Chapter 14: Cold n Hot

"Are you sure you sent Bobby home? To the school?" Rilou hissed from her place on Logan's back. Cerin gave her a false hurt look.

"Of course. Honestly Dream Giver, I'm truly shocked to see that after all these years of knowing me, you still have so little trust in me. I have to say my feeling is hurt."

"Gosh I wonder why that could be." Rilou sarcastically barked at the same time Logan spat, "Fuck your feeling!"

"Ha, ha! You two really are birds of a feather. You know," He smirked, sitting on a red rock, "At first, I was confused as to why you of all people would be the Guardian, but now that I look at you two, I can't imagine anyone else doing that job in your place." Logan looked as confused as Rilou truly was.

"Honestly, Cerin," Rilou rolled her tiny multi-colored eyes," what is your deal with the guardian thing? My guardian died a long time ago."

"You've never heard of replacements? Or maybe the fact truly is that Kalos wasn't the REAL guardian the whole time. Think about that." Then, for some reason, it decided to click together just then.

"Oh God…you think Logan is…oh God!" Her face turned so red a tomato looked white in comparison. If Logan didn't know better, he'd of thought someone dipped her in lava for a few minutes.

"Oh my, you mean you just now figured it out? That's too funny." His sharp teeth shined brightly as he erupted into a fit of laughter. Logan's gaze shot between the two, not having a clue what was going on.

"Huh? What the hell does that mean?" He asked.

"You're The Guardian, Logan. It's very simple really. Shall I explain? It's why you can slice up my beautiful creations, and why your connection with little Dreamy Queen here is so strong." Cerin giggled like a gossiping school girl, and brushed a strand of his long dark hair from his face.

"Cerin, don't." Rilou warned. Logan's head was swiveling from confusing statement to confusing statement. He was finally getting some sort of clue about some of this, and it was only confusing him triple times the amount he already was. Guardian? Replacement? Fake? Real? Him? God he needed sleep. And who the fuck is Kalos? He sat down on a hot red rock and shifted Rilou, who was still in his arms. His head hurt and he needed a break. The only reason he sat down with the Nightmare King in front of him, was that he didn't find Cerin much of a threat. Just an obnoxious jerk that had no clue what personal space was. He looked around and finally noticed where they were. They were in a volcano. Literally. The lava was pooling not fifty feet below them. They were sitting on a rocky perch above the pit of gooey fire. The sky above them was cloudy, like it would start storming at any given moment. "You know what will happen to your game if you tell him."

"Maybe I don't care about my game anymore." Rilou sorted, shuffling in Logan's arms a little.

"You never get tired of yourself, much less your own games and ideas." She hissed. Cerin chuckled.

"Okay I digress. You're right. But, I think our story needs a hero in it, wouldn't you agree?" Cerin was pacing a bit now, looking at his perfectly filed nails as he did so. "It's been far too long since Kalos was in it. Almost-what was it-four, no…hmm." He gave himself a slightly weird look. "No three is far too short. Now how long was it?" He asked himself. He held a finger up to the two mutants. "Give me a moment, dears, let me think.

"Dear?!" They both spat back. Rilou made a gagging noise and literally turned a deep shade of green, while Logan turned red with embarrassment and enragement.

"I'm gonna throw up on you." The tiny one mumbled to her friend.

"Ditto kid." He said back. Rilou watched Cerin, noticing he was babbling to himself rather…oddly. What was off about this? She thought for a moment about this whole conversation, how long they had been talking, who they were talking with, and what about. Cerin's never been this open about his thoughts, even with the story. And now he's nearly completely changed the subject. Not to mention now he's just sitting here babbling to himself… She just couldn't help but feel a tad…off about something. What was wrong? She knew he really knew how long it had been since Kalos had been…discontinued…in their story, so why was he playing dumb and acting like he really knew nothing?

"Oh shit!" She yelped, earning a glance from Logan, and a knowing smirk from her long rival. "You've been wasting our game time ever since we got here!" She jabbed a finger at him, making Cerin laugh so hard he fell over.

"The game's been going on this whole time?!" Logan spat, jumping up so he was standing. Rilou hopped out of his arms, her bare feet being burnt by the volcanic rock. Now Cerin was downright crying he was laughing so hard. He had planned this as a joke in the game. And they BOTH fell for it!

"C'mon Fur-Face! We're low on time!" She ran across the rock and hopped from rock pallet to rock pallet, ignoring the lava bubbling under them, Logan hot on her trail.

"Thirty two minutes…Dears." Echoed behind them.

Logan and Rilou carefully, but quickly hopped from ledge to ledge, slowly lowering them closer to the bubbling lava.

"I swear I wasn't talking to that bastard for nearly four hours." Logan commented, making Rilou snort.

"He likes to use his nightmares to speed up the daylight, and in turn time itself."

"He can do that?"

"You weren't up there an hour were you?"

"Oh…yeah." Rilou giggled at her friend, before squealing to a stop as she reached the edge of the last ledge, stopping right as her toes went over the ledge. She balanced on the balls of her foot, ready to hop backwards and to safety. Unfortunately, Logan didn't stop fast enough, so when he skid to a halting stop, his leg hit the tiny mutants back, knocking her off the ledge. She yelped in surprise, falling about ten feet from the lava, before using her gold dream dust to make five claws and catch the side of the inner volcano wall.

"Kid!" She heard above her. She looked up to see Logan staring at her. She would have waved, but thought against it due to the current circumstances.

"Logan! I'm stuck!" He snorted, despite him being worried.

"Yeah, no kidding!"

"Can you get me back up?"

"Uhh…yeah. I think… Give me a second."

"There's your second now HELP ME!" She screamed sarcastically. Logan rolled his eyes and looked at the wall. He could try scaling it, but it looked like the wall would crumble under his weight. Sometimes being about three hundred pounds kinda sucked. He nearly had a heart attack when she slipped a whole foot before catching herself. The golden dream dust was dimming and slowly dissipating. She was struggling to keep herself dangling on the volcanoes inner wall, but she was slipping. She was tired from the blast of power in the icy mountain. "Logan!" She was slipping again, two of her five claws gone. "Help! Please!"

"I'm coming! Hang on!" Heavy or not, he didn't have much choice anymore. He jumped over the edge and unsheathed his claws, stabbing them into the wall. Because of his weight his claws slipped through and cut down the wall, like he had sliced at butter. He skid down the inner wall until he was six or seven feet above Rilou, who was on the verge of tears. Another claw was almost completely gone. Her bare hand clutching the rock along with her claw was burnt nearly black. Her feet were black and red all over. They looked like a molten rock. No doubt the parts of her chest, leg, and arm that's leaning on the wall were burnt the same way. In which case Logan didn't know which she was crying from the pain or because she was terrified. Probably both. He carefully shimmied a couple feet until his leg was next to the tiny mutant. He couldn't get any lower. The rock was too soft, he'd fall right into the lava. Honestly, he didn't know if the lava would kill him or not, but right now he'd rather not find out. Rilou's white hair was nearly black from the volcanoes ash, not to mention her once pale pink dress was now almost all dark grey. Completely covered in ashes.

"Rilou, grab my leg!" She looked up at his eyes with a look that said 'you are kidding, right?' and shook her head.

"This is your plan?!"

"Better than nothing!" He barked. "Now shut up and grab my fucking leg so I can pull you up! Or do you WANT to fall to your molten, fiery death?!" As Rilou thought this over for what felt like an hour but was really only about two seconds, she cried out and sprang for his leg, wrapping around it like a koala combined with a boa constrictor. Her little arms were clutched so tightly, they easily and quickly cut the circulation of blood in them. "Ow…dammit when I said grab that's not what I actually had in mind…" He began climbing back up, his claws clinging to the inside of the wall as he did so. Rilou's arms were tired. She could barely keep her eyes open and her dream dust powers were completely drained. As Logan climbed, he noticed Rilou's arms loosening their hold on his leg. He nearly reached the top of the wall, where the ledge she had fallen from laid, when she moaned.

"Lo…gan…" She mumbled in a whisper. "I…I'm gonna…fall…" Her arms went limp right after, and she fell.