Okay, seriously, this story's been doing very well lately. I don't know how it happened. Just, I don't.
And oh my god, Obama is going to be the next president! Yay!!!!!!
But anyway, here's the next chapter. Enjoy!
Chapter 19: Life
A clump of dust and a small fragment of stone fell from above and landed on a person's face. Said person woke up soon afterwards with his eyelids slightly batting as he tried to figure out what had just happened.
Then, the memories came back to him all at once; the woman, the energy ball, and the part where he had fallen into the chasm that had separated the two sides of the temple.
Instantly, Vyse realized his friends were in trouble, but at the same time he was powerless to help them. He was hot from the lava's proximity to his location, and when he tried to move around to see how much space he had he found he was not able to move very far before certain parts of his body hit various parts of the debris above him. Even if one of his friends was still alive, he doubted they would be able to hear them.
Still, the Blue Rogue was determined never to give up. When he looked around, he found that a snapped cutlass was not too far from his reach. Taking the cutlass by the blade and pulling it towards him, the rogue began banging on the rubble as loudly as he could when the cold, hard blade of the cutlass was biting into his skin.
"Hey!" yelled the air pirate, the yell penetrating the air around him. "Guys? Can you hear me? Hello?"
He had not banged for long against the debris above him, for then he heard a slight creaking noise. Hearing this, Vyse barely had time to shrink back to where he had woken up before a small bit of debris collapsed even more, effectively crushing his only method of generating noise and sending dust flying in his face.
The air pirate looked at the debris in front of him and shook his head.
"Hey!" he screamed as loudly as he could. "Help me! If anybody can hear this, help me out here!"
Vyse continued yelling at the top of his lungs for extended periods of time. As his voice grew hoarse with every yell, he refused to back down.
The Blue Rogue knew what giving up could mean in a situation like this. And he was not about to lose hope that somehow, somebody was going to save him. So he continued yelling at the top of his lungs, hoping that somehow his cries were piercing the debris above him.
In the midst of what remained of the temple, a man clad in a skin-tight suit that covered everything but his eyes and arms and a scarf that trailed behind him in the wind found himself lifting debris this way and that to find out what had happened.
As he had cleared the debris, he had come across three bodies, all of them impaled with a very small fraction of stone and also crushed under the massive weight of the debris above them. There was literally nothing left of some of the deceased's body parts but a few pools or puddles of blood and maybe a portion of cracked bone.
The worst part was that one of them looked like he could have made it; but alas, the weight of the stone and the marble pillars above him was too much, and so he had succumbed.
The mysterious black-clad man shook his head as he cleared the last of the debris.
"No survivors on this level," said the man out loud, more to himself than to the air around him. "It's time to check that depression over there."
The man walked over to the chasm, and he began lifting some portions of the debris that had piled in there as well as rolling some pieces away. As he descended, he found that the chasm was very deep, and a strange kind of heat was being given off of some of the areas.
The man took note of this; the chasm was very deep and it had pockets of some incredibly hot source that was enough to heat up a lot of stone and marble. Under these conditions, he knew it was hopeless to keep searching, but something in his intuition told him to keep searching anyway.
Looking back up to the top of the chasm, the man continued down the massive heap of marble through any opening that he was able to find or clear for himself.
As soon as he had progressed all the way down, he began to hear a soft, high pitched murmuring that seemed very distant. Tuning in to this, the man began to walk in the direction that he knew the murmur must be.
And sure enough, as soon as he had descended a short ways, the murmur became louder, and now words were intelligible through the thick layers of stone.
It was a cry for help.
Thanking his intuition for having him continue his quest, the man descended further into the area, shoving debris out of the way as he moved closer to the source of the sound. After a while of listening in to the darkness and after he had found the bottom of the chasm, he heard the murmur next to him, now as a destinctive call for help.
Seeing a small rock immediately in front of him where a strangely-colored blade lay broken, the man walked over to it and rolled it out of the way, the cries for help coming to an abrupt end as the man rolled the rock away and then knelt in front of a young man who looked to be no more than seventeen years of age. He was lucky, the stranger supposed; he had been caught in a tiny space with his foot being in an awkward position under a small series of rocks. He looked fine; there were a few signs of major injuries in the boy's legs, but otherwise he was relatively unharmed.
"Are you all right there?" asked the man, the black suit blocking his mouth from the boy's view.
"I'm fine, I'm fine," said the Vyse, voice hoarse from what must have been hours of yelling. "My legs are killing me, but I'm fine. Thanks for saving me..."
"You're welcome," said the man, who edged into the hole and began to work on freeing the boy's foot from its hold. When he did, the boy hissed in pain, but the man quickly crawled out and pulled the young man out of the passage. "What happened here?"
"Some lady came..." replied the air prate, his words trailing off as a realization came to him. "My friends! Did you find my friends?"
The man took Vyse into his arms so that his legs were hanging behind the older man, the Blue Rogue doing the rest and encircling his arms around the man's surprisingly powerful shoulders.
"They're all dead..." said the man. "I'm sorry."
Vyse looked at the stranger in the dark, sadness in his eyes as he shook his head.
"No..." said the young man softly. "That lady killed them, didn't she?"
"Well, they were under quite a few pillars, if you must know," said the man.
"I swear I'll get revenge..." Vyse said softly. "I swear it!"
"What exactly happened?" asked the older man.
"It's a long story," said the young man. "You should get us both out of here."
"All right, then," said the older man, closing his emerald eyes as he seemed to recite something in his head.
In an instant, the two of them were back onto the highest level of the temple, and then the young man blinked before he looked up.
"What was that?" asked the young man.
"You'll see later," said the older man as he set the boy on the ground. "Now, hold still. This might tingle a little."
The older man knelt down next to the boy's legs. Holding his hands out over them and reciting something in his mind, a faint blue glow came from the younger man' legs. Slowly, the younger man felt the pain in his legs subside, and after another few minutes he felt nothing there at all. To test his legs, the younger man attempted to stand up and found that he wasn't instantly falling to the ground as he was sure he would.
"Hoo," said the younger man. "I feel much better. Thanks."
"You're welcome," said the older man. "Is there something you need to do?"
"I..." said Vyse, looking around and suddenly seeing the bodies of his comerades.
This effectively stopped him as he gasped in shock.
"Oh, no..." said the air pirate as he ran over to the corpses and got on his hands and knees after looking around at all of them. "Ganondorf! Markus! Logan! No!"
The older man nodded and walked over to Vyse softly, his expression becomming angrier by the minute.
"I swear, I'll have her head for this!" he said.
"I guess something happened..." said the older man.
"Of course something happened!" cried Vyse as he quickly stood up. "I've gotta get out of here! I have things I need to tell people!"
"Slow down, slow down," said the man as he simply crossed his arms in front of his chest. "You're unarmed, and you only just got healed from a few serious injuries. I also don't know anything about what's going on, or who you even are."
Vyse opened his mouth to retaliate when he noticed that the man was right.
Rising from his position on the floor, the air pirate walked over to the man in black and nodded.
"You're right," said the air pirate. "First things first. The name's Vyse. Vyse the Blue Rogue."
The man in black nodded politely.
"And I am Ryu of the Hayabusa clan," he replied in kind. "And what happened?"
"Well, it happened like this..." began the air pirate with a hand gesture.
A strange, grey spirit hovered in the air before the small group, a warmer, yellower spirit hovering right beside him as Leo, Fina, and Aika all looked at everything in wonder.
A group of attendants surrounded the small group, and they had all introduced themselves as Samus, Logan, Markus, Ganondorf, Falcon, and Gilder, all of who seemed to know more than they did about certain things that were going on in relation to the artifacts.
In the dark space they were in, such questions did not really matter. The grey and yellow spirits morphed into the shape of an average person, and the two of them bowed down respectfully to the three strangers.
"You do still give off the aura of mortality," said the yellow spirit, a female voice emanating from it. "Nevertheless, we respect you."
"And who the heck are you?" asked Aika, her face taking on a strange expression.
"Hey, don't address my wife like that!" said the grey spirit with an angry male voice.
"Hades, calm down," said the yellow spirit as she carressed the grey spirit's shoulders lightly. "She clearly meant no harm by her statement."
"Well, I'll trust what you say..." said the grey spirit as the yellow spirit withdrew slowly. "I am Hades, and this is my wife, Persephone."
"So you're the king of the underworld..." said Leo.
"Indeed I am," said Hades. "My attendants told me you were on a journey."
"Yes," said Fina, stepping forwards. "I was sent to Arcadia to collect the Moon Crystals. I was meant to save Arcadia."
Persephone shook her head softly.
"So they had the gall to decieve you," said the spirit softly.
"What do ya mean?" asked Aika.
"The elders never wanted it for good," said Hades, shaking his head softly. "After all this time, they still haven't learned that nothing can really be perfect..."
"What do you mean?" asked Fina. "Have the elders lied to me?"
"Precisely," said Persephone with a nod. "The Rains of Destruction... your own elders caused them with the Moon Crystals."
"What?" cried Fina, she and her two friends shocked at the news. "That's not true! My elders would never lie to me!"
"Anybody is capable of deceit," said Hades slowly. "And your elders did cause the Rains of Destruction."
"So they sent her down to get the crystals so they could call the Rains of Destruction again?" asked Leo.
"Indeed," said Persephone slowly.
"How could they?" cried Aika, visibly angered at this development. "They think that just because the world isn't perfect means that they have the right to destroy it? What is this?"
"Don't ask me," said Hades with a shrug as he moved around. "I would not know."
"But wait..." said Fina. "The crystals are with Enrique and Snake, and they got captured by Valua. So that means..."
"Oh no," said Leo, shaking his head in disbelief. "Galcian planned to call the Rains of Destruction so he could take over the world!"
"Of course!" cried a loud voice from the middle of nowhere.
"Shut it, Bison!" screamed Hades so loudly that the ground trembled with his yell.
All was silent for two seconds as everybody regained their bearings.
"So this means that the world is in trouble!" cried Fina.
"Not exactly," replied Persephone. "There is one more twist to this tale."
"There is?" asked Aika. "What is it?"
"Look to your items," said the female spirit. "You shall find your answer there."
Without missing a beat, Cupil unwound from Fina's wrist where it had been curled up, and then it belched out a red, a green, and a blue crystal one by one. Each crystal clattered to the floor harmlessly, and Fina, Aika, and Leo all looked down at the crystals and back up at the spirits before they looked to each other.
"We had the crystals!" said the energetic girl loudly. "I knew we were doing something right!"
"So the world is safe after all," said Leo.
"Indeed," said Hades. "And now, Leo, I believe you had a quest of your own to collect some artifacts to save the universe, right?"
"W-what?" cried Leo as he looked to the great spirit. "How did you know my quest?"
"Wait, so your quest involved collecting stuff too?" asked Aika, expression somewhat sullen as she said this.
"Uh, yeah..." said the turtle, rubbing the back of his head and closing his eyes sheepishly.
"That does not matter now, though," said Persephone. "The matter is that you have been betrayed as well."
"Oh, dear," said Fina, shaking her head and rolling her eyes with annoyance ridden all over her sapphire eyes.
"This is starting to get annoying," said Leo. "I think I know where this is going; the organization doesn't exist, the people that sent me on this quest are going to steal the items when I have them, and so on."
"Essentially, yes," said Hades with a slight chuckle. "I didn't expect you to figure it out so quickly."
"Hey, wait a minute!" said a confused Aika. "What's going on here?"
"There is a prophecy written in the stars," said Persephone. "It tells of twenty warriors that will rise up and defend the universe from the greatest evil it has ever seen."
"There are these two, you see," said Hades. "They heard about the prophecy, and they got the first group of twenty they could together so they could eliminate them so that no heroes would rise up against their schemes. They actually weren't too far off, but at this point all of the twenty told in the prophecy have survived."
"Wait," said Aika. "Would you know who some of the twenty are?"
"Yes," said Hades. "I cannot tell you all of them; however, I can tell you that Vyse is one of the twenty."
"He is?" said Fina.
"So he's still alive!" cried Aika, jumping into the air happily. "I knew it!"
"And what about my brother Raph?" asked Leo. "Is he part of the twenty?"
"Yes," said Persephone. "Actually, all of your brothers are part of the twenty."
"Oh my, really?" asked Leo.
"Yes, but somebody needs to go get them," said Hades with a wink.
"Wait, so we'll get to meet Leo's family?" asked Fina. "Count me in on it!"
"Of course, Fina," said Leo. "So, we'll have to go by New York first then?"
"Yes," said Persephone. "Then, you must convene with the rest of the twenty and stop whatever evils are bound to shake the earth."
"Okay," said Leo with a rare smile. "I've just got one question."
"What's up?" asked Hades.
"When do we leave?" asked the turtle.
Ryu and Vyse both ran through the desert, searching for anybody else that might be there.
The air pirate could not complain at all about his legs. They were feeling perfectly fine when they had walked out of the temple, and Vyse had an endless stream of thanks for the shinobi.
However, they were both running at a very fast pace through the desert in the hopes that there was still somebody there. They hoped this was the case, as they both knew what could have happened if the other groups did not find out fast enough.
So the two of them ran through the desert, Vyse getting exhausted quickly from lack of water and food. Finally, the pirate had to stop to catch his breath, Ryu looking at him from behind the silver-lined opening where his eyes were visible.
"Not used to this, are you?" asked the shinobi softly.
"No," said Vyse with a headshake as he panted heavily. "Normally I'd just get on a ship and go."
"But a ship can't really survive on land," said Ryu as he sat down. "Unless...?"
"I'm still not sure how your ships work," said Vyse with a shrug. "Our ships fly in the air."
"Then that might be the problem," said the shinobi with a nod. "Our ships sail in the water."
"They do?" asked Vyse, trying to imagine a sea of nothing but water in it and seeing everything he could see submerged in an abnormally high wall of water. "Then where's the land?"
"Above the ocean, of course," said Ryu.
"Okay, I won't try to figure this out," said Vyse. "What happened around here?"
"You should know that," said Ryu.
The shinobi would have continued with his anecdote, but a faint glimmer in the distance caught their attention.
"Ryu?" asked the blue rogue as the man in black stood up.
"I think we might have a potential candidate for seeing somebody who knows about this mess," said Ryu as three figures approached in the horizon.
"Oh, good," said Vyse, gathering his bearings and walking towards the group slowly.
When the two of them came closer, they found that the group was made of two girls and a very, very large man who all had weapons stored on their backs. The smallest girl, who had orange ponytails on the sides of her head, looked at the two of them and stopped walking, after which she indicated Ryu and Vyse's presence in the area to the other two. When the man and the somewhat older woman looked at them, they both put on puzzled expressions. When Ryu and Vyse approached, the older girl, who had blue hair, struck a pose.
"And what're you guys doing in the middle of the desert?" asked the woman.
"You guys haven't been visited by any green spheres lately, have you?" asked Vyse quickly.
"We've seen them, yeah," said the burly man heartily. "What's it to you?"
"Okay, they're lying to you," said Vyse. "There was this one sphere--!"
"Whoah, calm down!" said the large man with a soothing gesture. "Slow down! I don't even know if you're talking about the right thing here!"
"The green spheres?" asked Ryu calmly. "He was visited by several along with his three friends."
"Three friends, sir?" asked the blue-haired woman. "Where're the other two, then?"
"Actually, all three of my friends got killed by that sphere," said Vyse slowly. "And I barely made it out alive."
"And you expect Lina and friends to believe this?" asked the orange-haired girl. "That's stupid!"
"Yeah!" said the burly man again. "I'll bet you're in the Organization!"
"W-what?" asked Vyse, taking a step back. "But that doesn't exist!"
"Of course it does!" said the blue haired woman, pulling the large scythe from her back as she walked forward. "The orb told us so!"
"Wait a minute!" cried Vyse as he walked back. "Doesn't it look like the orb knows too much?"
This effectively stopped the woman in her tracks, and then she considered the pirate's words.
"You know, now that you talk about it like that..." said the woman.
"It did know everything about everything..." said the burly man, who had also begun to think. "So that means..."
"Hey, you're right!" said the orange-haired girl as she jumped up with the realization. "How come that orb didn't just kill us?"
"It no doubt had a purpose," said Ryu calmly, having not moved an inch from his spot. "Whatever that purpose is, it cannot be good at all."
"Well, duh," commented the blue-haired woman, rolling her eyes flamboyantly at the comment. "But until we figure this out, we're joinging forces?"
"Pretty much," said Vyse. "We'll exchange stories later."
"Okay then," said the large man as he stepped forward and held a hand out to Vyse. "The name's Largo."
"And I'm Serene," said the woman as she bowed down. "And the girl is Lina."
"Hey!" cried the girl impatiently. "Lina can do her own introductions!"
Vyse chuckled softly as he saw the girl's brief tantrum as he shook the berserker's hand.
"I'm Vyse," said the pirate. "And my friend is Ryu."
"Okay then," said Serene. "Let's go somewhere for the day and hear your stories!"
"Sounds like a plan to me," said Vyse.
"And if we find any contradictions, we're going to do stuff to you, so you better watch out!" cried out the woman loudly.
Vyse stood there for a few seconds with confusion riddling his face. As the group sauntered off, Ryu walked over to the air pirate and patted his shoulder.
"They will find you correct," said Ryu. "I'm sure of it."
Vyse nodded and the group of five walked off towards the nearest oasis.
Leo, Fina, and Aika all stood in front of the warp portal that was surrounded by the black shards of an orb that would have teleported them anywhere. As Hades and Leo were busy conversing, Fina and Aika both concerned themselves with the man that had claimed he was from Arcadia.
"So let me get this straight," said Aika. "You and Vyse were on Daccat's Island as well?"
"Pretty much," said the larger man. "And then we found this black orb in the treasure chest, and before we kew it we were on some quest to save the universe."
"But you were separated by the warp," said Fina.
"Yeah," said Gilder with a shrug, red trenchcoat rising with the shrug. "I actually didn't find out where he was until I died. Pretty sad, huh?"
"Yeah," said Aika with a nod. "At least he's still alive!"
"Yep, that's a good thing," said Gilder with a nod. "Especially considering he almost died there."
"I hope we can find him soon," said Fina with a nod.
"I hope you guys do too," said Gilder, looking over to the warp portal and seeing the humanoid turtle approaching the two girls.
"Well, are you ready for New York?" asked Leo with a smile on his face.
"You bet!" cried Aika excitedly.
"I can hardly wait to see it myself," said Fina with a smile and a nod.
"Okay then, let's go," said Leo.
The two girls looked over to Gilder and bowed respectfully.
"Nice to meet you!" cried Aika.
"Same here!" said Gilder.
After a quick exchange of parting bows, the three of them took a deep breath at the black portal before them.
And then, Leo, Fina, and Aika all walked into the dimensional warp one by one, their bodies dissapearing from the underworld as the portal closed behind Fina.