Chapter XIV – We Meet the Face of Terror
After having gone through the other three rooms, we sat in a circle in the main room, exhausted. "I can't believe we had to go through those guys just to get out of the rooms." Yang said, laying on her back with her hands under her head. "No kidding. First, there was that weird teddy bear. And then after that, it's a Creeper, which actually should've been easy to kill in the first place and somehow wasn't, a Hydra, and a giant spider. And we still didn't find any what was making these gravity alterations happen." I said, shivering at the memory of the spider. "You did seem to freeze up a bit when we were fighting the spider." Weiss said, not knowing she had done an unintended pun of herself.
"They kind of have a grudge against children of Athena. It has something to do with what Athena did to Arachne." I explained quickly, not wanting to go into detail. "Alrighty then. Back to our current objective. Just where do you guys think that door is? We went through every room. Bob said, scratching his head as he studied the message again. "Wait a second. It said "In between these doors." Remember?" Ruby said, snatching the paper from Bob. "No kidding, it's only right there. The only problem is that there's only four doors. Jack said, pointing them out.
"I think I see where she's going with this. There's only four doors we can see. But what if there was one that we couldn't see right in the middle?" I said, picking up on what Ruby was saying. I got up before Jack even had time to respond, going for the spot in between the two middle doors. I searched the surface of the wall for anything that could suggest an opening.
After a quick inspection, I found what looked to be four indentations in the shapes of the items we found in each room. "Let's try those things we found in the rooms. I have a feeling that those might be the keys." I said to my friends. "That sounds about right. None of them fit in with the rest of what was in each room." Iris said, putting her hair into a ponytail.
The rest approached the wall with the four items we had picked up. And Skyla was still cuddling the one remaining teddy bear that hadn't been destroyed from the first room. First, we put in the gold locket from the first room. After that followed the Christmas star from the Minecraft room, armless glasses from the Hydra's room (I kept one of the fangs from the Hydra as a souvenir.), and a lightbulb that was permanently lit up, even without any electric current going through to it.
After everything was put into place, the wall started rumbling as a door-sized section slid back and out of the way.
"That's not something you see every day aside from in movies." Ravena said. "No kidding. Let's get going." Blake said, walking in first. I just nodded and we all followed her. Penny took the lead since she was the only one that seemed to see in the dark. Unfortunately, most of us couldn't see in the darkness of the tunnel. After what felt like forever of just walking in the dark, we finally reached the end, where a door was opened by Blake, who seemed to see just as good as or even better than Penny, given that she didn't even fumble about for the doorknob.
Once we were in, most of us were temporarily blinded by the light from the room. As soon as we were able to see again, I immediately wished the blindness had stayed. Because what was in front of us was something straight from a nightmare. The creature in front of us was huge, mechanical, and had what looked like a faceplate that seemed like it could come off at any moment. We didn't get to examine it further as the thing got off of the ground, floated in the air, and started shooting lasers from its tail and arms along with what seemed to be balls of condensed gravity. We split up to avoid getting hit.
Luckily, we had ran off in pairs of two. Aside from Penny, who was pretty much a one-person army. Or a tank with a lot of agility. Still works either way.
I was running alongside Iris as she kept us covered with a floating shield wall around us. As we were running, I noticed that the room was getting bigger and that a gap was opening up underneath our enemy. I hoped he would have fallen, but he was just floating in place.
"We need to shoot it in the face! That looks to be the only weak point in its armor!" I shouted so everybody could hear as I shot a fire ball at it. It struck home, hitting the face plate right in the center, where the nose would've been if there had been one. While I didn't see anybody respond. I saw it turn around as it got hit from behind. As soon as it was facing Ruby and Weiss, Ruby immediately fired again, this time with Weiss's white glyphs in front of the sniper barrel.
The bullet slammed into the thing's face and froze that part of it. I nodded to Iris and we regrouped with everybody else, using her shields to cover us along with Ravena and Weiss's glyphs.
Now that I thought about it, I recognized the thing we were fight. The long robotic arms dangling from its legless body. The face as the weak point. The gravity effects. "You have got to be kidding me." I thought as I fired more fire at him.
"Everybody else stay here. Blake and I will go on it where it can't hit us." I said, shooting a fire arrow. "I'm coming too!" Jack said. "Alright. But just to say, there won't be much room on his back." I responded. "I don't mind one bit. Now let's get going!" he shot back. I just nodded, having nothing else to say.
With that, we jumped right at him. Unfortunately, he turned gravity against us, making it stronger than he had already done. "I really hate this guy sometimes." I thought as we fell. Luckily, we avoided falling to our deaths I grabbed hold of Blake and Jack and she threw her weapon, wrapping it around his tale.
Another good thing was that with our momentum, we were swinging upward at a much faster rate than we needed. That was also the problem. We were swinging back up way too fast.
"Nightmare was never a favorite among my favorite game bosses. And fighting him for real just shows how hard he really is." I said to Jack. "No kidding. I still haven't beaten the guy yet. And I'm doing that on Metroid Fusion." Jack responded. "Lucky. That's one of the good Metroid games. Although the Prime series is still my favorite." I said.
"You two can talk about whatever you're talking about later. We really need to take care of this thing." Blake said. "Alright. I'm just saying." I said, sighing. If only we weren't constantly fighting something. Especially when that something is from another world.
As soon we reached the tail, we clambered up his back. I occasionally had to use fire to boost myself up because I occasionally lost my grip. Once we were up on his head, I let my arms dangle for a bit. They were really hurting from that climb. It felt like they had been frozen over and then thawed out in a volcano. Not the best feeling in the world. "Alright. Let's get this over with." I said.
Together, we put our weapons under the rim of the faceplate and pulled back with a lot of effort. After a while of shots pelting it and our attempts at getting it off, it actually came off. "Thank you, world logic." I said. "And now this is where we might want to get off." Jack said as he clung to the armored beast for dear life. "Yeah. Let's get going. We don't want to go down with this guy." I said, jumping off. As soon as I was in the air, I boosted towards the platform where my friends were. Jack and Blake not far behind swinging from her weapon. We reached the ground just as the shots finally penetrated the ugly face that was now revealed. Nightmare screamed (I think.) as he fell and the room's lighting turned back on.
"Nice one there. Now if you'll excuse me, I feel like passing out." I said, getting on one knee. Everything went dark as I closed my eyes.
