Chapter 22- A Little Nostalgia
Thankfully they did not encounter any more fiend-possessed humans (or any fiends themselves) on their way out of the building. They wouldn't have been able to defend themselves from the aforementioned very well, with Matt hauling Julie's limp form along and Flynn burdened with Prof. Helen's. The front door had been blown to tiny shards of glass that littered the ground in front of them.
"I hope they know that it's rude to knock down someone's front door." Keith said.
"Uh, Keith, I don't think they care." Drake said.
"Good point." They turned a corner and cut into the forest. Matt stopped them.
"I need a break." He said. "I'm… not as young as I used to be."
"What are you talking about? You can't be that old." Drake said.
"I'm coming onto thirty pretty fast. You have to realize, I'm just as old as Yugi Motou or Seto Kaiba."
"Oh. I didn't know that. But that's still pretty young."
"When you've been through as much as I have been through, it wears on you really fast. I doubt I'll live past fifty." He gently lowered Julie's body to the grass. "Take a break, Flynn." Flynn gladly dropped Helen's body. Matt sat down. "Ah, I never thought I'd see the day when the Shadow Realm came into our world again."
"What do you mean?" Drake asked. "This has happened before?"
"Well, not exactly this, but, of course, you know the story of Marik and all that jazz, how he used the Shadow Games to fight his way to the top and try to become king of the world and stuff. It's kind of the same here, but this time we don't really know the motivation behind it." Matt ran his hand through his messy hair. "I was watching from the shadows, and almost got involved. I ended up dueling a ton of the Rare Hunters, and by some anti-miracle almost half of those were Shadow Games. So I got to experience all of the pain and suffering you guys are going through."
"Wow. I never knew that you were actually that old." Flynn said.
"Yeah, and I must admit that I wish that it was that way now. At least back then we were fighting humans, not these inhuman fiends." For a while there was silence. Then an intelligent shadow realm fiend jumped out of the darkness!
There was a sudden burst of motion as everyone scrambled for their weapons. The fiend took advantage of the momentary chaos to knock both Drake and Keith down, effectively separating them from their weapons. Flynn leveled his M-203 only to have it knocked out of his hands by the beast. Matt drew a bead on the creature with his duck gun, and pulled one trigger. A few pellets hit the fiend, but overall it did little damage to it and could not stop the fiend from yanking the shotgun out of his hands. Noticing that they all had no guns, the fiend turned to the prone forms of Helen and Julie. Matt tried to do something, but the fiend (almost lazily) grabbed him and threw him up against a tree. After seeing this, Drake, Keith, and Flynn all felt that there was nothing that they could do anymore. They watched helplessly as the monster grabbed Julie's inanimate body and lifted it from the ground.
A kid in a hoody jumped seemingly out of nowhere and landed on the monster's shoulders. He shoved a pistol down the creature's throat and pulled the trigger. Drake saw a huge lump begin to make its way down the fiend's throat. Startled, the fiend dropped Julie's body. The hoody kid jumped down, grabbed both bodies, and jumped away from the fiend. The fiend exploded, showering everyone in blood and guts.
Matt had just regained consciousness after losing it from the impact against the tree. He walked unsteadily back towards them, shaking his head. Then he looked up and noticed the hoody kid and the bloody mess on the ground (or all over it, to be exact).
"Grenade pistol?" he asked. The hoody kid nodded, grinning. "What are you doing here? How did you get here?"
"I'm Adam; I can be anywhere I want to be." He said. "I'll just leave you here, then, knowing that I saved your ass again." Adam set the bodies down and jumped away. Drake heard another explosion in the distance.
"Who was that?" Drake asked.
"That was an old friend of mine. Good thing he came along, otherwise we would have been screwed." Matt said, retrieving his double-barreled shotgun. "Grab your stuff. We need to get out of here." Everyone retrieved his weapon, and they set out through the woods again. Matt seemed to still be a bit unsteady, tottering even more than before under the burden of Julie's weight.
"Matt? Are you okay?" Drake asked.
"Just a bit unsteady." He said. "Don't worry, I've been through worse." They continued on their way, finally arriving at Matt's secret base. Matt threw open the door and they all climbed down.