A/N: The other chapter that everyone has been waiting for is upon us: the beginning of the battle against Nebilim! Are we really close to seeing the ending, be it good, bad, or indifferent? Haha, you'll just have to see. I won't bore y'all with an introduction since, well, if you've been reading for a while, you already know what's going on. If you don't, then start from chapter one, yo XD

Without further ado, I present to you…

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Chapter 26: It Begins

"Lloyd! Sheena!" yelled Kratos. "Remember what we practiced and we will win this battle!"

Lloyd got into his fighting stance and nodded. "Got it!"

From one of the many folds in her robe, Sheena drew her angelic weapons, the Heart of Symphonia. "Ready when you are dad!"

Nebilim laughed. "Are you sure about that?" He clenched his fists, rested on one knee, and slammed his fists into the ground, causing a large column of jagged rock to erupt from the ground and speed toward the Angels. "Try this!"

The angels didn't even so much as flinch as the watched the rocks come toward them. "Wait for it…" said Kratos quietly. The rocks were no more than 10 feet away when he finally yelled, "Now!"

Kratos jumped to the right, Lloyd to the left, and Sheena took to the air, watching the rocks pass underneath her as she did so. "Ya missed!" She threw down the Heart of Symphonia, allowing it to hover just in front of her feet. "Try this! Hikari no Ai!" She placed the insides of her palms together and turned them towards Nebilim. "Heart Cannon!"

The pink beam of light streamed from her hands and struck Nebilim with amazing speed. He was only knocked back a little, allowing his crossed arms to take most of the blow. Even as the beam continued to strike him, he said, "Ha! That may have worked on Abyssion, but it won't work on me!"

"Are you so sure about that?" asked Kratos mockingly.

Nebilim turned his head as far as he could, only to see that both Lloyd and Kratos stood behind him. "What?"

"Go Lloyd! X-Strike!"

"Right!" yelled Lloyd. Standing at a ninety-degree angle from his father, he slipped past Nebilim's right side, slicing his back with Hope and his side with Faith as he passed. Shortly after he passed by, Kratos swept by Nebilim's left side, making a very deep cut in the demon's side with Polaris as he did so.

The demon howled in pain as the blades found their mark. Temporarily weakened by the strike, his arms flopped to his side, allowing the full power of Sheena's Heart Cannon to hit him dead in the chest, sending the demon skiing across the cold, dark floor. The beam subsided and Sheena floated gracefully back to the ground along with the Heart of Symphonia.

She leaned down and picked the card back up. "Won't work, huh?"

Nebilim opened his eyes and sat up. He smirked. "Impressive." He stood up, letting fragments of the floor fall off of him as he did so. "You may indeed be more powerful than the angels of old. However, it's going to take more than a petty trick to take me down. A lot more."

Lloyd and Kratos walked back to Sheena and stood next to each other about three feet ahead of her. "Come then, Nebilim," demanded Kratos proudly.

"Heh… you asked for it." He crouched down a bit and closed his eyes. The angels watched soundlessly as Nebilim's arms began to quiver, then to split open, and finally mutate into the Nebilim Devil Arm Twin-Blades. As he opened his eyes, something that looked like an eye opened on the outside of his left blade. "This won't hurt a bit. I promise."

Kratos calmly took a step forward and kneeled down. "Let's go Lloyd. Sheena, you know what to do."

Lloyd nodded and kneeled next to his father. Sheena put away the Heart of Symphonia temporarily as she pulled out another card and began chanting.

Nebilim smirked. "Oh no you don't! I won't give you a chance to summon anything this time!" With that, he dashed full speed at the angels, blades full extended outwards.

Ignoring his threats, Sheena continued to chant. Kratos and Lloyd held their ground as well, Nebilim's threats obviously having no effect on them either. He was less than ten feet away when Lloyd and Kratos finally held up their Angel Arm-adorned arms and yelled, "Omni-Guardian!"

An enormous green wall of spiritual force blinked into existence, essentially cutting the main hall of Shadow's temple in half. Nebilim leapt into the air with every intention of trying to shatter the strange wall. His blades connected with the wall but the only result of this was his being stalled in midair by the forces associated with the mystic barrier. He gritted his teeth as he very slowly tried to push his blades through the wall. He progressed no more than a few inches before Kratos' and Lloyd's Angel Arms shined, causing the wall to violently push against Nebilim. The wall eventually dissipated but not before Nebilim had been slammed into and skidded across the stone floor.

Kratos stood up and Lloyd followed suit. "Now Sheena!" he yelled.

"Right!" she yelled as the familiar circle of summoning appeared below her. "Ancient Ruler of the Elements, I summon thee!" She threw down her card and finished the chant. "Come, Maxwell!"

Light flashed throughout the great hall and from it appeared Maxwell, the Summon Spirit of Matter. He lifted his staff and floated upward on his flying disc. The ancient summon spirit cackled and pointed his staff at the fallen body of Nebilim. Not far above Maxwell, several (relatively) large meteors materialized. They revolved around Maxwell until he sent each meteor one-by-one at the demonic overlord. From each impacting meteor, there erupted a fiery and rock-riddled explosion, the shockwaves of which caused part of the ceiling to collapse upon Nebilim. The hellish lights of Niflheim shined through the hole in the ceiling, causing an eerily dim-red ray of 'light' to shine upon the pile of rubble that Nebilim was trapped under.

Nobody moved or said anything. Nebilim wasn't dead, that much was for sure. Although it was a powerful attack, the angels had no idea how much real damage it did against Nebilim. However, they had to wonder why the battle was going so easily for them. Nebilim's first attack may have been just a show of force but they doubted that he had held back against his most recent attack. They were able to counter both attacks with almost the same ease that they had enjoyed against the semi-vicious rabbits that once inhabited the wilderness surrounding Iselia. This was almost too easy. If this kept up, Nebilim would surely be defeated.

Kratos sheathed his blade and extended his hand toward the rubble. "Stay back, but do not allow him to get up," he said calmly.

Sheena withdrew her current and replaced it with another. "I call upon the light of the heavens, I summon thee!" As before, she threw her card down, bringing about another flash of light. "Come, Luna!"

From the light appeared Luna, floating on her crescent moon as she always did. "Yes Lady Summoner?"

The angelic summoner pointed to a point just in front of Kratos' now burning fingertips. "Luna, Circle of Faith!"

"As you wish." She waved her hands, causing a large ring of light in front of Kratos that was pointed directly at Nebilim.

"Excellent," said Kratos quietly. A number of small fireballs appeared on the tips of fingertips and lingered for a moment. A few seconds later, he yelled, "Saint Fire!" and launched the fireballs through the ring at toward Nebilim. As the balls of flame passed through the ring, the red and orange flames turned blue and white and left a short trail of stars behind them. The fireballs demonstrated their new-found power as they literally slammed into the pile of rubble, their impact creating an enormous pillar of saintly flames that extended through the hole in the ceiling and toward the hellish skies of Niflheim.

"That's not all!" yelled Lloyd proudly as he stepped forward, the Saint Fire still burning insanely fierce ahead of him. Both blades drawn, he began to spin himself in a strange dance-like fashion. Throughout the dance, he scraped his blades across the ground numerous times, and from each of these scrapes came a familiar shockwave of energy known as a Demon Fang. "Demonic Dance!" One wave, then two, then three, four, five, six… the waves did not stop coming. Without the Angel Arm, Lloyd had been able to, at most, create three Demon Fangs at once via his Demonic Chaos attack. Each wave slammed into whatever was still within the large pillar of blue-white flame. When Lloyd finally ceased his 'dance', he unleashed an amazing twenty-seven shockwaves at the pillar. Finally, the flames died down as well, revealing a prone Nebilim behind them.

"Get up Nebilim," said Kratos coolly. "We're not finished with you yet."

"How…" whispered the demon. From the ground, he looked up at the angelic trio. "How can this be? It took nine of you before to bring me down and it was still a close battle. How is it that you can do this to me?"

"Hmph. It is as I said earlier: we are more powerful than the angels of old. Far more powerful it would seem."

Lloyd clenched his fist and grinned. "That, and our teamwork is second to none. With a leader like my dad, we can't lose."

"That's right," chimed in Sheena. "and this time, you won't just be sealed. We are going to completely destroy so as to make sure that you can never come back and hurt anyone ever again."

The demon brought himself to his knees. "No, this… this can't be!" He slowly stood and stared at the angels. "If you think you've already beaten me, think again! This is just the beginning!"

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Uhh, only 1,500 words. Sorta short, I know, and I'm sorry. Next chapter will prolly be fairly short as well, but I guarantee that the end of next chapter will be very… interesting. How? You'll see! Thanks in advance for any and all reviews!

Oh, and to my readers of Crossing the Bridge, I'm so sorry about the delay! I've hit a nasty roadblock in my mind but I'm working to get past it.

Also, to anyone who has visited my site, does anyone actually like the idea of a site? Freewebs sucks and I wanna remake the site on another server. I have a bunch more Fanart to post and would like to share it with everybody. Anyone wanna see a new site?