Chapter 51:
~ Avalanche II ~
With a single swing of his mighty weapon, Lexaeus shook the earth, causing the trees as far as the five non-numbered members' eyes could see to sway as the ground moved beneath them. The circle of mixed Fanboys and Fangirls were sent stumbling to the ground, and for one brief moment the group thought that perhaps the giant of a man had shrugged off the stronger Fanboy's influence and was attacking the swarm intentionally.
Unfortunately, that was not the case.
"Whoa! We all felt that one!", the Fanboy known as Shikujiru Shito laughed, springing back to his feet and backflipping to a safer perch on one of the low-hanging limbs. "And if you think that's bad, just imagine a direct hit!"
Otonashi didn't have to imagine － he had trained under Lexaeus, after all, and sparred against him time and time again during his time in the Organization. With the sheer strength that his superior officer possessed, even a pulled punch was nothing to take lightly. Priority number one was dodging and running; even all five of them together would have little hope of taking down Lexaeus in direct combat, and if they somehow could, there was still the question of how they'd handle the Fanboy afterward.
"Michiko! We're going to need your speed," the silver-haired man called out, glancing around for a shock of green among the browns and grays of dead leaves and rock. "Get Roberto and Toivo as far as you can!"
The green-haired girl removed her sword from the tree she had impaled it into in order to keep her balance in the aftershocks of Lexaeus's first attack, nodding in response. She took a flying leap over to the two larger men and dematerialized her weapon, surrounding herself with an aura of green energy for a few moments before scooping up one of them in each arm and zooming off up the mountainside, crisscrossing between trees so quickly that she left a green blur in her wake. Otonashi whipped his weapon upward into the branches, swinging out of the way just in time to avoid another blow that sent what must have been a full ton of loose soil flying － the crater left behind afterward was easily the size of a truck. He definitely did not want to take a direct hit from something like that.
"Aww man, don't tell me you're running away!", the Fanboy shouted, shaking a fist at Otonashi as he swung from one tree to the next. "In that case… Fanboys! Get the chef! One of you punks is gonna fight Lexaeus, whether you like it or not!"
Vittorio leaped over a Fangirl that was still struggling to stand after the repeated tremors of Lexaeus's attacks, narrowly dodging the arms of a Hater Fanboy that reached toward him as he passed and then lashing out with his spatula － which bent and twisted in mid-swing, the flat rectangular blade on the end slicing through the monster's wrist and sending its hand tumbling to the ground in a shower of green sparks.
Moments later, the disarmed Fanboy was crushed as Lexaeus barreled forward at full speed, taking a swing at Vittorio with total disregard of whether anything else was in his path. Fortunately, the attack wasn't aimed to shake the ground this time, only cleaving through half a dozen of the mixed Fanboy and Fangirl group as well as several small trees. Vittorio was safely out of reach, but only just barely; the wind from the swing would have blown his hat off, had he still been wearing it at the time.
Up in the trees above, Otonashi was keeping an eye on the situation on the ground as he swung from one branch to the next. Michiko had pulled far enough ahead of the rest that she was able to slow down safely, conserving her energy for carrying the two slower members of the group. Vittorio was managing to avoid attacks from the mind-controlled Lexaeus so far, but every blow came dangerously close. He silently thanked whichever numbered member had trained the old chef for making sure that he was far quicker than he looked.
It soon became clear to him that simply running away was a plan that was doomed to failure. Running created distance between their non-numbered group and the mindlessly raging Lexaeus, but as long as Lexaeus remained under the Fanboy's control, no amount of running would get them out of this situation. Without the Dimensional Hippievan to carry them away, and without the safety of a base to return to, there was simply no place for them to run.
Before long, Michiko's slowed pace allowed him to swing ahead of her, and at that point he finally descended from the trees. The green-haired girl turned for a second, glancing over her shoulder at the sound of Otonashi's feet hitting the ground. She couldn't see him, of course, thanks to the fact that Roberto was currently filling her peripheral vision on that side, but the weight of the landing made it obvious that it was someone larger than the microphone-waving Fanboy but much smaller than Lexaeus.
"Otonashi?", she asked, slowing her pace further but not stopping. "What's going on?"
"We can't just keep running forever," he said. "We'll wear out before Lexaeus does, especially in the state he's in."
He glanced back for a moment; Lexaeus and the fleeing Vittorio were visible in the distance now, and occasionally he could hear the obnoxious voice of the Fanboy calling out his exaggerated play-by-play of the "fight" he had arranged between the two of them.
"Roberto, Toivo… you two go on ahead without us," he continued. Michiko released her grip on the two men, and they hopped to the ground, both looking more than a little disoriented. "I think I've got a plan."
In one of the Keybearers' training rooms, Riku stood alone with only his Keyblade to keep him company. The doors to this particular training room were locked －magnetically sealed shut with his Keyblade, to be specific. The kind of training he was doing was something he didn't want any of the others to stumble across, especially not those who clung too closely to the late Master Ansem's views. Or rather, to Ignis's more aggressive take on those views. Being confined to a bed while he recovered from his recent injuries had not weakened Ignis's influence over the lower-ranking Keybearers; if anything, it had only added more fuel to the fires of anti-Organization sentiment that had already been smoldering in many of the soldiers after Zagan's betrayal.
With his Keyblade held at the ready and one hand outstretched in front of him, he closed his eyes and thought back to the Mark of Mastery exam. To the battle against the computer-generated duplicate of Sora, which stared at him with evil yellow eyes and grinned like a maniac as he rained down blow after blow. He didn't know how he made it out of there alive at the time, but what he had seen was clear － he had somehow generated a barrier of swirling purplish-black energy, stopping the fake Sora's attack in its tracks. His opponent's Keyblade was helpless to penetrate the shield, only causing the outlines of purple hexagons to glow on its surface upon impact.
He didn't know for sure what this power was, or where it came from. But he knew that nobody else among the Keybearers had a power that didn't come from the Keyblade itself… except, of course, for those who had once belonged to Organization XIII. He'd heard the stories from the survivors of Ignis's confrontation with Irael, how the bulky ex-Organization member had filled the air with exploding spheres of energy and set them off all at once with the sound of his bell-like weapon. Of the dozen Keybearers present in the room, only Ignis, D'aal, and two others made it out alive.
Power like that was exactly what the Keybearers needed on their side right now. He'd seen the Organization up close; he'd fought against them. Though their powers may have emerged as a result of their exposure to Fangirls, they weren't Fangirl-corrupted monsters like Ansem had assumed, ticking time bombs just waiting for something to turn them to the other side. Their powers seemed so much more versatile than the Keyblade technology that Ansem had devised, so much more reliable. It was a power he already had within himself, and based on what he'd heard about such things from the former Organization members, he only needed to train and practice with that power in order to master it.
Once again, he went over the Mark of Mastery exam in his mind. The false Sora cackling as his Keyblade blows clashed against Riku's own weapon, rattling his bones with the force of their impact and pushing him further and further back each time. The confusion, the fear he'd felt, the looming sense of hopelessness…
No. That wasn't it. It was the need for something to get him out of a situation that seemed so terrifying and hopeless.
He felt the familiar power well up within him, and when he opened his eyes, he was once again surrounded by a barrier of swirling purple and black. The training room looked so different through the translucent fog of energy; the lights seemed a little less harsh, the air a little less dry and dusty. For the first time since Zagan's treachery was revealed to the Keybearers, he felt safe.
Riku closed his eyes again, trying to imagine what else his newfound power might be able to do. Surely barriers were just the beginning. He'd seen the Organization in action, including a numbered member; it was clear that the ways they could use their powers were limited only by their imagination and their endurance. Riku had no shortage of either.
At the sound of a hand rattling the handle outside of the training room's door, Riku lowered his hand abruptly, and the shield of dark energy that surrounded him flashed into a flurry of purple hexagons for a moment before scattering outward in all directions. By the time the Keybearers on the outside of the door had unlocked it with their own Keyblades and entered, there was no sign of exactly what kind of secret training Riku had been up to.
"Oh, Master Riku!", one of the younger recruits said, embarrassedly deactivating his Keyblade and clipping it back to his belt. "Sorry if I'm interrupting…"
Riku let out a quick laugh, then sighed.
"It's fine," he said. "Actually, I was just about done for today. There's somebody I need to see over in the infirmary."
The younger Keybearer gulped, then stepped out of Riku's way to let him through the door.
"D'you think those guys are gonna make it? That whole explosion thing… sounded pretty bad…"
Riku nodded slightly.
"Yeah… I'm sure they'll pull through."
Vittorio threw himself to the ground and rolled to the side, narrowly evading a small boulder spinning through the air. The projectile smashed clean through the trunks of several trees, showering the chef with splintered wood and bark, and then kept flying for at least another dozen feet before finally losing its momentum; there was little chance he'd still be standing after a direct hit from something like that. He gulped, eyes going wide at the destruction the attack left in its wake; it seemed that the Fanboy controlling Lexaeus was either getting tired of the chase or starting to take him a little more seriously than before.
Pulling himself to his feet once again, he flicked his spatula in Lexaeus' direction and an oversized pancake materialized from a blob of bubbling yellow energy, colliding with the larger man's face and wrapping around with a dull splat. He then took off running as fast as his legs could carry him.
Normally, a distraction like that would have been completely useless against an opponent as intelligent as Lexaeus. In his current state, however, he was little more than a mindless brute; the Fanboy's power had suppressed his usual personality completely in order to replace it with an utterly out-of-character blind rage.
The giant stumbled forward awkwardly, unable to see his target. Unable to see… much of anything, aside from a field of lightly toasted golden brown that had suddenly filled his vision.
"What's this!?", the Fanboy suddenly shouted, spinning through a series of awkwardly anatomy-twisting poses before stopping with one finger thrust forward. "A-ha! So the chef finally reveals his power!"
His face split into an evil grin, and his cape fluttered behind him despite the fact that there was no wind at all now that Lexaeus was no longer kicking up any with swings of his massive weapon.
"Too bad it's not going to be much help… have you forgotten that Lexaeus controls the element of Earth!?"
Lexaeus stood perfectly still. For a brief moment, it almost appeared as though he had returned to his usual self － waiting, observing his surroundings, carefully determining his next move before taking action. What was actually happening was that, in the absence of enough sense to simply remove the pastry that obscured his vision, he was focusing on what he could still detect － the ground below him. Through his own feet, he felt the vibrations of his target's footsteps, coming closer and closer to calculating the old chef's location each time one of his shoes touched the ground. And then…
"Hmph!"
With a grunt, Lexaeus hefted Skysplitter high overhead, then thrust it into the ground in front of him. Just inches behind Vittorio, a pillar of stone erupted from the ground, sending loose soil scattering everywhere. The chef changed his path, swerving around a tree, but all this accomplished was causing the next stone spike to split the tree apart as it burst forth. A branch as big around as a telephone pole snapped free of the trunk and went spinning through the air, slamming into Vittorio's back and knocking him to the ground.
Vittorio wheezed and struggled to breathe for a moment, then slowly began to push himself up off the ground. Thankfully, the branch had knocked him forward rather than landing on top of him. But already he could feel the ground beneath him rumbling. With the wind knocked out of him like that, he just couldn't get up fast enough. The next time Lexaeus unleashed one of his stone slabs, it would be a direct hit.
He felt the earth move below him and closed his eyes, knowing that even if he somehow survived, his part in this fight was over. He thought back to the restaurant he had once owned, a dimly-lit little Italian place in a small town which he had opened up decades ago before passing on to his son when he joined the Organization. He thought of the years working alongside Axel in the Organization's kitchen, and all the unusual ways the two of them had devised for integrating their newly-gained powers into their cooking. He thought of his training under Luxord, and how no amount of training could have possibly prepared him for this.
But then, something wrapped around Vittorio's waist. As the ground exploded outward beneath him and a pointed stone the size of a small car burst forth, he was yanked upward, sailing through the air for a few moments and then abruptly coming to a stop on what felt like the rough, dense bark of a low-hanging tree branch.
He opened his eyes to find Otonashi and Michiko had stopped running.
"That was close," Otonashi muttered. "And… uh… what in the world is that thing on Lexaeus's face?"
Vittorio started to laugh, but the pain in his chest quickly turned it into a cough. Otonashi shook his head and retracted his whip-like weapon, which unraveled from Vittorio and returned to its usual length.
"Huh… whatever it is, I don't think he can see through it," Michiko noted. She squinted in the larger Organization member's direction, wondering if what she was seeing was a pizza or maybe a giant tortilla.
"Then this might be our chance," Otonashi said. "Stay off the ground… and go for the Fanboy directly!"
With that, the two of them took off at full speed, Otonashi lashing out with his weapon and in one direction while Michiko glowed green for a moment before taking a flying leap in the other. While the silver-haired man swung from one branch to the next, his younger companion kicked off of the larger tree trunks, propelling herself from one to the next. Lexaeus turned his head wildly for a few moments, as if trying to track them both at once and having little luck. After a few moments, he slowly began to turn around, but remained mostly still for the moment.
Shikujiru Shito noticed this sudden change of plans, but just laughed in response.
"Oh, what's this?", he shouted into his microphone, broadcasting his voice to the crowd of mixed Fangirls and Fanboys that was now standing on the sidelines watching rather than even making an attempt at getting involved. "Looks like Vittorio's out of the fight… and two of the newbies are coming at me directly now? Ha! They must be really desperate!"
Otonashi rolled his eyes as the Fanboys in the crowd howled and booed. Within seconds, the two of them had closed the distance between themselves and the Uber-Fanboy, and only then did they let their feet touch the ground. The two of them braced themselves; they had no idea what their opponent could do in direct combat, but if his powers let him take hold over someone as strong as Lexaeus, it was possible he would be even harder to put down than the Uber-Fangirl the two of them had narrowly managed to defeat before.
Green energy flared around Michiko, kicking up dry leaves on the ground around her. Otonashi raised one arm, causing a metallic shield to appear in a silvery flash. Shito just broke out into maniacal laughter at the sight of them.
"You're really going to fight me now, huh?", he said, exaggeratedly bending over as though he'd laughed so hard he nearly hurt himself. Slapping his knee with one hand, he stood back up and crossed his arms across his chest in another unusual pose. "Well, in that case…"
He lowered both arms in a single movement, clenching his fists so hard that he crushed the microphone he had been carrying. A ripple of movement went through every muscle in his arms starting from the hands and then moving toward the shoulders, and then suddenly he nearly doubled in muscle mass, tearing his shirt wide open. The fanboy's cape fluttered wildly and his hair stood on end as a rush of wind erupted outward, clearing the ground of leaves.
"...I guess it's time to put you noobs in your place!"
The Fanboy turned to the sky and let out a distorted roar, and his entire head of hair suddenly spiked up and turned white starting with the roots. As he continued to scream toward the heavens, green lightning crackled around him and his whitened hair rapidly began to come loose and flutter away in the wind. When he finally stopped his exaggerated scream, he was left almost completely bald.
"Now you see," he said, grinning evilly. His voice was just about as raspy as you'd expect someone's voice to be after screaming for almost a full minute straight. "This is my ultimate form. And now I'll finish off each of you…"
He cracked each of his knuckles in succession, starting with his left hand and then moving to the right.
"...with just one punch!"
All around them, Fanboys cheered. A group of Shifters raised their hands in unison, giving him two thumbs up each as their glasses shone with the reflected light of the green lightning that was still crackling around his body. And then, finally, he lunged forward to attack.
Otonashi barely saw the attack coming. He raised his shielded arm just in time to keep the Fanboy's fist from hitting his face, but he was still thrown backward by the sheer force of the impact. At first, the speed he was sent flying was so great he was unable to even move due to the forces of the air pinning his arms to his chest; once he started to slow a bit, however, he was able to wrap his weapon around a nearby tree and stop himself that way.
Michiko fared a bit better, dodging the first punch aimed in her direction with a burst of speed and ending up behind the Fanboy. She attempted a counterattack, but before her blade could hit home, Shikujiru Shito spun out of its path, even his cape managing to get out of the way in time to avoid being cut. He frowned, then planted a swift kick in her midsection, sending her tumbling backward. As her feet hit the ground, the green aura around her surged, and rather than falling over she merely skidded to a stop. For a brief moment, the Fanboy's eyes widened.
"We 'newbies' might not be as strong as Lexaeus," Michiko said, gritting her teeth as the pain in her stomach finally began to register. "But you shouldn't underestimate us."
Otonashi swung back toward the Fanboy's location, then landed heavily with one fist to the ground. Blades of metal burst forth from it, forcing Shito to jump and dodge out of their way. The silver-haired man lashed out with his weapon, coiling it around the Fanboy's arm, but in response he simply yanked on it and pulled Otonashi in close enough to knee him in the gut. As he coughed up blood, Shito used his own weapon to swing him around a few times and then threw him off into the woods dismissively. The whip-like end of the weapon actually snapped, the end remaining wrapped around the Fanboy's arm but the rest flickering away into silvery energy.
As the Uber-Fanboy shifted his expression back to the condescending, grumpy frown he had been putting on previously and lunged forward for another punch, Michiko's energy surged around her sword for just a moment and she swung it backward. A wave of cutting energy sliced through the entire crowd of Shifter Fanboys and Fangirls, their severed hands still holding in the thumbs-up position for a brief moment before they began to glow green and shatter. As the now-cut trees behind them crashed to the ground, the air was filled with a flurry of zeroes and ones. Shikujiru Shito stopped just a step short of punching distance, eyes glowing with rage.
"NO! Not my audience!"
Michiko took advantage of this opening, lunging forward to let loose with a wide slash. The Fanboy dodged backward, but this time his movements were more awkward; rather than avoiding the attack entirely, he was left with a thin cut across his chest, which erupted into green sparks for just a moment before fizzling into a glowing scar. He countered with a series of punches, sending Michiko staggering back and slumping to the ground. But his blows were weaker now; the single kick she'd taken head-on just seconds earlier had done far more damage than all of these punches combined. Without the powers of the Shifters' opinions boosting his strength, he wasn't quite so far ahead of his opponents anymore.
"You," he snarled, clutching his chest with one hand for a moment and then pointing at Michiko. "You think you've got me beat just because you took out the Shifters, huh?"
Otonashi pulled himself to his feet once again, coughing up blood and breathing heavily. He held out one hand and rematerialized the handle of his weapon with its usual flash of silvery light, but this time only the handle appeared － the rest remained wrapped around Shikujiru Shito's arm. He flinched for a moment, slumping down to one knee but not falling entirely to the ground, and then smiled slightly.
"No."
The Fanboy blinked, turning toward Otonashi and glaring at him.
"Then what? What's got you two looking like you think you've already won!?"
For a moment, all three combatants were perfectly still. Michiko glanced to Otonashi, who nodded back in response. Shikujiru Shito looked back and forth between the two of them, trying desperately to figure out what they knew that he didn't. Failing that, he burst out laughing.
"Ah, I get it now!", he shouted, pointing at the two of them. "You're bluffing! Well, if you think I'm going to fall for that, then you really are－"
A heavy footstep behind the Fanboy stopped his sentence short. As a shadow loomed over Shikujiru Shito, he craned his neck back to see what was causing it. For one brief moment, he saw Lexaeus － still blinded by the pancake on his face, Skysplitter raised high overhead. And then, in one swift movement, the Fanboy was shattered into an eruption of green energy that illuminated the entire surrounding forest for several minutes afterward. The lesser Fanboys and Fangirls that still remained let out a collective gasp, then scattered in all directions, none of them daring to attack now that the strongest among them had been destroyed.
Instantly, the red haze of blind rage faded from Lexaeus's mind. He released his grip on his tomahawk, reaching up to his face with one hand and effortlessly removing the pancake that had obscured his vision. For just a moment, he glanced at it with one eyebrow raised, and then took a bite.
"I'm… not going to ask how I ended up with a pancake on my face," he said, cracking a smile for just a moment. "Not bad, though. Could use a bit of maple syrup, perhaps… but not bad."