Ch. 50: Snowmen, Romance and Long-Overdue Phone Calls

The track in front of them was littered with giant monsters made of ice and snow - but the snow was purple, and the ice was neon green with yellow in the centre, in the typical colour scheme of minions of Dark Gaia. Basically, they looked like Marshmallow from Frozen, the giant snow monster Elsa had created to prevent anyone from disturbing her. Hence Tails' reference mere seconds ago. "Marshmallow Nightmares," he whispered, letting out a chuckle at the relative hilarity of the situation.

The Marshmallow Nightmare at the forefront of the pack let out a menacing roar. Dan, who, despite the edge of competition that had overtaken the Skylanders, was still at the forefront of the race, gave into instinct and frantically tried to turn the car around. Somehow forgetting that doing so would result in him driving straight off the edge of the track and plummeting to his doom.

Luckily, the Super Roaster was a Seedway-type car. Meaning it accelerated well, and took turns hard with a tendency to draft. That's exactly what Dan did, as his wheels lost traction on the ice and he span out of control, causing him to slam straight into the forerunner of the pack of snow monsters.

And kept going through.

Because, for all the evil intent and mutations cast upon the snow and ice to recreate them in such a misshapen, mutated form, they were still just that. Snow and ice. The reinforced wood and metal of the Super Roaster tore through the compacted material as if it was warm butter, allowing Dan to regain control and continue racing.

Heartened by their comrade's unorthodox success, the other Skylanders continued on their way, smashing through the mutant snowmen as if they were nought but, well, snow. The spirit of competition sprang up again, and soon they were vying for the most creative method of dispatching one of their poorly-thought-out foes.

Continuing to take advantage of his tractor-like Trash Thrasher's incredible strength, size and girth, Spyro ploughed through the ranks of Marshmallow Nightmares, leaving nought but purple/black snow and coloured ice in his wake, which was rapidly dissolving.

"FRUIT SPLAT!" Tails exclaimed, extending the Rapid Rider's reed-paper wings and daringly driving straight between a Marshmallow Nightmare's legs as the wings sliced through the monster's thighs, leaving it lying helpless on the icy racetrack as the needle-sharp point of the ice-cream waffle cone that made up the front of Zap's Chuck Ice barrelled through it, bisecting the monstrous ice creation.

Suddenly, bad rock music could be heard from behind most of the racers. Almost everyone turned to look in shock. Gill Grunt had somehow landed himself a sleek, crimson, fighter-jet-like car that seemed themed to electric guitars. One of which he was horrendously strumming. Then, horror of horrors, he started to sing.

"Now I'm only gonna warn you once,

So don't make like a dunce,

I'm coming through on the big-time highway,

So get out of my way, because I'm gonna, -"

Gill Grunt was cut off before he could finish, as the Trash Thrasher 'accidentally' reversed and ran over him. "Sorry, bud, the gearstick broke!" Spyro shouted as a flash of light marked Gill Grunt's disappearance from the race, leaving nothing but a pile of red wood. "If anyone asks, the gearstick broke and that was a total accident," Spyro shouted to everybody. No one complained. Gill Grunt's singing was that terrible.

The Beep Beep, and it's vampiric driver, had rotated the horizontal traffic light attached to the back like a spoiler forwards, and Roller Brawl was having a lot of fun. Spotting a Marshmallow Nightmare, she activated one of the spotlights, painting the snow monster in red light. "Time for a jam session," Roller Brawl smirked, flipping off the red light and dazzling the beast with the traffic light's central, yellow spotlight. "Let's roll," she added, flooring the accelerator. In the seconds before the heavy, reinforced metal jeep smashed into the Nightmare, Roller Brawl flipped the lights to green, creating a form of traffic-based irony. "Beep Beep, get out of my way," she finished, continuing on her spotlit charge of green light through several more monsters.

"Oi!" Chill shouted at her vampiric friend. "T'e charge, t'is my signat're move!" She playfully cat-called, taking advantage of her mechanical mount, the Arctic Roller, a white device with crimson highlights and an engine constructed from an old freezer and McDonald's cups painted crimson, a seat made of a turquoise life-raft, and two flashing red safely lights on the back. And a crimson and white snowboard mounted in front of the tyre-less, ridged, spiky white metal wheels that seemed to act as both a snowplough and a battering ram. "Aie, am t'e one wi't t'e bat'aring plough snowboar't," Chill added, folding her arms.

"Well, old friend," Roller Brawl smirked, noticing there were still foot-harnesses attached to the board, "do you know how to snowboard?"

Chill snorted, folded her arms and replied, haughtily, "Of course I t'o. Slam Bam t'oght me how," she smirked.

"Then I guess you can deal with this!"

With that, Roller Brawl painted Chill's car in red light, and, realising what her frenemy was about to do, Chill swerved to the right and the Beep Beep clipped the Arctic Roller's back left wheel.

Chill used one of her spare ice javelins to secure the steering wheel, pointing the snowmobile straight forwards, and, drawing her main javelin, which was larger and more of a poleaxe, and threateningly brandished it at Roller Brawl.

Never one to back down from a challenge, Roller Brawl created a curse chain link between the two cars, making sure that it didn't damage either, then locked her skates and stood up on the bonnet of the Beep Beep. "Let's roll!" the vampire bladed repeated, this time as a challenge.

The two female warriors began a car-top battle for supremacy as Cynder looked on in both annoyance and amusement from her pitch-black go-kart. "I'm torn," she muttered to herself. "On the one paw, I should be catching up to Spyro and the others, but on the other paw, I could watch this forever!"

Back at Dark Gaia's adopted island, the Dark Guardian was, as usual, meditating. Dark Gaia was in a semiconscious trance, spawning minions. Which left the Dark Phoenix and the Dark Wyvern alone with nothing but each other's company to pass the time. Because it wasn't like there was anyone else that would spend time with them.

"So, er, I wonder where the Dark Moray is?" The Dark Wyvern asked, awkwardly trying to make conversation.

"Who cares, when we have each other?" The Dark Phoenix responded, smiling through her beak. The Dark Wyvern gazed into the phoenix's eyes, her beautiful soulless eyes with red sclera, yellow irises that, rather than being shaped in a clearly defined circle like usual, were more like small four-pointed stars with a large centre that got hazy and sort of merged into the red of her sclera, and no pupil to speak of. The Dark Phoenix stared back, losing herself in his own eyes, identical to hers but purple where hers had red and white where hers had yellow.

The female phoenix felt her heartbeat start to quicken. 'Am I . . . . . . . . . Am I in love with him? Is that even possible for a monster like me?'

The Dark Wyvern was thinking similar things. 'Could I? Could I? Could I love her? Would that even work for mutants like us?'

The Dark Phoenix had an idea, 'I'll see what he's thinking,' at the exact same time that the Dark Wyvern wondered, 'What does she think about it?'

And they both tried to use their mental telepathy on each other.

Kaos screamed in frustration. They had checked, double-checked, and even triple-checked every single one of that idiot Jecovo's known hiding places. He hadn't been at any of them! Any of the times they'd checked!

"That fool! Gah! I'm just trying to take over the universe here. How hard can he possibly make it?" Kaos ranted at the inside of the Conquertron's head.

"Did you consider giving him a phone call?" Duskwort asked sarcastically.

"Fool! Of course I tried . . . . giving . . . . . him . . . . . a . . . . . . . . . . phone call," Kaos finished the sentence slowly as realisation struck him.

Duskwort and Glumshanks blinked in shock. Even the Conquertron seemed surprised, as it paused for a brief second before continuing on it's flight.

"Are you seriously telling me you never thought of doing so much as frikkin' phoning Jecovo up and asking where the fuck he is?" Duskwort swore, shocked. "I knew you were stupid, but this is a new low, even for you," Kaos' eyelid twitched in anger and Glumshanks hastened to calm him down. "Don't worry, master. He just doesn't understand that sometimes your vision of power distracts you from some of the more, eh, simpler solutions," the butler calmed the megalomaniac down.

Kaos pulled out his pitch-black phone, with a customised cover that gave it evil-looking horns and ridges and protrusions. Some scratches on the back showed where the brand name, Drobocket Corps, had been erased.

Since the only phone production company currently in existence was owned and run by the Skylanders Drobot and Sprocket, Kaos had at first refused to own a product produced by Skylanders and instructed his inventor trolls to create their own version of the phone.

When it had been finished, Kaos had almost instantly received a test call from Glumshanks. It had gone fine - until Kaos tried to hang up the cell phone. The second he had pressed the 'end call' button, a small explosive charge had detonated inside the phone, causing it to explode in his face.

"WHY THE FUCK DID YOU PUT EXPLOSIVES IN MY PHONE!?" Kaos had raged at the inventors, who were standing nearby, both to see their invention at work and because Kaos wanted them for him to scream at if something went wrong. Or for him to scream at in basically any circumstance.

"Because it's more fun that way! BOOM BOOM!" the head inventor responded, before the whole team burst into manic laughter.

So Kaos had given in, bought a Drobocket Corps phone, and just scratched out all of the brand names and logos on it.

The megalomaniacal Runt dialled in Jecovo's number, and held the phone up to his ear, listening to the dial tone.

Finally it picked up. "Jecovo speaking. Who is this?"

The voice was harsh, guttural, cruel. Since the various incidents relating to Bash, Flashwing and Jade, three Skylanders, Jecovo had been driven mad. After the unfortunate affliction the three of them had forced upon him, Jecovo had gone insane trying to find a cure. He was no longer the young, nerdy twenty-year-old elf Kaos had called one of his few friends twenty years ago. Jecovo remained the best of the best at his craft, but much else about him had changed.

"Jecovo, old buddy. You wouldn't believe what I've gone through trying to find you. It's Kaos," Kaos spoke into the phone. It was several seconds before the answer came, and when it did, it sounded a bit different. Lighter, slyer, smarter somehow.

"Kaos. Good to hear from you, old friend. How long did it take you to think of simply giving me a phone call? A month? A month and a half?"

"No," Kaos scowled. "It was only two and a half weeks. Now, when can we meet up? I need your help,"

Jecovo responded, again with a delay. Now his voice sounded more like it had when he was younger, thin, reedy, nerdy, but with undercurrents of veiled power that had not existed twenty years ago. "I'm currently watching a couple of very interesting and unique specimens, and I'm hopefully going to be moving in for the capture of one of them very soon. But I suppose I could spare some time tomorrow afternoon. Hmm, say, five o'clock PM tomorrow at the Wyldwind Mountain Research Facility? We can talk business, and I can show you some of my latest specimens,"

Kaos did some calculations, or more accurately made the Conquertron do some calculations. If they left now, they could be at Wyldwind by four tomorrow.

"Sounds perfect. See you there!" Kaos responded. Jecovo replied oddly quickly, and for his final phrase his voice sounded high, lilting. Feminine, really. "Goodbye, hot stuff,"

Before Kaos could say something along the lines of 'goodbye', the 'hung up' tone sounded, and, grumbling, he hung up the phone and stuffed it back in his pocket.

"Well, that went well," Duskwort snarked. "What was up with the voice changes, though?" the Darkness/Water hybrid dragon wondered.

"You'll see when you meet my friend. Ever since an, eh, accident in the lab a few years ago or so, he's had some, er, rapid personality shifts. Just makes him more fun to be around. You'll see when you meet him," Kaos smirked, feeling happy at the thought of one of his oldest, and greatest friends. No matter how much said friend had changed throughout their lives, in more ways than one.

If anyone can guess what media I coined the phrase 'BOOM BOOM' from, they will get an as-yet-undisclosed prize.

"Ooh, I can't wait to see Jecovo again. And how he's changed. Should be fun, huh Tech?"

Don't call me that. Anyhoo, took ages, but I finally finished this chapter. And, speaking of Jecovo, his appearance probably won't reveal any spoilers for These Flightless Wings, but it might answer a couple of questions said fiction has yet to pose. So, nothing serious.

'Keep telling yourself that,'

Why do you always have to be the downer, Gaiphe? I would have thought getting a boyfriend would make you, er, happier.

'My mother's giving me slack over it. And I'm not sure how I feel about my counterpart dating Burn. Or The Dark Wyvern, or whatever he calls himself,'

They technically aren't dating yet. And might not be. We'll find out next chapter. Peace!