I’m sure I didn’t get as much ‘everyone’ action in the last chapter, but this one will be a big one. Expect lots of fun battle attacks from your character and others.
Chapter 16: The First Hero: The Impending Darkness
“This city is huge.” groaned Jake as they landed from the high walls. Many regular people were living here, doing regular people things.
“How are we going to find our first hero?” Raffi wondered, looking around, but then Shade pointed at the giant castle that they had seen before.
“I’m sure this place is led by a king or queen, we’ll simply ask them.” he told them. The straight path leading the way was pretty cleared, so they started running that way.
“Is there even a true name for this town or it just…Rock City?” Ash wondered.
“I’m pretty sure we’ll find that out once we get to the castle as well.” answered Kevin as they got to the moat that surrounded the castle. People either used their wings or followed through an ice bridge Shade/Raffi created and then continued on their way to the castle.
“Halt!” two guards said, standing in front of the main and giant door.
“Let us in, I’m the American Dragon.” Jake said, turning into his red dragon form. The two guards looked at each other and then opened the door for them. They sped in and started ascending the closest stairs.
“Hey, hey…” a guard stopped them, “If you’re looking for the princess, she’s down that hall, up one set of stairs, and then down another hall.” the soldier pointed in the direction of the first hall. They nodded and began to run through again.
“You know what?” Florence realized, making them stop while they were at the end of the first hall, “We don’t even know this person’s name… how will we find the first hero?”
“That’s true… Dark Shade, maybe you could help us.” Shade said to his shadow. It moved and then he popped out from the barely seen shadow.
“I helped you in the jungle, what is it now?” he asked, making all of them groan.
“At least he’s not laughing.” muttered Kevin under his breath.
“Can you go to the sages and find out if they know the name of the first hero?” asked Shade to his darker self. Hearing Kevin’s comment, he nodded and grinned, floating over to him.
“Eee hee hee hee!” Dark Shade giggled in his ear again and sped off before Kevin could slash Dark Shade to death.
“Shade, have you considered therapy for that guy?” Raffi asked and then starting the pace of running again.
“So until then, we’re going to want to appeal to the princess so that we may get an ally for our forces.” Jake said.
“Hey, what about the king or queen of this place? I wonder where they are.” added Ash as the finally got to the last hall and sped down it.
“Well, we’ll just have to find out once we go past these doors.” Florence answered. She stood in front and pushed the double doors open.
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The doors opened and led them outside to a balcony area.
“Hmm?” a female voice wondered. The throne’s back was facing them, so they had to run down a little set of stairs and saw the princess on her throne. She had on an elegant and long white dress and dark black hair that goes down far, but not SUPER long. Around her neck was a simple lined necklace, but what was important was the pendant at the end of it.
“Are you the princess of this city?” Shade asked and she stood up and walked to the end of the balcony area and then turned to them.
“Yes I am, Princess Garnet Til Alexandros XVII.” Garnet told them.
“So are you the one in charge here?” asked Raffi as Garnet leaned on the edge of the balcony.
“Well… kind of. The queen just recently passed away and we’re kinda waiting for my power to fully make me the queen.” she told them, “And what of yourselves?” Garnet decided to ask them. They looked at each other for a moment.
“I’m Ash. I like blood and I hate bees.” Ash introduced. They all kinda gave her an odd look and Garnet simply laughed.
“I actually meant on why you’re here in Alexandria.” she answered.
“I knew it wasn’t called Rock City…” grumbled Ash, crossing her arms.
“Well, we’re looking for someone, but we’re not sure where to find them.” Kevin said.
“Well I’ll be happy to find whoever you’re looking for; we’ll just need a little information to find them. Anything you know about this person?” Garnet asked them.
“We have a little help that should be back here soon.” Shade said. Almost like they were magic words, Dark Shade flew down from the sky and floated in front of Shade.
“The sages said that all they were able to get was that the first hero will be the highest royalty in the city that you need to travel to.” and with that, Dark Shade simply floated into Shade’s shadow. Garnet looked to the side and sighed.
“I knew that this day would come.” she told them, “Before the queen died, she told me that I would not be the actual person to rule Alexandria, people from outside the city will come and take me to do an even more important task for the world.” they all looked at each other.
“Since you’re our first hero, we’re going to want to know a little more about you. What combat do you do?” Jake asked her.
“I’m a novice earth elementalist,” Garnet began, lifting her hand and rock pulling up from the floor and then back down, “but my main power lies in summoning.”
“Then you’ll clearly be great help for us.” Shade said, smiling. Garnet smiled back and some wind blew through her hair. Suddenly, a guard came rushing in.
“Sorry to interrupt, Your Majesty, but we have a big problem on the horizon.” the guard said. They all wondered what this was as the guard walked closer. He pointed past the balcony and something bad was in that direction. The guard handed them a mini-telescope and they saw this horror slowly coming his way, even if it seemed to be far away.
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The group started running down the halls and were about to go down the stairs, but Garnet went a different way.
“Something wrong?” Florence asked her.
“I’m in a dress, I can’t fight like this.” Garnet said, finding a room and walking into after opening the door.
“What is with girls and their constant need to change their outfits?” Shade wondered before they began running down the stairs, down the hall, and through the main door. Outside, many people were screaming and running around crazily.
“We’re going to have to wait for Garnet before we can go off.” said Kevin as he pulled out his sword. Florence pulled out her bow and they continued to wait until
Garnet in her new outfit came rushing out. She held a racket in her hand, which most likely held the powers to her summoning.
“Come on, we have to get to that terror.” Garnet said, waiting for everyone (who could) to turn into their flight form. Florence went with Shade and Garnet went with Jake.
“We’re here…” Raffi said slowly, pointing in that way. In front of them were five giant airships, the middle one being the largest. They were made of giant, metal coatings and were coated with guns. While far away from Alexandria, the first wave of attack from the airships would destroy the city.
“Let’s go.” muttered Garnet seriously.
“We should split up into small groups and take on the outermost ships and then meet in the middle one. Raffi, Kevin, and Ash took one way while Shade, Florence, Garnet, and Jake were on the other side.
“This way.” Raffi told her group, running one way. Many robots coated the ship, most of them holding very short-ranged lasers.
“I’ll take the robots,” Ash began, “Kevin, you get to the interior and destroy the inside and Raffi should take out the guns.” the two of them nodded. Kevin quickly shot back into his dragon form and flew over the robots.
“Well, since I can’t take the blood from these hunk-of-junks…” muttered Ash, closing her eyes and then shooting them open, “I’ll do something else.” her teeth turned into fangs and she flew to the leading robot. She kicked the laser that was in its hand and bit its neck.
“Beep brrzt, beep.” the robot muttered. Suddenly, the gray, tin coating turned green and the robot turned to another group of robots, running to them and going kamikaze.
“This will be easy.” Ash chuckled evilly and let out a hiss, shooting at multiple other robots. The newly green robots turned around and shot at the evil robots.
Raffi had gone straight to destroying the guns that were aiming at her and Ash. She controlled the water in a thin, nearby cloud. Twirling her body around with her arms in a dancing-like motion, the gun got whipped through multiple times and it got destroyed.
“I’ve got to be quick.” she whispered to herself. Raffi turned and then ran to the next gun turret with the same whip of water she took from the cloud.
Kevin sped out of the interior of the ship quicker than expected.
“Ash, Raffi, next ship!” he yelled, deciding to make it easier to simply keep his wings out, but stay in human form. Raffi did the same and Ash simply had her vampire wings out, so it didn’t matter. Once they flew off their first ship, it started to blow up and slowly descended into the open field below.
“Garnet, are you ready to show us what you can do?” Shade asked, grinning at her. She grinned back and nodded, moving her head back a little to push her hair out of her eyes. Taking the racket with both hands, Dagger span it a tiny bit and then suddenly, an ice goddess appeared.
“Shiva, Diamond Dust!” she yelled to the ice goddess. Shiva looked at the main rooming of the ship and blew ice over it as well as from the palms of her hands. This attack caused a giant thing of ice to cover it and then shatter, leaving behind lots of ice and destroyed robots.
“Great job, Garnet. Jake and I can take out the ship. Shade, you take Garnet and as much of this ice as you can with you to the next ship.” Florence said. They all nodded and Shade sped over to the ice. He turned it into water and let it cover his and Garnet’s feet and then took them to the second ship.
CRASH! Their first ship suddenly blew up right after Jake, with Florence, flew out of the main room. They both landed on the second ship where Shade and Garnet already were waiting for them.
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“This ship is more advanced than the one before it.” Raffi muttered, looking at the giant mass of robots headed their way.
“Then we’ll have to fight harder.” simply answered Kevin, breathing ice as far as he could on the first bit of the robots. He jumped into the air and crossed his arms, controlling the ice-coated robots and then down on others.
“Take this!” yelled Raffi, speeding into the robot battle and shooting her water attack through a long line of robots and then freezing the stream. She controlled the ice over the ship.
“I don’t think we’ll have much luck here, but we might as well try.” sighed the vampire. She took control of nearby robots and ordered them to destroy the gun turrets nearby.
“Crazy Trio Attack!” Kevin called to his two others. They turned to him and nodded, going over and getting into a triangle formation, Kevin in the middle and floating in the air. Raffi controlled as much water as she could from the clouds and Kevin was adding on to it with ice, that Raffi simply melted with the regular water.
“It’s good!” Raffi said, making the water cover the triangle way. Ash formed bats to surround the inside of the water triangle and sent them to the robots. This made the bats, with the water triangle, go there. Raffi and Kevin did what they could to freeze a tiny bit of the water on as many robots as they could.
“We’re done!” yelled Ash, moving out of the way and collecting her bat army. Raffi and Kevin crossed paths and moved their arms forward in the same motion and the robots flew off the airship. This was because the two controlled the ice stuck on so many of them.
“It’s not enough…” they were all panting, but another army of robots simply appeared in their place.
“What’s… that?” wondered Raffi, pointing at something that attached to the side of the airship. It seemed to be a vine-made rope of sorts. Multiple ones appeared and a familiar group appeared.
“Giovanni!” Kevin said with a grin. Geo appeared from the side with multiple other people from his group. Most of them had gloves just like Geo’s or machete weapons. Maybe spears or vines would be other weapons, but the sludge gloves and machetes were the most popular.
“Yo.” laughed Geo, shooting many giant bursts of sludge at groups of robots.
“We’ll take care of these guys, you go in and destroy the inside.” a warrior told Kevin, Raffi, and Ash. They nodded and ran past the open path to the inside of the ship.
Back with Shade, Florence, Garnet, and Jake…
“So can you just summon another… you know… summon to destroy the ship?” Jake asked Garnet.
“No, I need time to recharge.” simply answered the princess.
“We’ll protect you until then.” replied Florence. She pulled out an arrow and shot it at a robot, knocking it over. Jake simply turned into his full dragon form and spat a lot of fire at the robots.
“Fire melts metal!” he taunted, clawing a few robots off the edge. Jake let out a little laugh of triumph.
“My turn…” Shade muttered. He put his hands together and then quickly apart, splitting the giant water stream into a quarter of the water and then three-fourths of it, “Haaaaah!” he yelled, twisting his right arm and making the smaller bit of water freeze on the ground. Controlling the ice, he flew into the air.
“Take this!” right before landing, the large water wave he carried with him quickly span and shot the hollow robots out of the way in a circle. One went Garnet’s way on accident.
“AH!” she yelled. She jumped out of the way and controlled some rock that was far down to form into a ‘bat’ form. Garnet set down her racket and smacked the robot off the ship. She let out a dangerous smirk and picked up her racket before gasping.
“Guy’s I’m going to summon Bahamut! We’ll want to leave!” Garnet yelled. The three of them sped out of their battle and to Garnet. The usual, Garnet was with Jake and Florence was with Shade. Garnet turned to the ship and slightly twirled her racket, making the sky dark.
“Summon Bahamut, and use Mega Flare!” the giant, dragon god came flying down and flew across the airship. It flew around in the air to turn around and blew a few fire shots in the air, which didn’t do anything. Bahamut powered up a great attack and then shot a giant, blue laser at the airship, which turned into a giant flare laser on impact. This destroyed the second ship for them.
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Before the other second ship blew up, the people from the jungle left and they all met at the giant, main airship.
“It’s time to meet who’s running this.” Shade said. Surprisingly, there were no robots or anything. They ran inside and farther in, getting deeper and deeper into the place. Once they reached the main room, they saw a giant chair in front of them, manning the control panel.
“So you’ve arrived.” the booming voice said, not turning around.
“Who are you?” Kevin demanded. A chuckle could be heard and the person turned around, revealing himself to be Maelstrom.
“Maelstrom!? But the last time we saw you was at the North Pole!” gasped Jake.
“That’s right. I would have destroyed Christmas if you hadn’t interfered. But this new plan is perfect, the first hero is in the city that I’m going to!” Maelstrom said, grinning from his shadowed face. Garnet let out a worried sound.
“How do you know about the ‘first hero’?” Florence asked, but he shook his head, getting out of his seat.
“This isn’t the time for that, it’s time for a battle. However, I knew a giant battle with me being teamed up on isn’t the best thing, so I made this…” he muttered, pressing a button on his control panel. Lightning covered the room.
“What’s this going to do?” Raffi asked him, but Maelstrom shook his head again.
“You’ll find out in the battle… but you can only choose four representatives.” the Maelstrom said.
“Shade, you’ll probably want to be the representative for water.” Raffi said. He nodded and took the water she had, mixing it with the water Shade brought with him.
“Garnet should definitely battle.” Kevin said. She seemed nervous, but simply nodded, “I might want to do it, too.” Kevin said.
“I haven’t got a good chance for a nice battle, I want in on this.” Ash said with a grin. The four of them turned to Maelstrom while the other four took a step back.
“Very well.”
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“In this battle, it will be turn based. Determined by the power of you all, an order will be set.” Maelstrom said to them. In their view, a ‘one’ appeared in front of Kevin, a ‘two’ in front of Ash, a ‘three’ in front of Maelstrom, a ‘four’ in front of Garnet, a ‘five’ in front of Shade, and then a ‘six’ in front of Maelstrom again.
“Attack!” Kevin said, his sword in his hands. He ran up to Maelstrom and slashed once and then jumped back.
“Attack!” Ash used this as well, jumping to Maelstrom and doing a roundhouse kick.
“Shadow Ball!” Maelstrom stood in front a little and lifted his dark hand. He aimed it at the middle and Garnet and Ash got hit. He then stood back after the hit.
“Rock Spire.” Garnet held her racket and then a rock spiked down from the ceiling. She controlled it to shoot down and smack into Maelstrom.
“Wave!” Shade jumped into the air and let the water carry him to the middle of the room, in front of Maelstrom. He controlled the wave to move up and he moved with the wave until it crashed on Maelstrom. At this point, Shade jumped off and froze it on him. Once it shattered, Shade gathered the pieces and went back to his spot with the water.
“Dark Maelstrom!” this attack, matching his name, created a dark vortex to appear and suddenly, a storm made of black and dark colors surrounded the four, causing them all to be hurt. The vortex disappeared after this.
“Blizzard Blade!” Kevin coated his sword with a large bit of ice, making it larger in size, too. He ran at Maelstrom and jumped into the air, stabbing his sword through him and then controlling all the ice on it to turn into tiny shards that shot into Maelstrom.
“Vampire’s Feast!” Ash jumped ahead and shot her hands into the air. Suddenly, Maelstrom was at a scary manor location where a giant Ash, with three other unknown vampires, surrounded Maelstrom. The four of them surrounded Maelstrom in bats and then took a giant bite out of Maelstrom. At the end, they all appeared back in the same place.
“Clones from the Black!” Maelstrom put his hands together and then quickly apart. From him, four shadows were made and they made shadow Maelstroms in front of all of them. Dark swords appeared and shadow attacks were shot in all of them. At the end, the shadows vanished and Maelstrom put his hand back to his sides.
“Judgment Bolt!” Dagger put her focus on the racket and suddenly the heroes vanished. Lightning and clouds appeared and the lightning god Ramuh appeared. He threw his staff on Maelstrom and lightning coated Maelstrom.
“Uhn…” Maelstrom fell back on his button and the lightning field vanished.
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Not only that, but Maelstrom accidentally broke the control panel and it set to ‘self-stop’. The whole thing completely shut down forever.
“Grr… I may not be able to get the first hero, but I was able to stall.” Maelstrom said. He went down into a shadow and flew out of the room. The airship stopped right in place and began to fall very quickly.
“We have to get out of here.” Garnet said. They sped out of the inside part and flew off of the airship, landing on the meadow area near Alexandria. The giant airship landed in the space between Alexandria meadow and the start of the jungle. It made a bridge!
“I’m sure this will make the jungle people happy. This way, people won’t have to invade their land to get to Alexandria.” Shade said with a smile. Kevin had wandered a little from the group.
“Well, I’ve got to tell my kingdom about my leaving.” the princess said slowly.
“Here, I’ll take you.” Raffi said, flying with Garnet. Kevin then walked back to the group, closing his phone.
“Great news guys!” he said, “Since we’re going to be traveling so much, I called my cousin Cid, who designs airships like these, and said that he would travel with us and we’d use his old airship!” they all smiled.
“Okay, here it is.” once Cid had gotten to them, he left the wooden airship that was smaller than the airships that tried to attack Alexandria. Also, it was more shaped like a boat and had a few propellers on top of it.
“And we’re ready to go.” Raffi said once she and Garnet had gotten back.
“The final hero is in the Atlantic Ocean area, we’d better leave soon.” Ash said. They all nodded and boarded Cid’s airship. The boarding dock closed up and it started to fly off.
Back at Alexandria…
“Without a royal hand, what are we going to do over here?” a royal official sighed.
“I’ll rule Alexandria…” a female voice said in a somewhat sinister tone. The royal official gasped at the sight of this person.
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There you go! I LOVED working on this. There were many different battle songs I listened to for the whole ‘airship’ battle and then one specific song for the Maelstrom fight. Enjoy!