Wind. A bitter, whistling wind. Red peaks stretching up to the sky for miles upon end, it seemed. Swirling dust. Eddies of sand and disturbed air. Enormous dust devils spiraling in the distance. A low, keening scream disrupted the air, from the large bird-like creature that sat atop a jagged rock. Farther away, from what seemed like light years, mighty volcanoes shook the earth and sent their fiery plumes into the air like birds from a tree.
A head poked up from an elliptical hole in the ground where a portal had once been, along with two other heads. Grean looked around in awe and fear. "Blimey," he said quietly. "The thing I said about whether you've been here before... I was just curious myself. But I never thought..." He trailed off. Ketsuban was at a loss. Blackrose was crying.
"Don't cry," Grean soothed Blackrose. "It's just hell on earth. Nothing to be scared about." Blackrose had to stifle a laugh. But the air around them was dismal enogh to stifle their happiness, too.
In the distance, a tall, towering shape loomed. At the very top, a red light shone. It was an evil thing, blurred with centuries, maybe eons, of neglect.
"The Lighthouse of Old Uhtblok," Ketsuban said in fear. They all knew about the Lighthouse of Old Uhtblok. When they were all kids, their respective guardians had told them the millenia-old text file of Uhtblok's Evil Plan. And it had seemed like a simple story, full of princesses and knights and warriors and bloxxers and kings and queens and dragons... until they had gotten to the Lighthouse. They said it was once a graveyard, for those evil enough to control the whole Universe, and for those foul things that were said to have eaten away at millions upon millions of worlds.
Next to the Lighthouse was a sleek, black spaceship. From here it looked unadorned. But with the vision that the Bloxy Cola had given him, Grean could make out the familiar symbol: F. He stiffened. F.E.A.R. was here. And surely a ship this sleek and fancy could only belong to the highest in the organization.
"Well, we're screwed," Grean managed after a while. "It's F.E.A.R., coming to take us away."
"We must go to war," Blackrose said angrily, "against the people who killed my father."
"Yeah, F.E.A.R. are some ugly bleeders," Ketsuban agreed solemnly. "Let's beat the crap out of them."
SonicXX stood in prair as his second-in-commands watched carefully. Behind the seconds stood Rajan and several other F.E.A.R. captains. Rajan was worried that this all would turn out for the worse. But, he reasoned, this is SonicXX here. He won't just let anything bad happen to us.
A glowing dark aura encircled SonicXX, and his eyes were starting to glow red. He was in Deep Prayer.
In his mind, he saw a dark room full of corpses. There were at least nine of them, all shredded and mutilated to a massive degree. He was the shadow, the invisible one, the death of all things. He started to get a feeling that all was not well. For one thing, he heard a sound of footsteps.
"Your Grace." The voice startled SonicXX out of his possessment. It was Rajan. "Sir, there is something I think you will want to see for yourself, sir." SonicXX peered out the tower window closest to Rajan's finger. He could not believe what he saw.
"Smashing through the snow, on a one horse open DIE MOTHERBLOXER DIE!," Ketsu screamed as Grean latched himself onto the third F.E.A.R. Mech and with gusto ripped off its head with his hammer. Deleting a few other troops in a small shower of blood, he signaled to Blackrose, who opened fire with the XLR. In between the fire Ketsu darted, grabbing a sticky grenade pack from a dead soldier and sticking one at a time on the turrets surrounding the lighthouse. There were several explosions, most of which destroyed the turrets.
"Take out the doors!," Grean yelled to Ketsu, who immediately chucked the entire bag of sticky grenades at the huge wrought-iron gates to the Lighthouse.
The impact that followed neatly took out the front of the building along with the doors, successfully killing off the rest of the F.E.A.R. soldiers and mechs who still remained.
"Move in!," Ketsu ordered everyone.
Inside the Lighthouse it was dark; dark as pitch, dark as leatherhide, dark as a demon's heart. Spiderwebs of massive proportions littered the cieling and walls. Up against a corner, something huge rested. Blackrose whimpered. Grean, arms protectively aroung her, silently crept towards the thing, not daring to make a noise. They all realized it was just the empty skin of a monstrous spider, about two billion times the size of a Black Widow, it seemed. Yet, on its belly, it had a sign on it that meant more than poison. Ancient Uhtblok was calling to them.
"Come on," Grean said to the rest. "WE can't stop here just because of a sign!" He chuckled halfheartedly. Even he was not sure whether to turn back or fight the enemy. He chose the latter.
With a slightly trembling hand, he pointed down a set of slate stairs, below which was nothing but pure darkness. Blackrose couldn't bear it any longer. Her ears drooped down and she started crying at the top of her lungs. Grean, this time, had no idea what he was supposed to do. He looked at Ketsu, who looked bemused.
There they were, about to face their greatest enemy, and Blackrose, perhaps Grean's best friend, was breaking down in front of the very steps of doom themselves.
Reaching a conclusion, Grean knelt down by her. He took the small, light hand in his own bigger ones. She looked up at him. He had no idea why he did it, or what drove him to do this thing, but he did it anyways. He kissed Blackrose.
For a long time their lips were locked, and after a while Blackrose stopped crying and sat there as they finally broke apart.
"I'll always be there for you, Black," Grean said. Blackrose nodded.
"Me, as well."
