Heh. Just out of curiosity . . . anyone know what "Saturniidae" is? There was originally going to be a filler chapter with a big hint about that, but to heck with filler. Let's keep this caravan creaking!
GUEST05: Yeah, things seem to be going pretty well from what I've seen! At least, I'm guessing. Dunno any German. :P I was almost getting a Season 1 vibe in a few places there . . .
Y'know what my theory on Cole is? I think they realized, after Rebooted, that most people were ready to skin Cole alive for the whole triangle fiasco. So then they decided to make him fluff-brained so he'd seem like less of a threat and people would stop hating his guts. That's my theory, and I'm stickin' to it.
I'm writing OOC, in other words. And by crakky I defy anyone to stop me! XD
Well, I'm leaving that open for the readers; you can pick and choose what you think they'll do. 'fraid I'm not gonna explicitly resolve it myself, though.
Say, just curious, are you in the UK or Australia? You totally don't have to say if you'd rather not, I was just wondering 'cos you use British spellings. I'm kinda fond of those. ^_^''
Eh . . . heh heh . . . I was afraid someone would notice that. Errrr . . . wellllll . . . yes? . . . Only hinting, that is! Things will happen yet. Unfortunately. :S
You don't lead by pointing and telling people some place to go. You lead by going to that place and making a case. -Ken Kesey
Two days later, the dragon mash was (with any luck) finished. They were all pretty tired of the 24-hour shift cycle stoking the fire, checking the temperature, and stirring the mix, but their efforts seemed to have paid off. The mash cooled into a thick, dark-green slurry scented faintly with sea salt and cherries, which was exactly how the recipe said it was supposed to be.
"So, this is the kind of stuff dragons like, huh?" said Kai a trifle dubiously. Cole cautiously scooped out a dollop of the still-warm mixture and popped it into his mouth. Then he gagged.
"Okay, I—ptuh, yuck—reallllllllly hope dragons have a different sense of taste."
Of course now everyone wanted to try it. They all agreed that it was absolutely vile, but then again—liver-and-toads wasn't exactly the most palatable snack either, to a human.
It was only then that they realized they had no way to get the vat up the mountainside, much less down into the cave. It was heavy, for one thing—they could lift it between all of them, but it was too unwieldy to just carry along on an incline. Besides which, both the mountainside and the tunnel slanted pretty steeply, so tilting the vat enough to carry it on those slopes would cause it to spill. And spilling was not an option.
"Well, now what?" said Kai as they all stood at the base of the mountain, looking up towards the cave entrance. It seemed fantastically far away all of a sudden.
"Could we attach it to the Bounty and air-lift it?" asked Lloyd.
"There's no way the Bounty could maneuver smoothly enough to make that happen," said Nya with conviction. "And then there's still the question of carrying it inside the mountain."
A defeated silence.
"Why didn't this occur to anyone before?" growled Kai.
"Didn't occur to you either," said Cole irritably. Kai gave an angry snort.
For a while they stood about and looked glum. Presumably they were thinking about ways around this issue, or at least thinking that they should be thinking such a thing. Every now and then someone would look up as though an idea had struck him, but always he would sober and shake his head before even saying anything.
Cole leaned back against the cauldron, sighing. First reflex was to give up. Second reflex was to blame this on someone else, complain that this whole thing was ridiculous and a waste of time. Complain about something. It's not like he could do anything else, could he?
What would he have done two years ago?
He bit his lip, trying to remember. Optimism came to mind. He'd never really been the one with the answers—it was usually Zane or Jay who had the know-how and figured stuff out—but he'd always been the one barking at the front of the pack, assuring the others that there had to be a way through this. Just telling them they could do it. It had usually been enough . . .
That seemed so stupid now, though. Hollow, insincere. He looked around surreptitiously at the others—Kai brooding, Jay seemingly resigned to failure, Zane sunk in thought but getting nowhere. Lloyd, for once looking around like he wished somebody else had an answer. Nya, staring off into the distance as if her thoughts were elsewhere.
Optimism, on this lot? They'd have his head.
Still. He'd promised he'd try to do better, and even if it didn't help at all, try was what he was gonna do. He wracked his brain for something, anything.
"Okay . . . so what if we got some ten-gallon buckets and carried it up bit by bit?" he ventured.
"That'd take forever!" protested Jay. Zane glanced at the cauldron, then up the mountainside, mentally calculating.
"Approximately thirty-eight hours," he announced. "Assuming we worked non-stop."
Groans all around.
"Well . . . well, come on. There's got to be a way. We can't let something this stupid stop us!" protested Cole.
"Can't we, though?" asked Kai bitterly.
"We don't have a choice. We have to think of something." Cole kicked at a pebble, in his irritation sending tiny ripples of earth rolling in its wake.
"Wait—what about that?!" said Nya all of a sudden. "Cole, your earth!"
"What about it?"
"You can pull columns of rock out of the ground, right? What if you made a kind of platform of rock and moved the cauldron along with that? Like an escalator."
"Sorry, but I can't pull up columns that smoothly," said Cole, shrugging in regret. "They sort've come up shaking, and the tops are usually all jagged. I could maybe manage it out here on the hillside where the ground is soft, but down in the tunnel it'd basically be yanking up chunks of solid rock and shaking them."
"But a platform could work," said Zane slowly. "What if . . . "
Within half a minute everyone was talking at once, and chances were there was even some listening going on somewhere in there. Eventually they sorted the mayhem out into a coherent plan: Zane created a wedge of ice that would keep the vat level on the slope, and gradually generated a pathway of ice to slide it on. Kai kept a steady tongue of flame licking along the top edge of the ice wedge, melting it just enough to keep the surfaces slippery. The others pulled at the whole construct with ropes, letting the wedge freeze to the path whenever they needed a break. Although complicated and a bit nerve-wracking, it was actually a surprisingly effective process.
"Well, we're halfway out of the woods!" said Cole encouragingly, as they paused at the mouth of the tunnel. Zane was carefully restructuring the ice block to accomodate the reversed slope.
"Only now, we're gonna have to be more careful about the ice path," said Lloyd. "It wasn't a problem going up, when we were pulling from the front, but now we're gonna be pulling from behind to slow this thing down. If Kai doesn't melt the ice fast enough, we're going to slip."
"You say that as if it's even a possibility," grunted Kai, cracking his knuckles.
However, they'd barely made it three steps into the tunnel before they realized there would be other issues.
"Jay, pull back!" called Nya, coughing. Kai's flames were burning double-time, since he now had to melt the ice path as well, and the tunnel was thick with smoke. "Your rope's going slack, we're doing all the work!"
"Geez, I'm doing what I can here!" protested Jay. "How'm I supposed to stay level with you guys if I can't see you?"
"Kai, can we get a little light over here?" called Cole hopefully.
"I only have two arms!"
"Woah, easy, geez. We'll manage if we have to. Right guys?"
"We'd manage better if someone had a spare hand for a flashlight . . . " muttered Nya.
"Oh! Wait! I've got an idea!" cried Jay all of a sudden. "Back in a flash!" Without warning he let go of his lead rope and darted back up the tunnel slope; Lloyd gave a yelp of dismay as the full weight of the cauldron's right side started to pull him forwards. Kai abandoned his melting efforts and stepped over to take Jay's place.
Jay was gone for a little longer than a "flash." The others' grumbling was just starting to build up a proper head of steam when the patter of running footsteps sounded from above. A strange whining sound accompanied it, and soon a flickering beam of light danced through the gloom. Then another one joined it.
Finally Jay appeared, grinning like a toothpaste commercial and piloting a bizarre device. It was a square platform with four small rotors attached to the corners, allowing it to hover smoothly at Jay's side. Four flashlights were hastily taped to the underside of it, sending beams of light out in four directions.
"Bonus points!" said Jay brightly. "The propellors will help to clear the smoke out of here."
"Well that's great, but we kinda need your hands free to hang onto this rope!" retorted Kai.
"Keep your hair on," Jay scoffed. He tucked the flying table's remote into his belt and resumed his place on the rope team. "I designed this thing to automatically maintain a constant distance from the remote, so it'll follow us down without me piloting it. It's also equipped with a rapid-pulse sonar system that allows it to avoid walls and obstacles, as well as tell it when it's sinking towards the floor. It can compensate for the weight of whatever you put on top of it!"
"Gotta admit, that's pretty neat," said Lloyd admiringly, squinting through a flashlight beam to get a better look at the invention. Cole leaned over to Jay as they resumed moving slowly down the tunnel.
"You can make it do all that," he whispered, "but you can't remember that helicopters need a second rotor to balance the first?"
"Shut up." Jay cast him a look of mixed chagrin and amusement. "I'm a man of lofty engineering; I don't get bogged down in the details."
Finally they made it to the bottom of the tunnel. They were all worn-out and rather irritable by then; they were more used to quick, intense action than to slow and precarious processes. Once the wedge gently bumped to a halt at the base of the tunnel, Kai let out a long, frustrated breath and without warning winged a punch at Jay's head.
"What was that for?" demanded Jay, ducking.
"You were closest," muttered Kai, then dodged Jay's return swipe and turned back to the ice wedge, melting it carefully from below to lower the vat to the floor. Then they all dragged the cauldron the last few meters into the cave, and Cole whistled to catch the Ultra Dragon's attention. Jay's invention, rotors still whirling, blew the thick salty-cherry smell around the cavern.
The dragon's four heads seemed to perk up all at once. Shard's neck was the first to snake over, sniffing heavily and tilting in scrutiny. Without warning the former ice dragon plunged its muzzle deep into the cauldron and began to gulp down the mash like there was no tomorrow, and before anyone could even react the other heads were doing the same. The cave rang with cheers.
"Dragons have a seriously weird sense of taste," said Jay amusedly, backing away to a distance at which inadvertantly losing a limb was less likely.
It was a while before the snarfing and eager slobbery sounds gave way to the calmer shllllp, shllllllllllp of the cauldron being licked. The Ultra Dragon finally began to notice the attention it was getting again. Flame developed the hiccups, to the other heads' dismay and the ninjas' amusement.
"Twenty-four hours and you'll be good as new, buddy," smiled Jay, scratching Wisp's forehead as the dragon sniffed eagerly for any leftover traces of its meal. "Keep taking it easy till then, okay?"
Flame hiccuped again, spewing sparks from his nostrils.
"You see, this is what happens when you eat too fast," scolded Kai, grinning. "You've been hanging around Rocky too long!"
Seconds later he was sprawled back on his hands and covered in dust, courtesy of a highly offended Rocky. The others tried not to laugh too hard.
Cole shook his head and chuckled, scratching Rocky underneath the chin as a still-hiccuping Flame attempted to lick his former owner consolingly. All the hassle and snappishness while getting the mash ready, to say the least of getting it into the cave, was forgotten for the moment. The old team feeling, though—that mushy warmth inside he'd sometimes get when they were together and happy—that was still missing. He didn't know if it was just him, or all of them.
But he didn't think too much about it. All he could really register was the relief plunging through him. It had all been worth it, every last minute of it. Tomorrow, for the first time in a year, the Ultra Dragon would fly again.
Leaving the dragon to continue its healing process, they headed back to the Bounty, where Zane, ever tireless, had whipped up a satisfying dinner. A few dishes seemed . . . off, here and there, but he was clearly regaining his old skills at a crackling pace. When they'd first returned from Chen's Island he hadn't even remembered how to make instant rice.
The table was pretty quiet, aside from the clinking of dishes and utensils. Everyone looked much calmer and more contented than before, but the occasional ripples of conversation just never took off. Maybe they were all just tired; either way it somehow clashed curiously with the nostalgia of eating in the Bounty's little mess hall, where they'd shared so many meals in the past.
Cole searched for a conversation starter and was puzzled to find none. He was exhausted too, after all, and the giddy relief of their success had worn away into a pleasant but drowsy apathy.
There was a mixed-berry pie for dessert; pulling it closer to grab a piece, he was suddenly struck by the impulse to scoop the whole thing up and wing it across the table at Kai. There'd been a day when he wouldn't have thought twice before going through with it, and five seconds later they'd all be embroiled in a food fight. Now, though, he found himself calculating. First Kai would yelp and be ticked off; the others would jump and—Cole ran an extrapolation—probably just grin. Possibly resignedly. A grumpy Kai would chuck the half-empty pie tin back at Cole and roll his eyes, the others would exchange hesitant glances, each waiting for someone else to follow up . . . and maybe nobody would.
Annnnnnnnd that would just be incredibly awkward. Cole cringed at the mere thought of it and hastily just took a slice of pie. Suddenly the very idea seemed stupid, and he wondered how in the world they had gotten into so many food fights back when they were younger. What was different now?
They were, he realized. They were getting smarter, more mature. Back in the old days they'd all acted on the first impulse that struck them and plunged headlong into anything that looked like fun, but now they calculated the consequences of every action, even the most trivial.
Come to think, that explained just about everything he'd been fretting about the other day, too. That was why they had all changed so much; life was whipping them into shape. They had started as a band of reckless, idealistic, high-spirited youngsters who believed being a hero was like in the movies, but experience had taken them and ground them down. Had taught them that no victory came without a price. Taught them caution, cynicism, respect for danger. Whittled them into serious fighters.
Suddenly it all seemed so childish, the old days. The wisecracks and pranks, the competition, the griping about training, the inconsequential fights that usually worked themselves out with a pillow war when they thought Sensei Wu was sleeping. All the fun they had shared. The time for fun was over forever. They were grown-ups now.
That was a good thing, he realized. And yet some selfish part of him still howled in dismay.