Chapter 44- A Close Shave
"Though…" the fiend said. "I think that, to avoid any trouble on the way to the boss, I'll have to steal your souls here."
"WHAT?!?" Drake said. "You can't do that!"
"I can't… but they can, and I can order them to do so!" The fiend signaled to the largest and ugliest of the fiends. The brute smiled and roared. The other unintelligent fiends looked at him, then slowly smiled. Drake's fiend held its claw up to his face- and suddenly the claw wasn't there anymore. All that was left was a bloody stump. Drake's eyes widened in surprise. Three of the other fiends seemed to share his surprise, then began to advance on Drake, hoping to complete the task.
Then suddenly they had each lost their heads. The bodies flipped limply over. Drake elbowed his fiend in the stomach, causing it to drop him. Drake dropped to the ground, hoping to avoid whatever was killing the fiends, and watched from there. Flynn and Brooklyn had taken similar cover. He watched as something cut up every fiend that came near them. One of the fiends ran at Julie's still inanimate body, a huge sword in his hand instead of the usual terrorist assault rifle. A black shape appeared in front of him, caught the sword on a pair of small knives, and cut the fiend into tiny pieces with blinding speed. Drake had caught a quick glimpse of whatever it was when it had stopped to block the sword.
Whatever it was wore a long black cloak with a hood. Drake hadn't gotten a good look at his face but he had noticed that the lower half of the black cloak's face was covered in a black shroud. He had noticed in the moment that the cloak had flared up that everything else the thing wore was black. The best way to describe the thing was that it looked like a ninja.
Soon there was nothing left of the fiend army except the intelligent fiend and a large pool of blood. Whatever it was had single-handedly done what the three of them had been unable to do. The thing now stood in front of the intelligent fiend, who looked absolutely dumbfounded.
"How did you take out all of those fiends without so much as a scratch?!?" said the fiend.
"A little speed goes a long way." Said the ninja-thing. Despite the fact that he was wearing a mask, his voice was astonishingly clear. "Now, are you going to duel me or not?" The ninja-thing reached into his cloak and withdrew a deck of cards, then procured a duel disk from nowhere.
"Fine then!" The fiend activated his duel disk. "This shouldn't take long."
"My feelings exactly." The ninja-thing said. He slipped the duel disk onto his arm, slid his deck into the slot, and activated it.
"Let's duel!"
Ninja-thing: 4000Fiend: 4000
The ninja-thing drew his five cards and shrugged. "I told you this wouldn't take long."
"What are you talking about?!?" The fiend said. He sounded scared.
"Exodia." The ninja-thing said quietly.
"What?!?"
"I SUMMON EXODIA THE FORBIDDEN ONE!!!" The ninja-thing said. The massive form of Exodia rose up behind him and blew the fiend into vapor. "Eh. Too easy." The ninja-thing deactivated his duel disk and began to walk away. Drake jumped up. Flynn and Brooklyn did as well.
"Hey, wait!!!" Drake shouted. The ninja-thing stopped and turned. It was the first time he had gotten a good look at his face. At least he was a human. As he had seen before, the bottom half of his face and most of his nose was concealed behind a black mask. He had a blue headband that had a metal plate on it; the metal plate was inscribed with a curious insignia on it. The headband was cocked at a funny angle so that it covered the ninja's left eye. The only bit of his face that could be seen was his right eye and the little skin around it. He looked pale. The rest of his body was entirely shrouded in black, and his feet were clad in something like slippers, not quite slippers, but not hard footwear like shoes.
"Yes?" He said.
"It's just that… we wanted to thank you." Flynn said.
"And you remind me of someone. Who exactly are you and do you have any relation to Matt Peterson?" Drake said.
The ninja's right eye closed in what looked like a huge smile. He reached up with both hands, gripped his hood and his mask, and pulled both off. Then he reached up and pulled the headband up. There was no mistaking it, despite all the impossibilities of it. It was Matt, back from the dead again. Everyone gaped at him.
"How did you survive that?!?" Flynn said. "And where did you get the cool duds?"
"I didn't. I released my soul so that it would take no damage moments before my body was destroyed. And I've had these clothes for a while now. I got 'em a while back, in one of my other occupations. Oh, and about surviving. I released my soul from my body with the power of the Millennium Star, then returned after you had left. I'm sorry to have deceived you into thinking that I was dead, but I couldn't repair my body fast enough." Matt said.
"What do you mean, repair your body?"
"Remember when I said that we wouldn't have to worry about hurting anyone because the bodies we shot didn't have the correct soul? Well, in any case, if you can save your soul in the event of death, and float around as a spirit until they return to their body. Then, if they re-inhabit it, they can slowly repair the body back to operating condition. Speed of repair depends on the person's physical condition and the severity of the injuries. So, I was a little slow to return to my body and to fix it up. Then, I got an appropriate change of clothes for this stealth work and saved you guys."
"Wow. Complicated." Brooklyn said. "I never knew you could do that!"
"I've done it once before. I didn't think it would work again, but I knew I could try. Separating your soul from your body is not a human thing, if everyone could do it, it would be considered unethical. Side effects of it are inhuman characteristics such as unnaturally pale skin, strange eye coloration, and other such things. Besides, I couldn't die yet, could I?"
"No, I guess not." Drake said. "I'm at a loss. I wish I could survive as well as you could."
Matt laughed. "You've done a better job of it than I have so far. Thus far, I should be dead twice. You have yet to take a critical injury."
"Oh! Shit!" Drake said. The words "critical injury" had sparked his memory of Julie. "Matt, Julie got hurt bad during the last Shadow Game-"
"Was she playing in it?"
"Not exaclty."
"Continue." Matt looked troubled.
"Well, instead of saddling me with the usual burden of the Shadow Game, the fiend kinda… warped Julie away to that little alcove over there, and chained her to that wall." Drake pointed.
"Go on."
"Then, for every 100 life points I lost, he caused that rotary gun over there to fire these little darts at her. He said they wouldn't hit her vital areas, but some of them started 'missing' and hit her in the stomach. I want to make sure she's okay, I know nothing about medical stuff. And also, she has these little purple bumps around the wounds."
"Show me, quickly!" Drake lead Matt to Julie's unconscious form and showed him the wounds. Flynn picked up Keith's body and threw it over his shoulder again. Brooklyn hung back, watching the hallway with his laser ready. Matt checked the wounds, pressed his ear to Julie's chest and listened for her heartbeat, then nodded. "Well, she's alive, but these purple spots… I don't like them." He yanked one of the darts that Drake had missed out of Julie's stomach, then, to Drake's shock and horror, pulled back his sleeve and stabbed it into his arm. "Hmm…"
"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?!?" Flynn shouted. "You could kill yourself!!!"
"I doubt it." Matt said, as the little purple spots began to appear on his arm. "Hmm… this is a deadly disease, I think… I have little experience with the diseases of the Shadow Realm, and there are quite a few, but I've seen this one before. It's called Shadowpox, it's the Shadow Realm breed of Smallpox, except that it is much more deadly."
"More deadly than Smallpox?" Drake said. "That's not good… it's infecting Julie!"
"Yes, that presents us a problem. I know only one cure for Shadowpox… and it only works if the diseased has yet to be sufficiently infected."
"Spit it out! You're wasting time."
"Okay, to cure Shadowpox, one must take another human's blood, touch each point of infection with it, then clean each wound with an antibacterial solution."
"Who wants to donate blood to Julie?" Drake asked. Flynn shrugged. Brooklyn remained looking resolutely away. Matt bared his arm and dealt himself a terrible gash on the arm with one of his kunai. He dropped his kunai and dipped his fingers into his own blood.
"Help yourself Drake, I swear, I haven't got anything." Matt said. Slightly disgusted, Drake dipped his fingers into Matt's blood and began to put it onto all of Julie's little wounds. Matt took the other half of her body. It didn't take long to dab all the wounds in Matt's blood, as they were all pretty close together. After that Matt reached into his cloak with his non-bloody arm and pulled out a bottle of disinfectant. "Never leave home without it." He unscrewed the cap, pulled a little ball of cotton out of the neck, and began to dab each of Julie's wounds with it. It took him less than two minutes. Then, he replaced the cotton ball, screwed the cap back on, and put it back into his cloak. "That should do it. And I think we're just in time, too. A little more and she would have been beyond saving…"
Drake breathed a sigh of relief. He didn't think he could bear it if they lost Julie. "Thank you, Matt… how did you learn all this stuff?"
"Well, the Shadow Realm stuff I learned from experience and reading ancient texts. But I was an army medic a few years ago, after my ninja days."
"You really were a ninja?"
"Of course. How do you think I got the garb?"
"No clue."
Julie groaned and sat up. The first person she saw was Matt. "Oh, hello Matt… so I died at last? Nice clothes, by the way."
Matt chuckled. "No, actually you survived that. Look the other way." Julie looked over and saw Drake.
"Oh! Drake! So I didn't die? But I remember this horrible pain… I thought I was dead. But wait… MATT! YOU'RE ALIVE!!!" She screamed, and threw her arms around him. His eyes went wide for a moment, and he looked uncomfortable. Despite this, he started to slowly pat her on the back (with effort, as she had pinned his arms to his sides with her hug). "But… how?" She released him. Matt took a deep breath and explained everything again. "Wow… confusing."
"Yes, now let's go. We need to get out of here before more fiends come."
"But you're hurt…"
"It's self-inflicted. I needed to do it to heal you." Matt took out a long bandage and wrapped his arm in it. "All better. Now, we need to go. I don't want to face an even larger fiend army."
"Ah, with you hanging around again, we're not going to lose to anyone!" Flynn said. Matt just smiled.