Chapter Twenty: Released
Flash's spirit zoomed across the landscape towards Blizzard Valley. In no time at all he arrived in the metropolis and sought out the colossal fortress that held the OS.
"Heh, try to keep me out this time," the dead programmer chuckled as he zipped straight into the quadruple-firewalled structure. "I'll know all the secrets. All of them. Then I'll bring back Mommy and Daddy."
00000
Celestia sighed, brushing a hard, glittery bit of Malon's virtual drive off her rosy chain mail. "What a shame, Zero. Your latest girlfriend seems to have left you. Just like your parents left you. Just like I left you. How does it feel to be abandoned, not once but three times over?" She noticed that some of the blood data had spattered onto her shoulder, smiled, and licked it off.
Making small, senseless noises, the young warrior forced his body to its feet, only to collapse again. His sapphire eyes remained locked on Malon's headless corpse. His foxy captor broke into a cacophony of laughter.
"You're three times a fool, Zero. You're even less than your name tells you to be. No one will ever stay with you for long. You drive them to leave, force them to run or die just to get away from you. Tell me, how does it feel to be left behind?"
"No, no, no, NO!" Zero crawled towards Gutsman's feet, still staring at the corpse clutched in the yellow monster's hand.
Celestia frowned. "You aren't listening to me. Well, that can be fixed. Gutsman, toss her over."
He complied wordlessly, and Malon's remains thumped to the floor in front of the strawberry blonde. Celestia stepped around the decomposing body, drawing a wide circle in the air with her finger. Zero gaped as flames poured down from the circle and incinerated his girlfriend beyond the faintest hope of recovery.
"See? Gone. And in case you didn't hear me earlier, I should tell you now: I saw to it that Flash died too. He's gone, just like everyone else you care about. Oh, don't stop squirming, it's so fun to watch."
Zero stared at the charred circle of ground. There was absolutely nothing left. He closed his eyes and clutched his head, shaking. Then he went still, his hands clenching into fists.
Celestia grinned, standing with hands on hips. And in the next moment, she slammed into the wall, Zero holding her around the throat while a suit of utterly black armor materialized around him. Her eyes lit on his, and it was like staring into the void between universes. It was nothing, the kind of nothing that drinks in passion and gives back only despair. It was zero, not a number but a nightmare of emptiness given flesh.
"Maverick," he breathed. "Maverick."
Gutsman, bereft of orders, stood motionless and watched from the other side of the room while the black-armored warrior drew his weapon. Its shape and contours recalled the same sabre with which Zero had defeated a thousand enemies, but as the blond unsheathed the metal blade it blazed a brilliant white. It was a beam saber, a sword edged both with razor-sharp metal and a continuous, freestanding aura of lethal light energy.
Zero thrust the weapon up into the foxy warrior's belly, the metal edge rupturing several of her subprocessors while the wreath of light seared the surrounding flesh. The dark warrior pulled his blade out of her and thrust again, this time at the young woman's chin, but Celestia's form flashed and she disappeared.
The beam saber slid through the wall like an arrow through fog. Zero's form blurred, and Gutsman fell to the floor in several pieces.
Before the monster's cloven head had joined its severed legs on the ground, the fake hotel room detonated. Simultaneously, fire flooded the hallway room outside, leaving no room for anything whatsoever to survive. No trace of the blond warrior or his gorilla shaped victim remained after the devastation.
Rematerializing in a nearby hallway, Celestia threw a glittering force field up around herself and patched her stomach wound. She jerked around as something banged on the shield.
Zero chopped away at the shining defense with his saber. Lightning crackled from the force field up through the saber's blade and into his body every time the weapon connected, but the dark warrior gritted his teeth and relentlessly continued the assault. Cracks appeared in the shield as, by sheer strength, speed, and weapon power, the dark warrior damaged the shield faster than it could regenerate itself. Watching him pound away, Celestia's eyes caught upon an odd detail: Zero had something clenched in his left hand, something small and blue.
Taking no more notice of the other warrior's shield arm, the strawberry blonde snatched a few glass beads out of her weapons pouch and chanted the activation key. As her defense shattered, the vixen flicked the beads into the air and disappeared again. Zero darted out of the way as the beads exploded in a thunderclap and blast of superheated steam. His ears ringing slightly, the dark warrior slashed open the ceiling over his head and leapt up into another room.
There were a few chairs, an old Go board on a table, and a couple of wrinkly old warriors with weapons already in hand. The two of them, by their appearance and body language probably man and wife, attacked with short spears made for melee combat. Zero deflected one jab with his shield and beheaded one of the spears with his saber. Then he did the same to both spears' owners.
After slashing through the couple's disembodied skulls, permanently destroying their virtual drives, the blond kicked a hole in the wall and burst into the next room. A couple of men in civilian clothes took one look and scrambled for the door, but neither made it that far. As their blood data pooled on the ground, Zero took a moment to grab up one of their teleconsoles in his right hand, and laid a gentle kiss on the face of it. His left hand still clenched the something small and blue that Celestia had noticed.
Then he ripped a jagged X mark in the floor and dropped through the crumbling center, landing upright on an altar the size of a table in the midst of a shower of wood, carpet, and plaster. Several identically masked, robed cultists stood in front of him and the altar in a half-circle. Another cultist wearing robes with heavy golden stitching and a more elaborate mask stood behind him, traditional flaying knife in hand. The sacrifice, a little boy lying chained to the altar, remained absolutely still. Zero's metal boots had dented the metal next to his head in the landing.
For a split second Uncle Fastener hesitated, the words "Stop the blasphemer!" rising in his throat. He got out "S—" before making a sudden, one-way trip to Hell, accompanied by the other Sigma worshippers. As his spirit ripped away from his body, the scarred old priest's ghostly hands grabbed for the little boy. He missed.
Zero leapt towards one of the doors to the unholy room, leaving the sacrifice unharmed but also unfreed. The pale, wide-eyed boy struggled in vain against his manacles' chill embrace while brief screams echoed from the next chamber.
00000
Celestia's fingers shook as she typed in the command key for the long-range teleportation program. Her stomach wound had reopened despite the patch, leaking randomized data over the floor while her auxiliary processors took up the slack from those that had been destroyed. The vixen cursed and hunched over her work as an explosion rocked the building.
Her long, tapered fox ears twitched and her tail bristled. Even through the heavy blackstone walls of her inner sanctum, she could tell. The screams were getting closer.
Celestia tapped the Enter key and waited with the teleconsole gripped in one white-knuckled hand. Her other hand twitched at the ready by her weapons pouch. Dust settled down from the ceiling, and through the walls she heard metal twang and something smash something else repeatedly.
Finally, after several seconds that seemed like minutes, the TC spat back an answer in a neutral female voice. "Error 303: unable to connect to destination. Virus detected. Error 303849994XDjjjRE#dasdf.—"
Celestia hurled the teleconsole away. Its screen crackled and spat viscous black fluid in a steady stream. The vixen stepped back and donned a pair of rosy pink gloves, snapping her fingers as she did so. Her image bled away from her actual body like a watercolor in the rain, changing her appearance to that of a pinkish smudge several feet in diameter.
As the illusion took hold, the rosy warrior walked around the room and set up her defenses. Her hands described several circles in the air and floor, and the vixen tossed around over a dozen glass beads, which rolled into apparently random spots in the area. Two or three ended up in light fixtures in the ceiling after she tossed them up with a flick of her wrist. Finally, the young woman bared her teeth and growled softly, calling a fifteen-foot, glowing, nine-tailed whip into her hands. Its image blurred with the rest of her.
Celestia's ears twitched and she dodged to the side as something that had once been human-shaped smashed through the three inch thick blackstone wall. With a small, precise motion of her fingers, the warrior woman activated one of her foxfire circles and turned the intrusion into slag.
The blonde flicked a kunai knife at the irregular breach in the wall. Half of a tan helmet hurled through the hole at the same time, and the two projectiles collided with a small implosion as the little blade's program triggered. From Celestia's side, nothing much seemed to change, although the air shimmered slightly where the kunai had activated. From the chamber beyond, however, the hole now depicted an extremely realistic but nevertheless completely inaccurate view of Celestia's inner sanctum. Anyone leaping through the hole would have to change plans in midair if they'd based their trajectory on the false image.
Zero came through the ceiling instead. There was a crash, a grinding noise, and masonry fell in the only way masonry can: heavily. Celestia ducked and rolled, her blurred image wavering from side to side and everywhere around her. As she came up the vixen spoke an activation key and one of the glass beads exploded in a thunderous gout of steam, sending the dark armored blond flying into a wall.
Moving with impossible speed and grace, the warrior landed feet first and kicked off the wall at an angle, sending him hurtling towards his foxy opponent. Celestia snapped up the whip, its many tails reaching of their own accord to catch at the young man's body. Zero's sword arm blurred, and the Z-Saber clove the weapon's glowing tails to the floor, where they writhed like headless snakes.
Meanwhile, the strawberry blonde had long since dropped the whip and dodged aside, activating another foxfire circle. Her opponent's kite shield intercepted the infernal torrent, but then two more glass beads exploded, hurling him into another column of flames.
Zero twisted to the side, dodging the worst of it, but sacrificed most of his shield arm to the inferno. His shield dangled uselessly from the charred appendage by the time the warrior passed the foxfire circles and hit the floor. Of his whole left arm, only the hand had escaped the heat, leaving its tightly held little cargo unscathed.
Celestia somersaulted across the room with vulpine grace, speaking the command word for the glass bead at the blond man's feet. In the instant before its detonation, Zero flicked the weapon away with the tip of his blade. The tiny bomb went off less than a yard from his opponent's pretty face.
Zero dashed across the floor towards the scalded, concussed young warrior, his saber held at the ready. The severed whip's tails grabbed at his feet, but fell aside in smoking fragments in his passage. Another foxfire circle loomed before him, but the warrior broke its faint, shimmering outline with the saber before Celestia could activate it. Four more glass beads exploded, but the shockwave and steam were too far away even to slow him down.
Zero slashed and stabbed at his enemy's blurred image, searching for the squirming, dodging body inside the illusion. A thin column of flame shot at him from the big pink smudge, but he simply stepped aside and raised the Z-Saber for a cleaving blow.
Abruptly the dark warrior arched his back and threw himself into a reverse somersault. Bullets hailed through the air where he had been, followed by a pair of missiles that curved to pursue him. Zero tumbled to the side and tossed a piece of rubble into one rocket's path. The piece of blackstone and the missile both disintegrated into an unstructured mass of data, and the data immediately vanished.
His pit black eyes widened, and the dark warrior sprang past the other missile. The blond's super long ponytail whipped within inches of the weapon as it spun 180° to pursue. Zero twisted to kick some rubble to intercept, but bullets rained into his legs before he could complete the maneuver. As he crumpled to the ground and the rocket neared his stricken body, the young warrior slashed at the incoming missile with the Z-Saber and connected solidly. Weapon touched weapon, and there was a flash of light. The homing missile, the Z-Saber, and Zero all disintegrated into a vast, shining cloud of particles.
Celestia slumped against the wall, watching her college boyfriend's body evaporate. Her savior appeared wordlessly at her side, and she allowed him to help her up.
As she stared at the place where the dark warrior had lain so briefly, the vixen's face contorted silently in a series of expressions. Eventually, however, she addressed the underling who had come to her rescue. Her voice trembled only very slightly.
"Your timing needs work. But nevertheless, well done, Vile."