Chapter Five: Turn Up the Heat
Poliahu and Pharaoh glared at each other, one glowing icy white, the other a flaming red. "Oh, this is going to be a real challenge," Poliahu sneered. "You're just a special-powered little human-like you'd have any clue how to use abilities other than your own."
Pharaoh smiled at her and replied, "Actually, I've had some experience with learning how to properly use another's abilities."
"Yeah, I'm sure you have," Poliahu replied, rolling her eyes. She held out one hand towards him and snapped, "SMILE AND SAY 'FREEZE'!"
A beam of ice shot out of her hand and headed straight towards him; however, he quickly shut his eyes and focused on the warmth within. The flaming aura around him increased in intensity, and when the beam neared him, it simply melted into water and splashed to the ground.
Poliahu stared at him in shock for a few moments. She quickly regained her composure and said with her voice dripping with sarcasm, "Oh, how impressive-a little bit of heat. But I bet you have no clue how to actually conjure up some lava!"
She held her arms straight out and created dozens of spiky spheres of ice around her. In one swift movement, Poliahu swung her arms out in front of her and sent the spheres flying towards him. While a few of the spheres melted into water before they could even get near him, a couple were coming quickly enough that they were able to strike him directly.
"Aw, no little molten orbs to retaliate?" Poliahu mocked him as he flew back a bit from the pain of the spikes.
The other heroes arrived on the scene at that moment, dashing up to the very edge where the sand met with the ice. Seeing that Pharaoh was wincing slightly in pain and that spiked ice orbs were on the ground right below him, Téa cried out, "Pharaoh, are you all right?"
He opened his eyes and looked down at her. "I'm fine, Téa, don't worry."
Poliahu looked down at the others and sneered, "Oh look, more little humans. I am so doomed-not."
The other heroes glared up at her. Joey, Tristan, Téa, and Bakura glowed with their respective shades of magic while Spencer and Yuri brought out their Dark Magician and Dark Magician Girl staffs and Kaiba let out the Blue Eyes essence from its stone. "You're going to regret that, missy," Spencer yelled up to her.
Poliahu simply grinned at him and held her hand down at the heroes. They all quickly soared up into the air as a jagged spike of ice shot out of the ground. Undeterred, Poliahu rose the ice up even higher and split it up so that different jagged spikes of it went spiraling out in pursuit of them.
At first the heroes simply soared as fast as they could away from the ice right behind them; then, when their timing was right, they quickly whipped around and fired out beams of magic or electricity which shot directly through the ice and shattered it into little shards that fell towards the ground.
Poliahu angrily held her hands out, stopping the ice shards right before they could crash, and flung her arms behind her, sending the sharp shards flying back towards the heroes.
Pharaoh, however, quickly soared a bit out in front of the others and conjured up a force field wall before them. He placed his hands on the wall and sent heat flowing all throughout it; thus, the moment the ice shards touched it, they melted into large droplets and splashed down to the ground.
Pele watched all of this going on from down on the beach. She smiled when she saw the Pharaoh sent heat through his force field to melt the ice shards and murmured, "What a resilient young man…"
Poliahu glared angrily at the Pharaoh as he and the others turned to face her. "What an annoying pest…" she muttered. "I suppose it's time I stopped being so nice with him and let him really feel a chill. But first…"
She snapped her fingers and platforms of ice appeared below everyone except the Pharaoh's feet. With a wave of her hand, sheets of ice suddenly rose up from the platforms and completely encased the others heroes up to their necks within iceberg-like enclosures. The heaviness of the ice sent them zooming down to the ground.
Pharaoh was about to soar after them when Poliahu quickly conjured up a large, solid orb of ice and smacked it up against his head, knocking him out cold before he could melt it. She created a platform of ice which he fell down upon on his back. With him unconscious, the heat stopped coming from him in totality, preventing the platform from melting away.
Grinning, she floated up to him and pried his mouth open. She pointed one finger inside of it and started shooting ice down his throat.
As the others struggled to break out of their ice prisons, Téa looked up and saw Poliahu floating over Pharaoh with one of her fingers in his mouth. What's she doing to him?! Téa thought in horror.
Poliahu continued sending the ice down until a sheet of it finally came back up through his throat and out of his mouth. She floated away from him a little and continued using her finger to encase his body within ice.
The other heroes quickly focused on the magic within them and sent it shooting out of their hands, shattering the ice around them into pieces. Without hesitation, Téa soared up to Pharaoh and Poliahu with the others right behind her.
Poliahu was still shooting the ice out at him, which now spread all the way down to his toes and up to the very tip of his hair. Téa stared at this in horror and screamed out, "GET AWAY FROM HIM!"
Poliahu stopped firing the ice and crooked her finger back. She shrugged and replied, "Whatever, human girl-but it won't matter too much; your friend is gone." Grinning nastily, she pushed the platform of ice with the Pharaoh on it over to them. "He's been frozen from the inside out."
Téa stared down in horror at her frozen friend. "NO!" she cried out. She pressed one hand up against the ice by the side of his head and screamed, "Pharaoh, wake up! Get out of there! You'll freeze to death!"
The Pharaoh didn't even stir from within the ice.
"Yugi!" Téa tried calling out to the other person within, but he still didn't move.
Screaming, Téa curled one hand into a fist, let it glow with pink magic, and slammed it directly into Pharaoh's enclosure, shattering the ice into pieces which smashed down onto the frozen ocean.
Before he could fall, she quickly caught him in her arms. His body felt extremely cold from the ice within it. "Pharaoh…Yugi…no…" Téa murmured, her eyes welling up with tears.
The others, too, gazed down at Yugi and Pharaoh with saddened looks on their faces. Joey and Tristan held each other up and tried desperately not to cry, Bakura attempted to sense out their spirits if they were leaving, Kaiba tried to remain neutral, and Spencer started murmuring a prayer from his world: "May the gods be merciful with their souls, may they find freedom and peace in a spiritual realm…"
Yuri floated up to Téa and gently placed one hand on her shoulder. "I'm sorry, child," he murmured to her.
Téa sobbed out quietly, "This can't be the end…there must be something that can be done…"
She shut her eyes in despair. One single tear dripped out of one of them, glowing faintly with a tiny pink spark, and landed on Yugi and Pharaoh's chest.
Téa…
Téa snapped her eyes open as she started to feel the body she held grow warmer and warmer. Slowly, she let go of him and he floated there in the air, his outline starting to glow with red light. At first it was faint, but it gradually increased in intensity to the point where even from a few feet away one could feel extreme heat in the air.
"What's happenin'?" Joey asked, staring in shock at the red-glowing Pharaoh.
Suddenly, Pharaoh's entire body transformed into glowing, molten hot lava that emitted large flames all around his outline. Streams of steam shot out of him as the ice within him melted almost instantly. He sat up and opened his eyes, now glowing with bright yellow light.
"WHA-THAT'S IMPOSSIBLE!" Poliahu screamed out, staring down at the intensely flaming Pharaoh with horror in her eyes.
Pharaoh looked up at her and narrowed his glowing eyes.
"Uh-oh," she whispered in fear.
Lightning fast, he flew up to her and blasted out a ray of the molten hot lava which only narrowly missed her arm, creating a searing rip through her white jacket's sleeve. Poliahu stared at the smoking rip in horror for a moment, and then quickly tried to retaliate by firing a beam of ice out at him; however, the heat coming from him was so intense that it melted before it was even a foot away from him.
Smiling, Pharaoh shot out streams of lava which wrapped themselves around her jacket sleeves and singed them right off. He then moved the streams so that they sliced right through the jacket's shoulders, sending it falling down towards the frozen ocean.
Poliahu screamed "NO!" and dove for the jacket, but streams of green, orange, pink, grey, white, gold, and light blue magic came up from behind her and wrapped themselves around her legs, leaving her dangling in the air and waving desperately for her jacket.
Moving in unison, the other heroes flung her back towards the island; then, before she could fall to the ground, Pharaoh shot out a large beam of lava at her which blasted her directly in the chest and sent her flying backwards all the way into the night sky and out of sight.