Chapter 99: One More Hurrah
"Hey, wait!" Ariel suddenly shouted. "That window doesn't open!"
The five wizards who were competing paused, looking at the large window between them and the path leading into the Sky Labyrinth.
"Easy," Grace snorted, reality rippling in her hands, and suddenly the window flickered. "There!" With that, she leapt into the spatial distortion she had engineered and vanished.
"I think she opened a portal straight into the Labyrinth," Sarph observed.
"I'm with you!" Pierce agreed, throwing himself into the rift behind her. Boomer, Tyria and Sarph followed, and, sure enough, they were standing at the top of the path into the Labyrinth. Grace smiled as space snapped back into its normal alignment.
"That bought us an early lead. Let's follow through," the golden knight declared, looking around.
The Phoenixes blinked.
The Sky Labyrinth was an omnidirectional maze of floating platforms, stairs and other absurd constructions, spreading as far as the eye could see. A growing smile spread across Grace's face as she looked around. "This place is awesome!" she exclaimed, ecstatic.
"Yeah. I guess this is like a dream for you," Pierce agreed, knowing that an arena like this would play to his adoptive sister's strengths.
"Alright, which direction?" Boomer questioned.
"East," Sarph declared, peering through the maze of passages. "Domus Flau is that way," he declared, pointing at the distant mountain.
"I'm on it!" Grace agreed, targeting a platform and opening another spatial rift. "Let's go!" she declared, throwing herself headlong into the rift. Within seconds, she appeared in mid-air, and quickly bent gravity, falling upwards onto another platform and reorienting herself so that the city above was in place of the sky. The rest of the team landed behind her, Boomer looking a little dizzy.
"Shame Hare's not here," Tyria lamented. "She could search this entire place and find the exit in five minutes,"
"Well, I've got the next best thing," Boomer grinned, slamming his boombox into the ground and pressing a button. Immediately, the machine started playing a smooth, oscillating tone that echoed in all directions.
"What's that?" Pierce questioned.
"Echolocation," the Sound Wizard explained. "It's one of the new upgrades. It'll track our surroundings and give us a map,"
"What was that?" The Phoenixes looked up in surprise, seeing an unfamiliar group of wizards on a nearby platform eyeing them. "Did you lot just say you had a map?"
"Of the immediate area, sure," Boomer nodded, only half paying attention as he focused on his boombox. Meanwhile, Pierce and Sarph stiffened. They could see where this was going.
"Get 'em, boys! If we get that map, victory will be assured for Titan Nose!" The leader of the enemy wizards commanded, leading his team in a charge along the platform towards the Phoenixes.
Pierce groaned, but then noticed that they had to go around a right-angle bend to reach their position. "Grace, when they round that corner, launch a wide-burst Roar at them," he instructed.
"You got it!" the Dragon Slayer grinned, moving to the front of the group and inhaling.
"You're gonna send a little girl to fight all of us at once?" the leader questioned as he rounded the corner of the platform, his teammates in hot pursuit.
"Don't worry. I'm sure she's up to it," Pierce declared, as his sister breathed in deeply, before shouting; "Reality Dragon's Roar!" A conical burst of grey spatial energy smashed through the members of Titan Nose. While it wasn't strong enough to knock them all out at once, the force of the blow knocked them off their feet and sent them flying backwards . . . over the edge of the platform.
The Phoenixes watched as the five wizards fell, screaming, out of the maze and to the ground below. "That was easy," Sarph observed.
"One down, one hundred and six to go," Tyria grinned.
Boomer smiled as a blue hologram appeared, projected above his boombox. "I've got it! Alright, let's go!" he declared, forging onwards.
"Everyone, cover Boomer!" Pierce commanded, quickly overtaking the Sound wizard and shouting over the continued oscillating tone. "You can't fight properly as long as you're keeping that up, can you?" he guessed, and Boomer nodded. "Yeah,"
"Doesn't matter. Let's keep moving," Tyria declared, crackling her knuckles.
So the Phoenixes started navigating the Labyrinth, constantly moving east. Every few minutes they'd encounter a rival team and have to beat them out of the game. But it was forty-five minutes into the maze - and halfway across Crocus - that they encountered their first real obstacle.
Grace frowned, a faint noise to her sensitive ears the first indication of something being amiss. She held up her arms and told her friends; "Everyone, hold on. I hear something,"
Tyria was immediately on alert, looking around. "What's wrong?"
Suddenly, all around them, the lights dimmed, before a brightness shone from a platform just above them. Looking up, the five wizards could see a massive, silhouetted 'R' made of intricate metalwork, with three people standing before it. "What the heck?" Pierce blinked.
"Prepare for trouble! You hear something, do you?" a female, musical voice shouted down at them.
"And make it double; we'll explain it to you!" a mature, male voice added with a snide tone.
"To protect the world from devastation," the female chimed in.
"To unite all people within our nation!" the male continued triumphantly.
"To denounce the evils of truth and love!" Pierce cocked an eyebrow at this one. Truth and love were evil now?
"To extend our reach to the stars above!" Tyria shrugged. She'd been there. They weren't so special.
"Jessie!" The light dimmed, revealing a woman with a diamond-shaped face, long pink hair styled backwards into a swirl, and wearing a black-and-white jumpsuit with a red 'R' printed on its chest.
"And James," the other voice continued, now seen to be a man with shaggy purple hair, wearing a similar jumpsuit that was more contoured to a male body.
"Team Rocket blasts off at the speed of light!" Jessie commanded, leering down at Team Pierce.
"Surrender now, or prepare for a Grand Magic fight!" James agreed, pointing directly at Pierce.
"Meow, that's right!" Their gazes were drawn to a short, tan-coloured cat with a gold coin on his forehead, standing with the two. "They have an Exceed," Pierce observed in curiosity.
"You're another one of the teams competing, aren't you?" Tyria questioned.
"I thought teams were supposed to be five people?" Boomer frowned.
"Fools. Five is merely the maximum. You could enter the Games with a one-man team if you wished!" James retorted.
"Yeah, but you'd have to be an absolute idiot not to get as much help as you can," Sarph skeptically pointed out. A tick mark appeared on Jessie's forehead, and she tried to repress the urge to shout at him.
"These guys don't look so tough. They're just drama queens," the bluenette scoffed, unimpressed.
"Oh yeah?!" Jessie snapped. "Well, you're a bunch of lousy little twerps!"
"Let me take this one. It's a good opportunity," Pierce grinned, before playing a quick tune on his flute. With a flash of red and white, Aron appeared on the ground before them with a squeaky roar.
Grace giggled. "Aww, he thinks he's scary,"
"You wouldn't approve if you knew what he just said," Pierce shook his head, wondering where on earth the little Pokemon had learned that kind of language.
James raised his eyebrows. "Interesting," he observed, before a wide smile spread across his face. "Jessie, that little thing looks powerful. Let's capture it for the boss!"
"I agree. Alright, Meowth, go get that critter! Use Fury Swipes!" Jessie commanded. Obligingly, the Exceed leapt down from the platform, his claws glowing with white light.
"Did he just say he wanted to take Aron?" Grace blinked.
"Not on my watch," Pierce frowned. Over the course of the last three months, while training Aron he had discovered that the Pokemon was capable of several abilities that could be used a certain number of times sequentially. He'd further noticed that Aron tended to react when he instructed the Pokemon to perform these 'moves', and together they had come up with according names that seemed appropriate. "Iron Defence!" Pierce commanded, and Aron's body glistened silver as the Exceed's sharpened claws met his metal skin.
They bounced off, leaving faint scratches but without seriously injuring the Steel-type. "Okay, now Iron Head!" Pierce commanded.
"I won't let you touch my Master!" Aron shrieked, headbutting the unfortunate cat and knocking him backwards.
"I'm noticing a theme here," Tyria observed.
"This isn't working. Meowth, return!" James observed, and, obligingly, the tan cat leapt back up to the platform. "I'm going now!" the purple-haired man declared, charging forwards. Purple liquid built in his hands as the man declared; "Poison Sting!"
Pierce stiffened as Aron, unable to dodge in time, was hit head on by the poisonous attack. "He uses poison magic? Crap," he gulped.
"Don't worry, Master, I'm a Steel Type, remember?" Aron called back, before head butting James away again.
"And . . what's a Steel Type?" Pierce questioned.
"Immune to poison!" Aron declared as James picked himself up.
A smile tugged at Pierce's lips. "Is that so?" he grinned. "Alright! Use Take Down!" he commanded.
"He can talk to animals now. I see," Sarph quietly observed. "Yup!" Grace nodded eagerly.
"On it, Master!" The small creature charged forwards with surprising speed and smashed into James' legs. The man's eyes went wide, and there was a faint noise like glass cracking as he collapsed, clutching at his nether regions.
Pierce, Sarph and Boomer all winced. No one deserved that.
"Ugh!" Suddenly, James sunk into a shadowy portal and reappeared near Jessie and Meowth. "If you want something done right, do it yourself!" the woman huffed, glaring at the Phoenixes.
"She's got a point. We need to keep moving," Tyria agreed. "We should wrap this up,"
"Yeah, agreed," Pierce played a tune to recall Aron to the flute's pocket dimension, before pressing his hands together. "Take Over: Phoenix Soul!" His body burst with orange and gold feathers, wings sprouting through his jacket and plumage running down his head. Feeling the flames of his partner course through his body, Pierce lifted off, inhaling, before launching Raya's finisher. "Solar Blast!"
Team Rocket paled as the orb of fiery energy shot through the air towards them, before exploding before them. Amidst the conflagration, the sheer recoil threw them away into the distance, and Jessie had just enough time to shriek; "We're blasting off agaaaaaaaaiiin!" before the three vanished into the night sky.
"That was weird," Grace observed.
Pierce landed and reverted. "There are some strange characters out there," he shrugged.
Tyria nodded in agreement. "Yeah, remember that Metal Make wizard who would never stop talking?" she recalled her fight against Motormouth during the tussle with Severed Tusk.
"Not to mention Laughing Coffin," Sarph put forwards.
"Or Regykraeon," Boomer shivered. "But I guess, in the end, the joke was on him,"
"Guys, as much as I appreciate a walk down memory lane, we've gotta move east," Pierce interrupted, and everyone nodded. "Good. Boomer?"
The Sound Wizard consulted his map. "This way," he declared, leading onwards.
-[CoT]-
"Um, this might be a problem," Boomer observed.
Team Pierce had finally reached the easternmost edge of the Sky Labyrinth. Or, at least, the easternmost part of the parts that existed.
From this vantage point, they could see that the confusing, gravity-warped maze that they had been navigating was only an outer shell around what looked like a solid core, with several passages that they could see leading into the central part. It was from this centre of the maze that a long tunnel extended, directly linking the Labyrinth to Domus Flau, in the distance, and the maze had been cleared like brush around the tunnel.
And there was no other route to Domus Flau.
"Have we been going the wrong way all this time?" Tyria irritably demanded.
Sarph frowned. "We might have to backtrack," he observed, looking back into the maze.
"No. That'll take too long," Pierce shook his head, peering at the tunnel again.
Grace saw his expression. "What are you thinking?"
"Tyria. You have a drill, right?" Pierce addressed his girlfriend, who nodded. A smile grew on her face, seeing where this was going.
Pierce promptly rattled off a tune on his flute, and the portal manifested, expelling Raya. The phoenix shrieked, looking around, before pausing. "You need me for transportation again, don't you?" she sighed.
"Pretty much, yeah. Just a short flight," Pierce assured his partner, beckoning to Boomer, the only wizard present who couldn't fly. "Climb on. Everyone else, meet you down there,"
"TechType: Jetpack!" Tyria invoked, and Sarph summoned his Aera wings. Meanwhile Grace tore open a rippling spatial distortion and leapt into it, appearing in mid-air, where she bent space again so that another rift caught her and dropped her on top of the enclosed passageway leading to Domus Flau. Moments later, the rest of the team landed around her.
"Alright," Pierce grinned, tapping the stone roof under their feet. "Tyria, you know what to do,"
"You got it," the bluenette declared, pressing her forearms together as a blue, gear-like magic circle appeared around them. "TechType: Drill!" From the elbow down, her arms mechanised and fused together, expanding into concentric circles that ended in a titanium drill bit, which immediately whirred to life. Without hesitation, she reversed the weapon and plunged it into the stone.
The rest of the team stepped back as stone shards and chunks of debris were sent flying in all directions as Tyria carved a furrow into the stone, pushing onwards and onwards to excavate a tunnel large enough for even Sarph to enter.
And, suddenly, there was no resistance, and she squeaked, before the immense weight of the drill bit dragged her in and she hastily shut down the spell. "I think we're there!" Tyria called up, before jumping into the revealed hole. The rest of Team Pierce followed.
The Electrian landed on a bridge and immediately took stock of her surroundings. It seemed that she was on an endless bridge that went in two directions above a seemingly endless ocean. Looking up, she had the disconcerting experience of seeing a hole in the perceived sky through which her teammates were emerging, though her confidence in reality was assuaged by the knowledge that it was all an illusion.
Pierce landed next to her, the rest of the group following. "Well, there's only one way to go. Come on, there's no time to lose!" And so, with the Tamer leading the way, Phoenix's Eye ran full tilt in the direction that should lead to Domus Flau.
"Hey - I see someone ahead of us!" Grace pointed out. Pierce blinked, and squinted. Sure enough, there was another group of wizards a little ways ahead of them.
"We can probably leave them alone," Boomer reasoned.
"But what if they're in eighth place?" Sarph questioned.
Everyone paused. If the team ahead of them was eighth, and arrived before them . . they'd lose the preliminaries and not get into the main tournament.
"Grace?" Pierce asked. "Send them back to the start of this tunnel,"
"On it," Grace agreed, speeding forwards, before placing a reality warp right before the team that was ahead of them . . and another as far back down the tunnel as she could see. "Good thinking, bro. This way we'll place ahead of them, but if we're above eighth then they should still get to place. That's fair,"
"We could just beat the crap out of them," Tyria offered, but Pierce shook his head. "No sense in picking unnecessary fights,"
Due to the repetitive nature of the seemingly endless bridge, Quattro Cerberus didn't even notice as they ran straight into the rift and onto the area of the bridge that they had already traversed, putting them well behind Phoenix's Eye.
"Man, déjà vu," Rocker observed. "Is it just me, or have we been in this area before?"
"Hey, where did those guys come from?" an unfamiliar voice came from behind Quattro Cerberus, and the five wizards span . . to see Natsu Dragneel and the remainder of Team Fairy Tail glaring at them with menacing smiles.
"Attack!" Erza Scarlet commanded. A mere few minutes later, Quattro Cerberus was out of the running.
But back with Phoenix's Eye, the members of Team Pierce saw the bridge faintly come to an end, leading up to a large door with a familiar figure at the top. "Hey, it's Pumpkin-face!" Grace exclaimed, seeing Mato waiting at the door.
"Hallo, wizards of Phoenix's Eye!" the mascot exclaimed. "What a pleasure to see you here!"
"Does this mean we won the preliminary round?" Pierce questioned.
"Well, 'won' is a little subjective," Mato pressed his fingers together. "You've qualified for the main tournament, that's for sure,"
"Great, but where did we place? First? Second?" Tyria demanded.
"Not exactly. More like . ." The Phoenixes brightened, waiting to hear.
"Seventh,"
Five sets of eyes blinked.
"Well, at least we beat one team," Pierce muttered as the rest of the group collapsed.
"Let's just go inside," Tyria grumbled, picking herself up and pushing the door open
"By all means. See you at the start of the tournament!" Mato waved as they entered.
"Hey, don't worry, everyone. The preliminary round isn't worth any points, what's important is, we're in the running," Sarph pointed out.
"Yeah. And we're gonna win this tournament," Pierce grinned.
A/N
A/N
Let the Games begin!
Also, sorry but Chapter 100 has been finalised and is ready to post next week. So I am no longer accepting questions. Peace!
-[CoT]-
That same night, while the preliminaries were going on, Princess Hisui was slumped in the chair at her desk, in her royal chambers. She massaged her forehead.
After the visitation she'd had not long ago from the man who claimed to be from the future - Ryos, she believed - everything had seemed wrong. His predictions were absurd, and she had no idea what to make of them. Ten thousand dragons would attack Crocus in a week? How was she even supposed to react to that?
"Nice place," an unfamiliar voice offered. Hisui jolted awake, snatching up her Celestial Keyring and leaping out of her chair, wildly looking around for her assailant.
"Over here," the voice laconically declared, and the princess turned to see a man leaning against the frame of the door that opened onto the balcony. "So, you're the princess, right? I heard from Lucy that you're the one to talk to about the Eclipse Gate,"
Hisui blinked. "How do you know about the Gate?" she demanded.
"I used it to come back in time from X798," the man explained, emerging into the light. Hisui saw that he was wearing a khaki jacket with a shirt underneath that was so faded and dirtied she could no longer tell what colour it might have once been, with stained, torn, tan trousers. Hazel eyes glistened in the light, framed by blond hair that fell around his face in an 'M'. The light gleamed off his left hand unnervingly, and Hisui noticed that it seemed to be made of metal. A prosthetic? But above all else, her gaze was drawn to the rifle butt that protruded above his right shoulder.
"Another time traveller?" she surmised, keeping her tone level.
Kynigós blinked. "What do you mean, 'another'?" he demanded.
"Well, I met someone else who claimed to have come from the year X798 a few days ago. He span me a story about ten thousand dragons attacking at the end of the Games and wiping out humanity, and that he came back in time using the Eclipse Gate. I suppose you're a friend of his?" Hisui asked.
Kynigós snarled. "Ryos, was it? He's no friend of mine,"
The princess raised an eyebrow. "Perhaps you should sit down," she suggested.
Obligingly, the hunter rested on a stool, and took off his backpack. The ratty bag was covered in dirt and stains, with dozens of pouches attached to it, and several cords hanging out of it, and Hisui eyed it with interest as Kynigós reached into it and produced an equally ratty leather-bound book, with faded gold leaf printed on the cover in the shape of an avian eye, encircled by twin feathers. "Here, it's my journal," he tossed it to her, and the princess caught it. "Start at page 71. Everything before that is before I first time travelled,"
Hisui raised an eyebrow at the implication that the man before her had time travelled multiple times, but nodded, leafing through the pages, many of which were stained with ink, sweat, tears and, on occasion, blood, and found the first words.
My name is Deadeye Pierce Kynigós. And I have no idea what the actual fuck is going on . . .
