Chapter Twenty-Three
"All Or Nothing"
Zack intercepted Deimos first, their blades flashing in wild flurry of motion as they passed each other. Not giving Deimos a second to rest, Cody jumped at the Child of Darkness, deflecting several blows with his shield as he shouldered past the Champion. They all spun around to face each other, but before they could continue their battle they were blown off their feet as Ashani and Casius went at it creating a whirlwind of explosions. Tumbling through the air, Zack spread his arms and legs out as he unconsciously readjusted his aura for flight and steadied himself ten feet off the ground.
He looked around and spotted Cody off to his left, the younger twin's back pressed up against the windows of an expensive looking high-rise apartment building. Zack glanced around wildly, but Deimos was nowhere to be seen. He tried sensing the darkness emanating from the champion, but Ashani's raw power masked everything else. How could he have disappeared so quickly? Where had the wily old Champion gone in the seconds they had been disoriented?
Zack soon got his answer as the window behind Cody exploded outward in a shower of safety glass and he was pulled inside an apartment with a yelp of surprise.
"Cody!" Zack shouted as he rocketed towards the opening in the building, perhaps a bit too fast for his own good. He landed heavily, stumbled forward with his excess momentum and flipped forward over a leather couch before finally coming to rest on top of a glass coffee table that compacted beneath him. Dazed, Zack glanced up at the ceiling and saw a poster depicting a demented looking penguin holding a butcher's knife in an improbable flipper grip. The caption read, "Killer Penguin's Rule!"
What kind of people lived here?
Wait, what was he doing?
Cody!
Zack clambered back onto his feet and shook his head clear. He quickly located the path of destruction left by his brother's struggle with Deimos, followed it out into the hallway and into the stairwell.
"Cody where are you?" He sensed his twin's presence nearby, but just as Ashani's power was masking Deimos, Casius was having the same effect on Cody's.
Cody answered as he sailed down from several floors above, sending lances of golden light back up the stairs before landing next to Zack.
"Right here."
Without warning, the entire building jumped upward, tilted and then came crashing down as it imploded. Cody grabbed Zack with his right hand and pulled him close, holding his shield over both of them as interlocking plates of golden light surrounded them in a sphere.
The apartment complex collapsed all around them as their auras held them suspended in midair with the upper floors bouncing off Cody's bubble shield. It seemed like it took forever for the imploded building to come to rest and when it finally did they found themselves buried under layers of building materials. From somewhere nearby came a muffled laugh.
The sound grated on Zack's nerves and he immediately went from annoyed at this turn of events to being completely pissed off. He raised a hand and drew light energy into his hand.
Cody gave him a questioning look. "What are you-"
He never got to finish as the debris pile exploded outward in a blinding flash of white light accompanied by a loud thunderclap.
Zack rose upward as bits of building material scattered in his wake and he turned towards the source of the laughter. Deimos was only toying with them and Zack was tired of messing around. It was time to get serious.
"You got my back Codes?" Zack asked as he concentrated, slipping into the trance-like state he'd practiced with Niou and feeling the link with his brother establish itself. With the sync now complete, he gained Cody's spatial awareness on top of his own and was able to sense exactly what Cody planned to do before he did it.
"Yeah," Cody replied as he joined him in the air.
"Let's show him the power of the twin terrors!" Zack exclaimed, a small smirk touching the corners of his lips.
He sailed forward to engage Chiam's father with Cody hot on his tail. As the distance between them decreased, Zack pushed aside his self-doubt and concentrated on the black clad figure beckoning him to attack while Kasen's advice rang through his head like a mantra. 'If you doubt yourself and your abilities then you have already failed.'
Zack intentionally came up short in his movement and probed Deimos' defenses by launching several quick and indecisive strikes against him. The wily Champion effortlessly blocked his sword every single time and in doing so revealed a potential weakness. Deimos was a larger man and as such, he wasn't quite as nimble when it came to protecting his flanks.
Feinting an overhead swing Zack immediately rotated his wrist, rolled his shoulder and turned his aborted attack into a vicious side cut. Deimos turned away from Fortitude's edge and it glanced harmlessly off his armor, though it imparted a great deal of kinetic force into him. The speed and strength and Zack's side cut had startled him causing him to glare at the young Child of Light.
Momentarily distracted, Zack nearly missed the blur of motion that was Deimos's own sword slicing down at him in an overhead cut. He juked sideways through the air and turned away at the last second as the obsidian blade passed by perilously close behind him. However, this left Zack's back exposed to the Champion leaving him a prime target to a follow up attack, but then Cody moved between the two discouraging any such thing.
Cody threw all of his strength into his left arm as he slammed his shield into Deimos's chest and knocked him back through the air before pursuing in an attempt to keep him off balance by getting up in the Champion's face. As Deimos fought against the sudden pressuring attacks by Cody, Zack slipped around the man's side and launched an attack from behind.
The Truth Seeker broke off contact just before Zack connected. Without warning, the Champion of Chaos moved ever so slightly and trapped Fortitude between his left arm and chest plate without even bothering to turn around. Pain exploded across the White Knight's midsection as Deimos delivered a bone shattering elbow to his torso armor denting it severely.
Zack spun away weaponless as he sensed a retaliatory attack coming just barely managing to dodge it in time. Deimos tossed Fortitude aside and the sword burst into a shower of white sparks in preparation to return to its master. He never had the chance to summon it however.
A torrent of negative energy raced away from Deimos, the air crackling around it as it passed by. Zack's pupils constricted, partly from the brilliance of the neon red light and partly from fear. In less than a second, the young man realized that Deimos's attack was traveling too fast for him to evade and it contained all of the dark power the older Champion could handle.
He landed heavily on the ground intending to make one last ditch effort to block the attack, but lost his balance as the massive overpressure of displaced air preceding the attack hit him and caused him to fall over backwards. A cold sweat broke out on Zack's forehead and he gulped in fear as the neon red light filled his world.
'I'm going to die here…' He thought.
The torrent of negative energy impacted with incredible force, throwing out hurricane force winds that sent Zack sliding across the asphalt away from the point of impact. Strangely, there was no pain. He looked up warily, squinting his eyes as he did so, to find out what had happened.
Cody had happened.
"AHHH!" The twin from the future roared in defiance as he pushed back against the staggering force of Deimos's energy. Cody stood with his right leg braced behind him and his kite shield presented towards the Champion of Chaos. Negative energy crashed against Cody's bubble shield and was deflected away into nearby buildings tearing them to pieces, but the center-most portion continued to drill against his barrier of golden light energy. He wouldn't last long.
Zack rolled forward onto his feet and raced to his brother's side, throwing his own white light into Cody's barrier in order to reinforce it. Unfortunately, playing defensively wasn't Zack's strong suit. The twins began to feel their flesh heat up as the negative energy started to shred Cody's barrier before it slammed against his physical shield with alarming speed.
The force of the blow knocked Cody down onto his right knee, but he managed to keep his left arm raised to protect them. Only Cody's kite shield, deflecting the majority of the energy away from them, now stood between them and death. If it failed to hold together, their auras wouldn't be strong enough to protect them.
"I'm sorry!" Cody yelled over the rush of energy. Tears began to build up in the corners of his eyes and he gritted his teeth as his shield began to buckle. He'd failed everyone. Zack fell right in front of his eyes because he was too weak. In a miracle he couldn't understand, his brother was back and he had another chance, but just like always he was too weak to stop Chaos. It was over.
They were going to die in a matter of seconds.
They'd broken their promises to keep each other safe, but at least they could take some small consolation in the fact that they would be facing the end together.
Then, with absolutely no warning at all, the flow of negative energy stopped. Cody pitched forward in surprise as he was met by an abrupt lack of force pressing down upon him. Zack reached out and steadied him before they looked upward at their enemy. They both stared in surprise as they found a hand extended towards them and a familiar face framed by white blond hair and deep green eyes peering back at them.
"Miss me?" Jarran asked as he helped Cody to his feet. Relief flooded through Zack at the sight of their newfound ally, but there was still one thing worrying him.
"Deimos?"
"Will take no further part in this battle," Jarran explained, nodding his head towards his uncle who now stood on the ground a dozen feet away from them talking heatedly with two Champions of Chaos Zack had never seen before.
Cody started in surprise as he caught sight of Pandora, jerking backwards away from Jarran involuntarily. The young Child of Darkness followed his gaze.
"She's with me."
"I hope so…" Cody muttered warily, "She killed me in the future."
Jarran raised an eyebrow questioningly, unintentionally mirroring Zack's confused expression.
"Jarran? Pandora? What the hell!" Kahna interrupted as jogged over to the other champions. The lighting quick Champion of Chaos was pretty banged up from his fight with Taschen. Zack looked around and saw the Guardian limping towards them, obviously hurt, but still alive.
"We're no longer letting Ashani sacrifice his champions in an futile attempt to conquer Earth," Pandora declared.
"Futile? We're winning this battle." Kahna pointed out. Jarran looked pointedly at Cody.
"I come from two years into the future, where Chaos almost won, but in the end it was all for nothing," Cody said, "Except for me, Earth's Champions were all wiped out."
"If what you say is true, then how was it all for nothing?"
"Because you were all wiped out as well," Cody answered, then pointed at Nevian, Kahna and Deimos, "I never saw you three and I can only imagine that Casius took you down before he died. I killed Chiam and Pandora myself while Ashani killed Jarran, but was mortally wounded in doing so."
"But why would he do that?" Kahna asked in shock, "It doesn't make any sense."
"It makes sense if you remember how Ashani came to power as Demon Lord," Pandora answered.
"Seeing as how Jarran is more powerful than any of us were at his age, for Ashani to delay such an act would only be increasing the perceived danger," Nevian added.
"You're the one responsible for my boy's death?" Deimos suddenly accused Cody, glaring at the Truth Seeker with a mixture of hatred and pain.
"Chiam died in a fair fight. I didn't resort to the coldblooded murderous tactics he used on my family." Deimos started forward, but Jarran stepped in between them and gave Cody a warning look.
"The invasion is over," Jarran said authoritatively, "There is to be no more fighting on our part."
Seeing that the Deimos had finally begun to power down, Kahna decided he wasn't going to give his life in a hopeless battle. "I'm with you then."
As Jarran proceeded to hastily explain his plan, Zack turned away as he realized something was amiss.
The distant reports of gunfire echoed through the streets as did the cries of the wounded and dying on both sides of the battle, but he discarded those sounds. Something else was bothering him, something he hadn't noticed since the fighting with Deimos began.
Rather, it was the lack of something he noticed.
The sounds of Ashani and Casius clashing could no longer be heard.
A/N: With Jarran's arrival, the Champions of Chaos are all standing down. Things are finally looking up for our hero's, but now Zack has noticed something very important. Why is there no sound coming from the two most powerful people on the planet clashing together?
Stay tuned for Chapter Twenty Four: "Sacrifice"