Stella told me. Everything will be OK. The Order of Terina couldn’t stop us so far. Wildfire Hearts couldn’t stop us. Jeans can’t stop us.  I thought that over and over. We took our battle stances. Jeans was prepping to attack again.

“Hey, Zates?” Kalei said. “I’m only doing this one time, but…”

“Yeah?” I asked.

Kalei sighed. “Team Starlight, go.”

We all held our bloodsabers up and charged at Jeans, launching whatever we could at her and the mask. She swatted us away when we attacked and blocked any shots at the Starlight Despair, but we kept slashing at her and launching our Cani gifts at them both. Our swords sparked as they clashed together. Oka and I swung together towards the mask, but Jeans caught our blades. She swiped them both and threw them far over the nearest walls of rubble. A quick blast of power from her that Kalei blocked with her bloodsaber knocked us all back, and while Kalei tried everything to hold the energy back, Jeans stole her sword and threw it as well.

“Now what…?” I said. I could feel my power start to fade. The Starlight Despair looked grayer and grayer as the Elka rose higher inside of it. We were quickly running out of time.

“No more,” Jeans said. “I won’t let you do this anymore to me, Zeta! I won’t let you stop my Harmony when I’m this close to ruling it!”

A massive amount of Elka rushed to Jeans’ hands, floating above us in a sickly, wobbling mass. Red sparks crossed it, with some zapping the trees around us, frying them to ash. With a mad look in her eyes, Jeans didn’t waste any time, and flung it down towards us. There’s no way we could defend ourselves against it. I shut my eyes, grabbed Oka and Kalei, and hoped we could be at least proud we tried.

I heard a small click in the maelstrom, and then a familiar sound.

BWOMP.

Ovie’s Minivan in a Can exploded open and sped full speed at Jeans. With expert driving, Ovie smashed the van into her. Jeans was left downed, pathetically in a smoky heap as her blast veered off course and missed us completely, obliterating everything close behind us. Ovie spun as she braked, and I caught her expression in the seconds after she completely stopped. For just a moment, she looked blankly ahead, tears streaming down her face.

I knew the astronomical hurdle she had to overcome from all the guilt implanted into her to even consider doing that. She saw me staring. Neither of us needed to say anything, we had an unspoken bond of what we’d survived. Ovie wiped her eyes and drove off.

The mask was centimeters away from being full. I took a deep breath. Oka, Kalei and I shared a quick glance. Tapping into reserves I didn’t know we had, especially without bloodsabers to focus our powers, we threw everything we had left at the Starlight Despair. I thought about everyone it could hurt as we barraged it with branches, vines, lightning bolts, freezing rain, ice, and more. I tapped into a reserve I didn’t know I had when I thought about what Jeans had dragged me through. The mask became untethered from its perch above us, and landed in the center, with more and more cracks forming on it as it rattled.

“Alright, last shot,” Kalei said, looking at me and Oka. “It’s up to you two!”

“Why us?” I asked. “Don’t do some stupid sacrifice thing, Kalei!”

“I’m not,” Kalei said, picking up a gear from the ground and dropping it. It hung in the air for a moment and slowly floated down. “I saw it when she threw the swords, they fell all weirdly slowly, her crap must be turning this into a low gravity spot!”

Oka’s eyes lit up as Kalei held her hands out. “The jump!”