The three droids slowly crept in our direction as Kaiser shouted down, “Italix! I have disengaged your projectile offenses, but use any other means necessary. Bruno, Scorp-201, do your worst to our enemies!”
Looks like Arduwan was handling the big guy and Wraith was gonna dance with the scorpion. So that leaves Italia for me.
In a matter of moments, Arduwan lunged at the strongman with her sword. He caught the blade with his bare hands and flung Arduwan overtop of himself like a suplex. It completely knocked the wind out of him.
Wraith immediately started using his extreme agility to dodge powerful and swift strikes from the scorpions stinged. I had yet to see him move so fast!
Italia slowly got within ten feet of me before her right arm transformed into a thin chainsaw blade. She took a swipe at me and grazed my suit vest. The next strike knocked the baton out of my hand. All three of us had so much to handle on our own that there was no way we could possibly help each other.
Arduwan caught her breath and got to her feet. She opted not to pick her sword back up and started to grapple with Bruno. It appeared to be an equal display of strength and the crowd was most impressed.
Wraith on the other hand was running out of steam. In a last ditch effort, he retrieved the flare gun we had bought from his satchel and set off the shot at the droid, but it barely fazed it. The scorpion barreled towards him and landed a strike on his rib cage. This sent him to the ground and the scorpion crawled over him. It struck its stinger down at the ground and he dodge his head to the side just in time. It was everything he could just to not get killed. He may have had ‘plot armor’ as he put it in Callist, but here in Brasshaven, his skills only took him so far.
I on the other hand wasn’t fairing much better. Italia wasn’t as fast as the scorpion or as strong as Bruno, but she was a cunning and fearful opponent. It was all I could not to get hit. Up until this point, I hadn’t used magic. I wanted it to be an opportune moment. Well, I got my chance. When Italia took a downward swipe at me with her chainsaw arm, I caught her just before the chain.
“Chill!” I shouted, as I cast a freezing spell that enveloped the bottom half of her forearm. The ice jammed up the chainsaw blade from rotating. She leapt backwards to see what had happened.
I noticed Kaiser jump up from his chair to get a better look. After a moment of observing, he said, “What was that? How can he do something like that? Italix! Keep his brain intact! I wish to examine it after the battle.”
With that order she straightened back up and started walking towards me again. I saw that Arduwna was neck and neck with Bruno and Wraith was probably going to be killed within moments by that scorpion.
Things were looking bleak. Time slowed down for me. I looked up at the balcony and saw Emily standing there. Her face battered and bruised from the slapping. Beside her was a smiling Alabaster. I didn’t have much time to take it all in, but they say when you’re about to die, your life flashes before your eyes. Well, mine didn’t. My time with Emily’s did. I reminisced about how we met that day at her office. How we survived the night at Cadaver’s manor. The attack on our hotel room and the trial that put Creole away for a short time. Then she came back to my world with me and befriended Anabel and Higgins. She gave my ex-girlfriend a tongue lashing. And she almost threw up in disgust of the pastel colored World X. Everything led us up to this moment and I felt our time together getting cut short. I know there was only one thing that would ensure at least one of us had a chance to make it out of here alive.
“Finish this!” Kaiser ordered, still standing on the edge of his balcony seating.
As I held my hand up and took aim in the direction of the observation deck, I could see Alabaster’s worry wash over his face.
“Lightning bolt!” I yelled, casting a precise streak of lightning from my hand to the deck.
But you must be wondering, what was my aim? If I had used this on Italia, I would be completely drained of energy and likely still killed by Bruno or the scorpion. So that wasn’t my best utilization of this spell. I could’ve aimed for Roboto but that would leave Alabaster alive. And likewise, if I had killed Alabaster, Roboto would still have been there. What I took aim at…was Emily’s freedom.
The lightning shot from my fingertips and zapped across the arena, ultimately landing against Kaiser’s droid control box. It blasted to pieces and appeared to badly damage Kaiser’s hand in the process. I saw Alabaster and Clint shielding their eyes as I collapsed to the ground in front of Italia.
The arena fell silent and Italia stopped dead in her tracks. She slowly turned around and looked up at the deck. Then suddenly, almost as fast as the lightning bolt, she took off running in that direction and leapt up eye level with Kaiser. Beneath her skirt you could see that she was propulsed by CO2 powered canisters protruding from her calf muscles. As she hung in the air for a moment, her arm converted into a large machine gun and she unleashed dozens of rounds straight into the chest and midsection of Kaiser Roboto. Her dress acted as a parachute and she began to slowly float down as she turned her fire on the two guards flanking Kaiser’s destroyed body.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Just then, I heard Arduwan smash Bruno to pieces and run towards the scorpion droid overtop of Wraith. I was too exhausted from exerting that much magic at once to do anything. But when Arduwan got to Wraith, she smashed the idle scorpion and said, “Oh, Wraith, oh no!” He had taken a stinger strike to his right lung.
Emily had just started to come to, from her zombified state as Alabaster was recovering from shielding himself from potential shrapnel coming off his no defunct cohort. The moment she realized she was in control again, she ran screaming towards Clint, knocking him off the balcony. He wasn’t dead, but he wasn’t in good shape. The entire arena was in an uproar. People were screaming and clamoring to escape the scene. Italia was on a rampage killing every human officer in Kaiser’s militia that was in sight.
Emily then turned her attention to Alabaster, who was still seated. She wasn’t a physical threat on her own at all, but she reached for one of Alabaster’s fallen guards rifles and in an uncharacteristic move, started to shoot. A bullet caught him in his shoulder and he fell out of his chair and started to crawl. She went after him and fired again. This shot missed. When she pulled the trigger again she realized she was out of bullets. Alabaster rose to his feet and ran down the stairs to the balcony clutching his wound.
I was still almost completely incapacitated. All I could see was Wraith motioning to Arduwan to give him his satchel. She did and the next thing I saw was him pull a small vial with red liquid out. He drank it down and within moments, sprang up to his feet. It was another healing potion!
He and Arduwan made their way to me quickly. The stadium was still in a panic but none of Kaiser’s men were concerned with us. Wraith knelt down and produced yet another potion. He started to give it to me as I lay there.
“Wraith, you brought potions!” I expressed.
“Yeah, man. We’ve been through this. You think I’m dumb enough to come to a place like this without some?”
The potion touched my lips and as I drank I began to feel my fatigue relieved. I saw Emily coming down the outer staircase to the balcony and I decided to keep a little of the potion for her since I knew she had been beaten so hard.
“Emily!” I shouted as I met her embrace. I gave her the last of the potion.
“Eric, I tried to kill Alabaster but he got away. I’m certain he has the stone, so he’s likely to go back to the mansion and jump worlds again.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll stop him. But first…” I said as I motioned my comrades to the severely wounded Clint Bowers that was crawling across the stadium floor away from us.
Things had quieted down. The observers of these gladiator games had all dispersed and Kaiser’s men were being hunted down. You could hear the sound of Italia’s gunfire rattle in the distance every so often.
We all walked over to the injured rich punk and stood over him as he began to cry. No one said a word. We just stood there as he pathetically tried crawling away. He left a puddle of piss behind like mucus from a snail.
“Clint!” Emily said, firmly, “I wanted to let you live since I thought your role in all of this was happenstance. The four of us aren’t murderous barbarians…”
“I am,” Arduwan corrected.
“She is,” Acknowledged Emily, “but as a unit, we aren't.”
“So what are you going to do?!” he cried, afraid to look up at us as he laid there on his stomach.
“To be honest…I’d like to let you try and claw your way out of this desert. That should be a punishment fitting enough for a…”
*BAM* *BAM* *BAM* *BAM*
Before Emily could finish her thought, Italia landed on the ground next to Clint and finished him off for us. Smoke fumed from the barrel of her arm gun until she transformed it back to her normal arm. She then turned to us.
“I had to eliminate him,” she said, “you don’t know the terror they were planning. He was not innocent in this matter.”
I was taken aback but understood. I wasn’t quite sure what to say to Italia, since we didn’t really know each other. But she addressed me first.
“You are Noble’s son, correct?”
“That’s right.”
“I loved and respected your father. We had common goals.”
I was unsure if I should say anything about Higgins, but I figured she should know what happened.
“I want you to know something, Italia.”
“Yes?”
“Reginald trained me to be a world walker. He was like a father figure to me since I never really knew my dad.”
“Was?”
“Yes. He died. It was a few months ago.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” she continued, with a tremble in her voice.
“But he spoke to me about you. He loved you very much. I buried him with the locket you made for him. Tell us…what happened to you after that day on the train?”
“Your father and Reginald had a mission to accomplish. They had assumed I was dead and couldn’t afford to keep my body. But after the incident in Chimney City, Kaiser’s scouts recovered me. He worked tirelessly to rebuild me but his work was cut short during the final battle at the foundry. I was in a stasis until Kaiser resurfaced and resumed his work.”
“So you have no memory of the time between then and now?” I asked.
“No. Thankfully. It would’ve been far too painful to have lived that long as a mindless drone.”
Emily put her arm around the back of my waist.
“What will you do now?”
“I’m going to hunt down the remaining members of the miltian and then I’m going to destroy the droid production facility.”
“Then what?”
She paused for a moment before answering, “self terminate.”
“But you can’t! You should come with us! You’re practically family. And I promise you, you wouldn’t be the strangest woman at my house.”
“No, Eric. I died on that train all those years ago. The life in me now is artificial. I have my memories but my blood isn’t my own. It’s time for me to end Kaiser Roboto’s legacy.”
I guess I understood where she was coming from, but I was still sad. If only Higgins had known she was alive all this time…or at least, kind of alive. Maybe things could’ve been different.
“You should go now,” she noted, “Alabaster has the stone and is certainly on his way back to the waterfall. If you don’t kill him now, he could do this again in another world.”
She was right. We had to go now if there was even a remote chance we could intercept him.
“Goodbye, Italia. Thank you for everything.”