AOE Saga
The Reluctant Dracopyre
Chapter 4: Showdown with Doom
Matt and Chris burst through the doors and opened fire on the snakes. The snakes were vaporized before they could sink their fangs into them. "We better use the stairs," said Matt as he crushed the last viper beneath his boots. "Why?" asked Chris. Matt made a scissors-like snipping motion with his fingers and then made his hand drop slowly accompanied by a whistling. When his hand reached the bottom, Matt said, "Splat." "Ah," said Chris, his imagination supplying the visual details, "stairs it is then."
Matt and Chris started their trek up the stairs. They found a lot of Waste-Crawlers there, along with bat-like leeches, giant jellyfish-like creatures, and a small demon waving a pitchfork around. They went through these things easily but then there came a hard part.
The staircase has suddenly branched into two. One going left and the other going right. Chris looked at the two sets of stairs and asked, "Which way do we go?" "We'll have to split up," said Matt. Chris fished a coin out of his pocket and said, "All right then, heads I go left, tails you go right." He flipped the coin and caught it. "Tails, you go right." Matt bounded up the right stairway while Chris went up the left one. Suddenly Matt paused as realization dawned and said, "Hey! Wait a minute!" He turned towards the left stairway, but Chris has already gone. Matt cursed and continued his way up.
After 30 minutes of stairs, Matt was thinking that the lifts might have been worth the risk…for at least part of the journey up. He'd reached floor thirteen when a flash of light from down the hall got his attention. "The smeg?" he muttered, drawing his blaster and walking forward.
He approached the door where he'd seen the flash and nudged the door open. The room looked like a cross between a jewelry store and his old ships armory. "Wow," he said, stopping to look at a strange rune covered diamond sat next to a double bladed battleaxe. "Like it?" said a voice that reminded Matt of sabers. He turned to see the horrible (and still slightly blackened in places) skull-face of Massacrate. "You! But I thought that you were..." Matt said backing up. "…Destroyed by that explosion?" finished Massecrate. "When will you get if through that thick human skull of yours that I am immortal? I can't be destroyed that easily. All you did was cost us a couple of Waste-Crawlers. Nevertheless..." His eye-sockets began to glow red in anger and he finished "…that did hurt a bit. I think I should return the favor."
At this the Doom Weapon of Death leapt at Matt, swinging both his sickles at Matt's head. Matt just managed to duck but was lifted off his feet by a vicious punch to the chest that lifted him into the air. He got to his feet unsteadily. "S that all you've got?" he panted. Part of Matt's brain said. "Just one attack and already you're exhausted…This isn't good." The other half argued "You gonna let some walking overgrown hedge cutter kick you around?"
Matt pulled out his Ion Staff and activated it. Massacrate looked at Matt's weapon and laughed cruelly. "You really think you can stop me with that, human?" he said nastily as Matt ran at him, aiming a slash which was blocked and followed by a stab with his chainsaw blade. Matt narrowly avoided the whirling blade but overdid his balance in the process. He got up and was just in time to avoid a downward slash that would have sliced him in half. He brought up his staff in time to block the returning swing.
Matt backpedaled out of range for a second. Massacrate laughed nastily and said "Maybe I'll keep you alive long enough to watch your friends dealt with." He said before attacking again. Matt managed to block the slashes and he thought back to when the Walking Blades had told them about the Doom Weapons. 'Weakness…what was Massacrate's weakness again?' he thought blocking and parrying the Doom Weapons attacks.
Massacrate growled and said "Stay still and die." As Matt continued to dodge or block the attacks. "That's not much incentive to stay still," countered Matt. Massecrate lifted his left hand and a blast of black shimmering energy shot at Matt, who just dodged in time. The wall that the blast hit melted. Matt looked at that wide eyed. "Oooh boy." He said. He ducked another slash and got an idea. 'Those mech arms of his look plasma gun equipped. I gotta idea.' He then laughed at Massecrate. "Hah. Can't hit me if I'm outta arms reach."
Massacrate's eye sockets flashed red. "OH NO?" he snarled, sounding like a chainsaw rev. Some of the blue flames around his chainsaw blade focused on the end of one of his hands and became a plasma orb…which shot at Matt. Matt dived out the way and raised his hand which glowed, causing the orb to stop. "Hah…back at ya, stupid," he said grinning before causing the orb to shoot back into Massacrate's face.
When Massacrate had cleared his eyes he saw Matt had just finished a swipe. He turned to follow and felt a suspicious looseness in the neck area. Red light began to spill from where the Ion Staff had hit. 'How dare he vanquish me?' thought Massacrate and managed to launch a curse before Matt could react. Matt staggered back waiting for something awful to happen as Massacrate began laughing. After nothing happened apart from a slight light headed feeling he said "I think that was a dud…dufus." Massacrate laughed as he began to dissolve "Oh…you'll find out otherwise soon enough…" and laughed till he'd vanished.
Matt shrugged, muttering "Wacko." Before spotting the rune covered crystal from earlier. He picked it up and peered at it for a sec, muttered "Might be worth something on a commerce station." before pocketing it and running back to the stairs to continue up.
With Chris…
Chris blasted a Waste-Crawler sentry and ran up yet more steps. "How many stairs does this place have?" he grumbled. A green flash a few floors up got his attention. He looked up and pressed against the wall as a load of debris went by. "Oh great…I hope that wasn't what I thought it was," he muttered.
A flight later he found it was. Where the next two flights should have been were just half melted supports. "Damn it," Chris muttered and got off. "Guess me and Matt'll be going up together," he said and headed down the hallway. The corridor ended at a pair of double doors marked 'Conference Hall'. "Guess it's through here," muttered Chris and walked in.
The room beyond was coated in what seemed like wax. "Someone'll lose their cleaning bill over this," muttered Chris when his motion tracker beeped. A child-like voice said. "Oh…a visitor…will you stay and play a while? My other friends didn't last at all." Chris got a closer look at some of the wax. An extremely dead looking Dracon was in the wax. He looked around to where the voice had been.
A voodoo doll was standing there. "Poppet…sorry, freako…I don't play with dolls," said Chris, training his gun on the Doom Weapon of Famine. "Oh…a shame," said Poppet, disappointed and said "Ga'koloa." A red beam hit Chris and suddenly it felt like he'd been set alight. "Yargh." He yelled. Poppet giggled. "Are we having fun yet?" she said.
"Nope…let's try tag. You're it," said Chris, aiming and firing three neat bursts at Poppet. To his horror, the plasma orbs fizzled out just before impact. Poppet yawned. "Try again mortal." She said. Chris growled, his eyes going yellow as he went into feral mode. He ran at the Doom Weapon, readying his claws for a strike. Before he hit, he got a shock as his feral mode turned off. His normal fist connected and came away with small, but barbed needles in it. Poppet laughed and blasted him into the opposite wall. "I can drain your adrenaline from you and even the energy from your plasma gun. Surrender and maybe I'll make it quick," she said.
Chris pulled the pins out of his hand and ducked in time to avoid a fatal spray of needles from Poppet. The shot rebounded and hit a water pipe for the sprinkler system. A jet of water sprayed over Poppet for a second before the building computer sealed the leak but the effect on Poppet was interesting. Only her arm was hit but it swelled like a balloon. "Gah…stay still and die," she said angrily, firing at Chris as he ran to the cover of the large conference table. Hmm…I wonder he thought and spotted a fire hose on the wall behind him. He ducked out and grabbed it. "Hey, Poppet…thirsty?" he said ducking up and opening the hose full blast on Poppet. The spray knocked her off her blobby feet and into the wall…and caused her to swell even bigger then Morph had when he'd been struck by the manticore.
"Argh…how? No matter, my brothers and Echidra's new toy will finish you and your little…" she yelled angrily but Chris interrupted her. "Ah, shut up." He said and fired, this time the shot wasn't stopped and hit dead center, making her pop and spray water everywhere. The opposite door burst open and Matt came in. "The smeg? Chris? What happened?" he said seeing the scorch marks and vanishing bits of Poppet. "Poppet happened…how'd you do?" answered Chris. "Oh…met Massacrate again and dealt with him. C'mon. Let's go. Don't want the others to have all the fun do we?" he said and they both headed back to the staircase Matt had been using.
Meanwhile, with the experiments…
Draco continually looped around the building with Chip and Morph on his back. "Do you have to go around and around like that?" asked Morph. "I have to circle to gain altitude," said Draco, "I can't fly straight up with you two on my back." "Draco's right" said Chip, "although I do feel a bit queasy." "Spew on me," said Draco, "and you better learn how to fly fast."
But when they reached the thirteenth story, there was suddenly a screech from above. "That doesn't sound good," said Chip. Suddenly, several Dracon skeletons swooped down from above and started firing plasma fire at our heroes. Draco took evasive maneuvers and returned fire. A good many of the skeletons fell, but more kept coming. Even with Chip using his viral blasts and Morph with his TechPack didn't help much. Suddenly the skeletons parted to let something past.
It was a hand mirror with two bat-like wings on the sides of its glass. The mirror's single eye and the crack on the glass that served as a mouth showed malicious content. Holding the mirror's clawed leg was the disembodied human hand that had gone sickly green with age and decay. Embedded in the hand was a candle that produced a large milky green flame. The flame had a wispy face on it and two tibia bones on the sides for arms. "Fiendglass," said Draco. "And Corpselight," said Chip. "You remember us," said Fiendglass with his voice of sharpening knives, "isn't that nice? And we came just in time to watch your minions finish them off, right Corpselight?" Corpselight chuckled and said with a flickery voice, "It's surprising what useful things you find in a cemetery."
"Yeah, yeah," said Draco, "get out of our way so we can be save our friend." "Ah yes," said Fiendglass, "the Drac Omnitrix-wearer. Echidra's almost done with him." "What is she doing?" demanded Chip. "Something that will create the cornerstone of an unbeatable army. Although it has required a couple of tests." "What kind of tests?" asked Morph. Corpselight waved at the skeletons and said, "Some of these are fresher than others, they just couldn't withstand the tests." "You monsters!" growled Draco. "Thanks for the compliment, but you really shouldn't be talking about monsters like that," said Fiendglass, "after all, weren't you all created to be monsters?" "Enough talk," said Corpselight, "Echidra might want the hybrid dragon for testing. I suspect the automaton can be a good servant and the blob will fit quite nicely in a curio bottle." "No one makes a knick-knack out of me!" yelled Morph.
The Dracon skeletons flew straight at our heroes. There were too many of the skeletons to be fought off. Draco flew over to the building and landed on the glass windows. He then used his gecko-like feet to climb at an alarming rate to the top of the skyscraper. Unfortunately, a force field prevented them from entering. Chip rested on a gargoyle and said, "Okay, how are we going to beat them?" "Corpselight controls these skeletons," said Draco, "if we take out him, they'll all fall to pieces, literally." "All right," said Chip, "but Fiendglass is too quick for us to hit. And he can reflect most of our projectile attacks. How do we get rid of him?" Suddenly the gargoyle underneath Chip grunted and said, "Excuse me, can you get off my back? Your feet are digging into the stonework." Chip quickly moved and said, "Sorry, didn't know you were alive." "We're not all the time," said the gargoyle, "but storms like this helps moisturize our skin. Then we can really move around." "Isn't that dangerous?" asked Morph. "Not as long as you don't get struck by lightning." Chip's eye lit up and said, "I have an idea."
Eventually, Fiendglass and Corpselight made it to the top of the skyscraper. The three experiments were sitting there nonchalantly. Draco looked up from filing his claws and said, "Oh look, the two weaklings are here." "Weaklings?" yelled Fiendglass, "we're much stronger than the lot of you combined." "Sure you are," said Chip, "wouldn't it have been easier for you to have come up in a cardboard box. Hey, it could say 'Fragile' in big letters on the side." "It's a wonder they made it up in the first place," said Morph.
"I can fly higher than you can!" yelled the Doom Weapon of War. "Why don't you put your money where your crack of a mouth is," said Chip. Fiendglass flapped hard and pulled himself and Corpselight up a couple of yards. "Are you sure you should be doing this?" asked Corpselight. "Yeah," yelled Chip, "you might want to bring a parachute." Fiendglass's pride would not tolerate this and rose higher into the air. "How's that?" he yelled, "pretty impressive?" "Yep," said Morph, "and pretty stupid." He turned into Sparky and created a nexus of magnetic electricity around him.
Fiendglass looked up at the thundercloud over the skyscraper and said, "Oh, heck." A lightning bolt, drawn by Morph's electrical magnetism, flashed down and struck the two Doom Weapons. Fiendglass shattered and the pieces vanished back to where they came from. Corpselight survived but was sent plummeting through the air. When he got within range, Draco shot a fireball at Corpselight. The Doom Weapon of Pestilence caught fire instantly and the hand and candle were reduced to ashes.
Without a power source or a place to burn from, the ghost fire went out and the ashes were banished. As soon as the last flake was sent back to wince it came from, the Dracon skeletons started loosing their enchanted life. Some of them managed to get to building tops, but most of them fell to the ground when Corpselight's magic dissolved. "It's all up to the others now," said Morph as he turned back to normal. "Anyone up for a game of poker?" asked the gargoyle. "You're going to regret that," said Chip as he started shuffling the cards.
There's another chapter. The first two fights were written by largefish8. If you think this chapter was action-packed, wait till the next one. Please review.