Chapter 4
No Fear
New Vestroia, Unknown time
The days following Ingram's defeat and subsequent banishment to the dreaded Doom dimension, were not happy times. Shun refused to do anything, even drinking or eating, instead locking himself in his room, and jabbing pins of increasing size into a small voodoo doll made to bear a striking resemblance to a certain masked blonde, until its head eventually fell off, and Shun emerged to moodily 'borrow' a needle and thread from Baron, to sew it back on. When he had finished, and had begun to stab more pins into the doll, his keen ears caught a tiny knocking at his door. He crossed the room from hi bunk, where he had been sitting, and opened the door. However, when he did so, he saw no-one. He shrugged, and let the door close by itself, going back to his voodoo doll.
"Shun!" It was a shrieked, unpleasant, but strangely familiar sound. The ventus ninja looked down, and saw a small green, harpy like bakugan making its way across the floor.
"Harpus?" Shun stuffed the doll into a drawer in a nearby cabinet, hopefully before the harpy saw it.
"The one and only!" Harpus, apparently remembering she could fly, fluttered about a foot into the air, and landed haphazardly onto Shun's lap.
"What are you doing here? What about Komba?"
"Last thing Komba knows is that I disappeared..." Harpus looked down, then, looking back up at Shun, she shrieked "I heard Grandma got herself kidnapped, so I came to help."
"Harpus..."
"Don't thank me yet, ninja boy, we've still gotta find her first."
Shun sighed, picked up Harpus, and placed her on the short chest of drawers near his bunk.
"And that, my dear Harpus, is where we are stuck..."
"Why don't you do what Dan did?"
"Huh? What did he do?" Shun asked tentatively, almost not wanting to know.
"Well, he yelled at Masquerade in the middle of the night...and he appeared..."
"In the middle of the night?"
"Yes"
"You know this how?"
"Well, put it this way, Drago has a certain...fondness for the drink, and when he's drunk, he'll tell you anything."
"Really?" Shun smirked, thinking up various ways of using this newfound knowledge.
"Yeah, How else would I know he has underwear covered in pictures of rubber ducks?"
"Wha?" Shun barely got the word out, before dissolving into a fit of laughter.
Doom Dimension, Unknown time
On a small rocky outcrop, sat two vaguely humanoid figures, one, a darkus reaper, with his left horn broken and missing, and his right eye seemingly gouged out; his once fine wings tattered and torn. The other was Ingram, with no real bodily damage other than a long, straight cut through the side of his right shoulder, which was beginning to scar. Ingram sighed, and stared ahead into the gloomy landscape, featured by only a few fossils of other unfortunate bakugan. He turned to the darkus bakugan, who was, as usual, expressionless.
"What are we supposed to do now?" Ingram asked, quietly, almost fearing the inevitable answer.
"Nothing, There's no way out from here." Reaper answered, "This is where we die."
"Didn't Bakugan escape from here before?"
"They made a bet with the legendary soldiers, there's no way we could beat them, not in this state." Reaper leaned on the handle of his scythe.
"I wonder what would happen if we just flew up..." Ingram began, looking up into the storm tossed sky.
"Are you mad? You want to fly into that?" Reaper stood up, pointing at the sky. Ingram also stood, and spread his six wings, ready to take off.
"Anything is better than staying here, Are you coming or what?" And with that, the Ventus bakugan shot up into the sky, shortly followed by a hesitant Reaper.
Michael Gehabich's Laboratory, 10:00AM
Three girls, a redhead, a bluenette, and a girl with hair so blonde it was white, stood before a massive machine, operated by an old man, in a lab coat and with only a thin line of white hair – Michael Gehabich, Alice's grandfather.
"Are you sure about this?" The old man asked, "Once you're there, I don't know if I could get you back."
"We're sure." Runo spoke, quickly, loudly and decisively, before Alice and Julie had time to even utter a single syllable. Michael nodded, and the glass front of the Dimensional transporter opened up. The three stepped inside, and after the glass had closed once more, the machine began to glow with a multi-hued light. With a blinding flash, they were gone.
AN: Sorry for the lateness and lack of Masquerade in this one, but I hope it was enjoyable. And is it just me, or does Harpus' voice remind anyone else of Brian's mother from 'The Life of Brian'?
Disclaimer: I OWN NOTHING! (The plot is mine though.)