The Battle Majestic (Round 4 - Magpie Skies)

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

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"What the hell is going on?" Blitz asked. It didn't help that the last hour or so was a blur. He vaguely remembered talking with Vex, getting angry with the satyr, and then... nothing, really. Other than an odd feeling that he'd been safe for all that time.

He looked on the ground nearby and saw a number of dead guards. Then he looked at the Tender he was riding on and the swordsman desperately attempting to steer it.

He wondered where that feeling could possibly have come from.

"Well, what's going on is that we're getting the hell out of here before that tree shatters the dome and fills this place with water," Jacob said. "I guess maybe we can try to stop that, too; looks like the tree's in the same direction as the portal."

"Portal?" Blitz asked.

"Portal, rift, whatever. I'm guessing that's what it is, anyways. Steven found it and it's going to get us all out of this battle. Hopefully. Dammit, that's still not a great explanation."

"And we're trying to ride on Sen because...?"

"Because he can move faster than we can, especially carrying an unconscious guy. Now if we could just get the stupid thing to stay on track..."

As if on cue, Sen suddenly turned aside and started sniffing at a Yagg's corpse.

"See what I mean?" Jacob sighed. He gave Sen a small whack with the side of his sword. The Tender yelped and started running again.

Blitz rubbed his head. It still hurt a bit. Then something struck him.

"Wait. Can't you open portals or something? I kind of remember you doing that."

Yes I can, but I've got limited mana here and more to the point, there's already a major space-time disruption around here and it's extremely dangerous to open a portal near one of those, it could even be worse than drowning in the water.

That was what Jacob was going to say, but the helicopter started shooting at them before he could begin.

"Surrender, humans!" Liss's voice shouted through a loudspeaker. "Hand over that specimen and tell us what your government wants with us, or die here like dogs."

"Can you, uh, take care of that, Blitz?" Jacob asked. "I'm going to be a little occupied here."

Blitz shrugged, and fired a blast of lightning at the helicopter. The bolt dissipated against it immediately.

"I really should review our projects more often," Liss cackled. "Here I thought we'd have to start from scratch to outfit a Sentinel with electrical shielding, but it turned out we already had this prototype almost ready to go. It just needed a few finishing touches."

"Uh, looks like I can't help here," Blitz said, turning back to Jacob. Then he saw the open portal in front of them.

"Why didn't you do that sooner?" he asked.

"Because up until a minute ago, things weren't quite bad enough to risk destroying the universe."

"Wait, wha..."

Before Blitz could finish, Sen ran into the portal, dragging his passengers along.

***

Iris prepared for another lunge, but Vex was ready this time. As she moved forward, he swung his broomstick at her legs, knocking her to the ground again.

Before Iris could get up, she felt a hand close around her throat. Slowly, Vex lifted her off the ground, then carefully turned his arm slightly so she was facing him.

"Honestly, I was hoping you'd give me a better fight," he said with a smirk. "Oh well, I suppose I've had plenty of experience with women disappointing me..."

Before Vex could say any more, he was interrupted by a kick to his chin and a knife slash across his forearm. He howled in pain and dropped Iris. She quickly pulled herself off the ground and charged at Vex again, but he leapt back just in time.

"This almost makes me wish Magog was still there," Vex growled, rubbing the wound on his arm. "But on the bright side, you've earned yourself a second chance to impress me."

"Shut up," Iris growled. "I don't care what you think about me. I just care about seeing you dead."

"You're not the first woman to tell me that, you know."

She hurled her knife at his face. He tried to move out of the way, but it still nicked his shoulder as it flew past.

"That may have made you feel better," he said as Iris leapt towards him, "but it wasn't particularly smart to throw away your only weapon."

Iris reached into her medicine pouch and pulled out some powder.

"And it's not too smart to make assumptions about how many weapons somebody has," she said, blowing the powder into Vex's face.

Soon, Vex felt groggy, and his vision went blurry. Iris's fists struck him in the face repeatedly, and he could barely even tell he was feeling any pain. Desperately, he clung to his broomstick in an attempt to just stay upright. It was not a very successful attempt.

Iris smirked, and headed down the hall to retrieve her dagger. It was time to finish the job, and beating Vex to death with a broomstick would take too long. Besides, if she cut him in the right places, he might bleed to death even if someone else died first in the flood.

As she bent down to pick it up, a glove flew at her and punched her in the face.

When she regained her composure enough to process what happened, she saw one glove waving at her and the other flying away with her knife, towards Steven, wearing Jacob's plate vest.

"You're dead," she snarled, smacking the nearest glove out of her way and running after the other one.

"I guess that means you don't want to hear about how I found a way out of this battle," Steven replied, taking the knife. "Oh well, I guess we'll just leave you behind."

Iris suddenly leapt at him, before he could react. She tackled him to the ground, and he dropped the knife. She held his throat down with one hand, and reached for the knife with the other.

Just in time to have a panicking Tender appear from nowhere, run over her outstretched hand and then trip, depositing its passengers uncomfortably on the floor.

Jacob groaned, saw what was happening, and quickly grabbed Iris' arms.

"Blitz!" he shouted. "Help Steven, if he chokes to death we're probably not getting out of here."

Blitz nodded, and pulled Iris' hand away. Steven gasped in relief.

"How'd you get here so fast?" he asked. "I didn't even see you coming! Or hear, for that matter."

Blitz, Jacob, and Iris simply stared behind him. Steven turned around to see what it was.

There was a glowing portal in the hallway. A stream of light had emerged from it, and was passing through the doorway his gloves had taken apart a few minutes ago.

"Jacob," Blitz said, sounding worried. "Did we just destroy the universe?"

"Um. Maybe."

***

Liss was frustrated. The humans had evaded her, and she had no idea how - they'd simply disappeared. She wondered if it was cloaking technology, but a few sweeps of the area with her guns suggested that if it was pure invisibility, then they had found a good source of cover very fast.

Sighing, she turned her attention to the large tree, which was still growing. This was clearly some sort of weapon the humans had unleashed on Oxbow; if she couldn't catch the saboteurs, she could at least save the company. She flew in closer and opened fire.

A branch suddenly shot up through the cockpit, shattering its glass. It continued through the roof, clogging up the helicopter's rotor.

"That settles it," Liss grumbled. "Once I get out of here, I'm tendering my resignation."

***

When two portals get too close to each other, and they weren't both carefully made to prevent a reaction, sometimes they resonate. They get drawn to each other's energy, basically. I couldn't quite tell exactly where the portal was when I heard it, so I had to take a gamble and hope for the best. And it didn't work out and they're resonating. Now, that's not necessarily a bad thing; most of the time, the resonance is just a temporary phenomenon. Give it maybe ten minutes and it just fizzles out. But sometimes it doesn't, and then it starts dragging other things into it. Until there's nothing to drag in any more.

That was what Jacob would say if he had time to give a full explanation. Since he didn't, he summed it up with his suggested solution as Steven's gloves surrounded Iris and Sen with a large chain.

"We can either hope it goes away, or we can try to shut it down."

"How do we shut it down?" Steven asked. "Close the portals?"

"We could, and that would stop it, technically, but it would also mean we blow up the planet instead of the universe. I'm going to call that Plan B."

"What's Plan A?" Blitz asked. "We do have a Plan A, right?"

"Well... sort of. To be honest, it's really crazy and could still get us all killed if something goes wrong."

The building started to shake as a massive root burst through the ground nearby.

"I think I can take that risk," Blitz said.

"Well, okay. Basically, we're going to feed the resonance - that's the thingy the portals are doing, technical term - into this tree."

Steven and Blitz blinked.

"How does that work?" Steven asked.

"I'll explain if it does. Basically, though, we'll need my magic and your gloves, since they created the portals in question, and also a large energy source. Like, say, a lot of electricity."

Blitz nodded.

"I got it. All right, just tell me what to do."

As Jacob shouted out instructions, Iris tried to slip out of Steven's chains. She wasn't following Jacob's explanation too closely, but she was unlikely to get a distraction this effective again.

From what little she heard and understood, Jacob was going to hasten the tree's growth even more. That suited her purposes just fine, but she needed to get to safety first. Slowly, she made her way out, and ran down the corridor. Vex would regain his senses soon; she needed to be safely behind the lab's doors before then, leaving the others to die in the flood. She considered rescuing Sen, but the Tender only seemed interested in staring at the strange lights Jacob and the others were producing with their ritual.

She just had to hope he was more resistant to water pressure than at least one of the others, she supposed.

Jacob did see her escape, but as she wasn't actually trying to mess them up, he sighed and just let her go. There wasn't enough time. Iris laughed, pressed a button beside the thick doors, and they slid open. She walked in, and they closed behind her; a nearby console marked "LOCKDOWN" ensured she wouldn't be followed. Now all she had to do was wait.

***

"Why won't this stupid copter do anything?" Liss shouted at no one in particular, as she frantically pressed buttons. The helicopter's guns struck the trunk of the tree, but it was too large now for the bullets to have any real effect. Other buttons simply turned the radio and air conditioner on or off. The ejector seat was jammed. (If Liss had read through the documentation, she would know that this one was an issue the development team was still trying to fix)

Finally, one button got the rotors spinning again, very fast. As they moved, they started to chop right through the branch keeping Liss stuck.

Unfortunately, the same mechanism soon caused the blades to simply fly off of the helicopter entirely, and sent the body of the vehicle plummeting down to the facility below.

***

"Phew," Jacob said, as the resonance vanished and the portals with it. "That worked. Now I guess we'd better find that crazy lady while we wait for this area to become temporally stable again."

The ground shook, and dozens of roots popped out. Sen made strange noises that might have been mistaken for excitement.

"If that happens before the tree crushes us to death now that we've sped up its growth rate, that is," Jacob added. "Let's go."

They ran down the hall, and found Vex gradually regaining consciousness. Steven tended to him while Jacob took a look at the door.

"I think she's in here," he muttered as he jammed on the control button. "But she's locked us out. Guess she's hoping the tree gets us first, or the water when it breaks this dome."

"It took my gloves about ten minutes to break down the other lab's door," Steven said.

"Do it," Jacob grumbled. "For all I know, she's crazy enough to kill herself just to keep us from escaping. Blitz, you blast it, too. I'll... well, I could ram it, but that's probably dangerous while there's lightning flying around and oh hey, Steven, I'm going to want my armor back."

Steven took off the plate vest, and Jacob put it back on, staying some distance away from Blitz. The gloves got to work on the door, and Blitz fired on it, electrifying it.

It was only two minutes later that they heard the crash on the other side.

***

Liss stepped out of the helicopter. The landing had been rough, but at least she'd survived. She looked down and saw a human woman pinned under it; the woman groaned in pain.

"Well. It looks like I caught one of the saboteurs, at least. I'll turn you into security before I write my resignation letter. They'll probably give you medical attention, though frankly I don't think you deserve it."

"Drop dead, bitch," Iris growled.

Directly above, a rapidly-growing branch of the World Tree struck the outer dome. It broke through instantly, and water began pouring in, right over the hole in the roof that Liss' helicopter had made.

In mere seconds, the secured lab was flooded with water. As Iris' consciousness faded, she found herself wishing she'd used stronger last words.