Chapter Fifty-One: Battle Conclusion/Meeting
(author's note)
I'm not really satisfied with how all the action came out. I wanted it to be very action-y like maybe Expendables action-y. But this was the best I could come up with. I'll probably re-write the battle scenes somewhere in the far,far future.
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Blade looked down the shaft again trying to figure out a way to get down without hurting any of his brothers or himself. The thought of being bed-ridden under the kid's supervision cured him of just jumping in like he used to. He turned back to his brothers when he felt something wrap itself around him like a snake and he panicked, walking backwards and fell into the dark abyss.
"Blade!" yelled Jester and ran over to the edge of the entrance and looked down. "Blade, what are you doing?!" he shouted, hearing his echo for a few seconds before he felt a gust of wind on his face, and then another and another before he heard the whoosh of wings.
"Pull me up!" Blade shouted and reached a hand out.
The lights flickered back on and Jester saw Blade's hand grabbing around at the entrance before two black claws clung to the floor and pulled him up and out of the shaft.
Blade looked at the thing that attacked him and heaved a sigh in relief. "I like this coat, but it just scared the HELL out of me!" he growled and looked back into the elevator, ignoring the snickering of his brothers and jumped in, willing his coat to grow additional appendages so he could carry them down. His coat grew six octopus arms, one wrapped around Tunneler and Jester, another pair grabbed Torch and the remaining three lowered him back in. He clicked a flash light icon button on his screen so that they could see.
"Oh, this is much better." Jester smiled as they descended into the dark abyss.
"Easy for you to say. You haven't got two swords and a stick pressing against your back." Tunneler grumbled.
"Uh, yes, I do actually." Jester said.
"But you're padded." Tunneler countered and shifted to make himself more comfortable.
"I am not." Jester whined.
"You are too." Tunneler replied.
"Am not."
"Are too."
"Am not."
"Are too."
"Am not."
"Are too."
"Am-"
"Will you two knock it off! We're supposed to be in stealth mode." Blade grumbled.
"Well, he started it." Jester pouted.
"Did not." Tunneler said.
"Did to."
"Did not."
"Did to."
"Did n-"
Blade willed his coat to cover his brother's mouths and smack them on the head with the flat side of his blade.
"Can't exactly be sneaky when you two bicker all the time." he hissed.
Jester and Tunneler both 'HMPH!' and kept quiet.
Blade quietly sighed in relief and enjoyed the peace before, "ACHOO!"
Torch sneezed and set the coat on fire. Blade panicked and tried to put it out, accidentally cutting the added appendages and having them all free fall down the elevator. In a state of panic, Blade had set off a panic alarm with his magic.
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Kokiri was about to place his hands on Six Shooter's face when he had a terrible migraine.
"What's the matter?" Chug asked, pausing in his scans.
"Oh-h-h, I have so much work to do with Blade." Kokiri groaned and massaged his temple. "I'll be right back." he said and left the room in the same manner as Blade's coat.
"Blade has said your brother can change forms, is there anything he can not do?" Six asked.
"Yeah, harm me or Innocent souls." Chug said and looked over his recorded readings. "I think you can have a break for a few minutes while I go over these." he said and released the restraints.
Six Shooter sat up and rubbed his wrists. "How long before you two can get this thing out of me?" he asked.
"I really don't know." Chug answered. "I mean, we can sense souls and detect human presence, but we don't really know much about it. Number One could probably handle it in snap, but she's busy enough already." Chug said and collected his data and left to a private room.
Six Shooter got up and paced around the clear box he was in. It didn't have bars but it still served as a jail. He didn't mind it this time. It was better than being ignored and watching others have all the fun and getting into mischief and learning new things. He looked over to the screen that kept an eye on his brothers' locations. There was a map of the hotel's floor plans and another . . . vertical . . . map. The kid had called it a 3D blueprint. It was like a blue-print of the building as it stood, if that made any sense. He looked over to where Blade, Jester, Tunneler and Torch were, trying his best to ignore Torch's name. The little dots showed them falling rapidly down an elevator shaft and were getting close to the ground floor. By their speed he guessed that they were free falling.
'Jester!' he thought in a panic. If Jester fell from a high height, he was most likely to shatter into pieces.
Then their descent slowed down almost halting completely between the first and second floor. He blew out a sigh of relief, placing a hand on his chest.
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"What the devil happened that you had to give me a migraine?" Kokiri gritted, holding all the little Toulons in the tangled coat. Well, it was more of a piece of smoking cloth now than a coat.
"Gesundheit." Jester said, pointing at Torch.
"Torch sneezed and set the coat on fire and Blade panicked." Tunneler answered.
Kokiri held up the cloth where Blade was clinging for dear life.
"I love this coat but I HATE IT AT THE SAME TIME!" Blade shouted in a sob.
"You'll get used to it eventually." Kokiri said and floated down to the first floor. His phone beeped, he opened the doors and set them down and answered his phone.
"Hello? . . . . uh-huh, . . . . uh-huh, . . ., . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . uh-huh, . . . uh-huh, okay, bye." Kokiri placed his phone back in his pocket, waved at the little Toulons, gave Jester a long, slender wrapped item, closed the doors and flew back up the elevator.
"What's that?" Tunneler asked, poking Jester's gift.
Jester slapped his hand away and removed the wrappings and found a little note. "'You don't need the dowel anymore, here's the gift I promised you.'" he read and removed the rest of the wrapping to reveal a shiny gold javelin with a jester head. It's face was even split up in three separate parts just like his. "Here you go, Tunneler." Jester grinned, giving Tunneler the dowel on his back and replaced it with the new shiny javelin.
"Nice, now shall we continue onwards?" Blade said and straightened his coat and walked down the hallways towards the lounge area.
"So, what are supposed to do once we get there?" Tunneler asked. "I have patients that need tending."
"I don't know. I just follow the brother's orders." Blade said and stopped dead in his tracks, making the other two bump into him.
"What'd you stop for?" Tunneler asked.
"I just follow the brother's orders." Blade repeated.
"Yes, you said that." Tunneler said, ignoring Jester and his new javelin that he was twirling around.
"I follow the brother's orders." Blade said with more conviction.
"So what? He is your mentor for your magic." Jester said, putting his javelin away.
Blade turned around and looked at them in the eye. "I f-o-l-l-o-w the brother's o-r-d-e-r-s." he grounded out.
"W-h-y are you t-a-l-k-i-n-g like that?" Jester asked.
Blade stopped talking and waited for his statement to catch up with them.
"Oh, OH-H-H, I get it." Jester smiled and his head spun to his surprised expression. "So-o-o, the brother's our master?" he asked.
"Well, this is a first." Tunneler said, crossing his arms. "Having two masters and yet we're all still together."
"How in the world did this happen? Usually we all sit together and discuss whoever bought us off at an auction or from some antique store. How could we have fallen under their command without even noticing it? How could I have done that?" Blade asked, starting to panic a bit.
"Blade, calm down. At least we know they're good . . . most of the time." Jester said, mumbling the last bit. "And do you really want to separate Torch from the one master who's paid any attention to him if you refuse this?"
Blade looked over at Torch who looked back and blinked his orange eyes. He looked down at his blade and switched it to his shiny hematite hand.
"They give us things that we can actually use instead of just a new paint job and clothes." Jester said. "And they taught us how to fight and properly defend ourselves and more importantly, they can understand us without getting frustrated from guessing games."
"Look, maybe after all this is done, we can ask the brothers to give us some privacy for this talk and we can weigh the pros and cons then." Tunneler suggested.
"Yeah, that'll work." Blade said and continued to head towards the lounge room. But now he was losing his focus on the battle.
'Calm yourself, you're going to need your wits about you.' he heard the brother's voice in his head.
'Easier said than done. I just discovered something and it's bothering me.' Blade replied.
'Would you like me to block it for you so you can focus on the battle?' the brother asked
'Yes, thank you.' Blade answered and thought back to the last ten seconds. He stopped momentarily in his tracks. "What was I doing?" he asked himself and thought for a moment. "Oh," and continued walking.
Jester and Tunneler looked at each other wondering what that was about, shrugged their shoulders and continued to follow Blade.
The four of them came across Pinhead armed like Rambo, but without the red bandana, at the archway to the lounge and asked him what he was doing there.
"The brothers sent me, saying you guys might need me." he said and gave an automatic rifle to Tunneler who cocked it and switched off the safety. "They said something else but I forgot what it was, I wasn't paying any attention." he said and gently pushed the door open a smidge. Enough for them to squeeze in and then he closed it and it locked by itself with an electric screen.
"Did they just trap us in here?" Tunneler asked.
"We are going to battle the rest of the totems in here. The screens is just so they can't get out." Pinhead said.
"But what about us? What if we can't get out?" Tunneler asked, lowering his rifle a bit.
"This is the kid's own security. I saw him set up the programs and he told me how they all worked." Pinhead answered.
Tunneler was about to speak some more but stopped and they all turned around when they heard screeching coming from every entrance of the room. Blade motioned to everyone where to hide and when to come out. They all took their places and waited.
The doors in the archway slowly opened up with a creepy, mysteriously alluring creak. The kind that arouses curiosity and entices poor saps inside to meet their doom. Jester tried not to laugh at the theatrics. He knew a move like that would have enticed him if the kid hadn't insisted he watch movies. This was a classic.
Blade saw the totems shadows on the doors as it creaked open and he pointed at Torch. Torch nodded and trotted off to a different section in the shadows, making sure to bump into something along the way.
Torch was very happy with is new body. Master had given him so many additions that he kind of wished he was back in his old body with them. Master had given him his regular eyes so that his brothers would know it was him. He also included night vision, heat reading vision and lasers. He put his flame inside of his belly and gave him a more animalistic body that he felt very comfortable in. During the times he'd been awake and snuck away from his brothers he would occasionally run around on all fours and bang his head against walls or trees. He rammed against a rock once and got a headache from that and he didn't do it again.
But the down side was that he would get dirt, fallen leaves and pebbles stuck in his flamethrower and he'd have to ask for help to get them out. Jester was the main one that would help him. Blade and Tunneler would help every now and again, but it was mostly Jester who helped him. Six Shooter would just laugh and tease him endlessly and call him a klutz, saying he's got two left feet and all sorts of torment.
He focused back the task at hand when his targets came into view and crouched low to the ground. He shut his eyes off and switched to the night vision one.
Tunneler saw the last of the totems enter the room and the doors slammed shut, getting all of their attention and that's when Torch set off a stream of fire. The fire caught the couches and a quarter of the totems. He jumped up to the piano and fired his rifle, getting another quarter of the totems.
Pinhead fired a cross bow into the air and cut a hidden trap, getting two-thirds of the totems trapped in a peanut butter paste that was dumped onto them.
Blade cut a nylon braid and dropped a few cages, some broken glass shards and a tub of jello on a handful of the totems.
The fire alarm went off and shrouded everything in the white flame retardant fog, making it the perfect battle ground for Jester who went berserk with his arsenal. The other four remained where they were, knowing better than to get in Jester's way when he went into a frenzy.
After five minutes the fans turned on and the windows opened to let the fog clear out. Once cleared they saw Jester fighting with the last three which was quickly won within a few seconds when he beheaded them.
Pinhead walked over to Tunneler. "You know, Jester's starting to scare me a little." he said quietly.
"Yeah, I know what you mean." Tunneler said. Jester hardly ever killed in battle even when they were set out to do killings. Jester was the one who would cut cables, telephone wires and security systems whenever they were sent out on a job. Sometimes he would join them of his own free will and they never questioned it because they knew he would stay out of trouble and stay safe. But now with his new martial art skills, he was starting to become a little wild.
Blade noticed this as well and didn't like what Jester was doing. 'Are more totems coming?'
'No, there's very few left in the building but the traps will take care of that. Did you still want to hold your little meeting?' he heard the brother's voice say in his head.
'What meeting?' The memory about the brother possibly being the new master came up and he looked over at Jester again who was cleaning his katanas of the blood. 'Yeah, is Six Shooter going to be okay? He needs to be here as well for this.'
'Sure, I'll send him down.'
Blade switched his knife for his hand and raised his fist, signaling they were done and sat down at the fireplace. Torch burned all the couches so there was no comfortable place to sit.
Pinhead, Tunneler, Jester and Torch all came up to the fireplace.
"Is the battle really over? I was just getting started." Jester whined.
"Yeah, it's over. We're having a meeting as soon as Six Shooter gets here." Blade said and dusted his shoes. "In the meantime, I suggest we clean ourselves up."
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Kokiri prepped a little brown megalograptus for Six Shooter to ride down to the lounge. It was already pre-programmed so all he had to do was steer it. Six was informed of the security measures that had been taken should he try to give them the slip, he was annoyed about it all, but it served to keep the thing inside him in check and Kokiri sent him on his way.
Six was surprised that they only gave him one meg to escort him down to the lounge.
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Blade and the others were watching Jester pace in the lounge, swinging his swords around and kicking things. They could tell Jester was wanting another fight.
They all looked up when they heard the trilling of a meg coming in for a landing and saw Six Shooter arriving. He passed easily through the barrier set up and landed by the fireplace.
"Okay, boss, we're all here and accounted for. 'Cept for Torch, as usual. What'cha got for us?" Six asked.
"What do you guys think of the two brothers?" Blade asked, deciding it was best to get their opinions now instead of later.
"I like them." Jester said, raising his hand in the air.
"I s'pose they're all right." Pinhead said with a shrug.
"Yeah, me too." Tunneler said.
"They're still working on me, so I don't know." Six said. "But we most certainly know your opinion of the brother, don't we?" Six clicked, nudging Jester who snickered. "Why you askin'?" Six asked.
"Well, I'm asking because I just recently found out that I blindly follow the brother's orders without a second thought." Blade said, getting shocked reactions from Pinhead, Six and Torch.
"So you're claiming the brother as our master?" Pinhead asked.
"I don't know. I mean, they did great for us but there are a few things we probably could have done without." Blade said.
"Like what?" Jester asked.
"Let's name all the good things first." Tunneler suggested, not wanting Jester to know that his new martial arts skill was probably one of the few things they could do without.
"Okay, well, first off, the kid has pretty much adopted Torch. I find that a good thing." Jester said.
"The kid's been teaching me computer skills and mechanics." Pinhead said.
"I learned about medicine and mechanics as well." Tunneler said.
"The kid gave me a new leg and a proper hand." Blade said.
"And that fab-u-lous coat." Six chuckled, making the others laugh as well.
"The brother gave you magic and has been teaching you how to utilize it properly." Pinhead said.
"They taught us martial arts too. And don't think I don't know what you guys are thinking. It makes me a little wild, I'll grant you that, but you try just standing by and watch as the rest of you get into the deep action. There's a lot more to fighting than hand-to-hand combat you know." Jester said. "And I may have snuck in some monster in my systems earlier." he mumbled, tapping his finger tips together.
Blade narrowed his eyes. "Jester!" he called out in an appalled, chastising tone.
"What? The stuff's good." Jester giggled and took off running when Blade chased after him.
The others watched them chase each other around the room, but Torch's electronic senses had him looking at the meg and then growling at it.
"Wha-?" Six looked over at the dog-reptile creature and took a really good look at it. "Torch?" he questioned.
Torch responded by growling louder and stood on all fours, hunched over and with his ridges raised.
Pinhead, Tunneler and Six looked at the meg and backed up as it began to twitched and jerked around.
"Uh, Blade? Jester?"
Blade and Jester stopped in their tracks when they heard the meg scream, writhe around a moment before it's electronic blue lights turned red and gave off a thrumming hiss, looked at the puppets by the fireplace and attacked with it's claws and tail.
Pinhead deflected its claws with the fire poker, Tunneler tried shooting at it with his automatic, Torch tried to jump on its back and severe the tail with Blade and Jester's help but the megalograptus managed to fight them all off and send them flying into the walls except Torch.
Torch had his teeth sunk in the tail and the meg slammed it down as hard as it could and repeated the process four more times before Torch finally let go and rolled over to dodge the tail, stood up and ran off towards the door. His senses picked up another electric energy and he ran towards it to seek shelter. The meg followed and jumped in the air and landed in front of Torch and swung its tail down with full force. Torch managed to dodge it again and ran off in another direction.
The meg turned around and flew after Torch, closing in before a light purple misty-ish lightning blast came out of nowhere and hit the meg right on and disabled it.
Jester ran after Torch with his katanas out and stood in front of him. The rest of the puppets looked towards the opened doors and saw a tall man dressed entirely in black. He had black eyes, a pale complexion, what appeared to be a cape and was pointing a little stick at the meg.
Six Shooter gaped. "Grand-pappy?"
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(author's note)
When Jester's talking about sneaking monster into his systems he was talking about the energy drink 'Monster'.
