94. The Metanoic Coil
Edward, Tao, and Nathan stood across from Roto in the ground floor of Sasuke's pagoda, discussing their plan of action with subdued whispers. The demonkin watched them with a calm countenance, sinewy arms crossed over his chest, featherless wings folded behind his back.
"There's no telling what he's got up his sleeves," Tao explained. "And I'm sure he’s well-versed in this game of his. That's why I think immobilizing him is the best idea we have. No matter what he does, that should severely limit his options."
"Alright," Edward said. "I agree with that. What do you say, Nathan?"
"I agree with the Seneschal," Nathan said slowly.
"Then it's settled," Edward said. "But how should we phrase it? No moving altogether?"
"That may be too dangerous," Tao said. "It'll be hard to keep our bodies completely still. too. If anything we should be specific – no moving to another spot."
"Okay," Edward said. "Then the first rule is: no moving to another spot!"
A wintergreen glow resonated through the room, declaring that the first rule had been set into place. Edward watched Roto carefully, searching for any indication that their plan had been wise. Once the glow faded, Roto made a slight nod, as if ascertaining this fact, then opened his mouth.
"No talking," Roto spoke calmly.
As another glow resonated, the faces of the three humans paled. In an instant, Roto had completely removed one of their most important tactics. Silenced, Edward, Nathan and Tao had no choice but to stare at each other in muted distress.
Edward was beside himself. But I thought you couldn't make any rules that prevented new rules from being made! Doesn’t this count?!
Tao held up a finger to grab his teammates' attention. Once Edward and Nathan were looking his way, he tapped his finger to his temple. A few moments later, another glow resonated through the room.
Tao just thought up a new rule, and it was enacted... Edward realized in horror. We immobilized ourselves with our first rule, but with Roto's, he did nothing but limit our teamwork and confuse us. We're completely at his mercy now!
Before Edward or Nathan could even begin to consider what Tao's rule was, another glow resonated through the room, signifying that Roto had enacted a second rule. Once this was done, Roto raised a gnarled hand and began to form a light green psynergy orb within it.
He's going to throw that at one of us... Edward's eyes widened. And we can't jump out of the way! He's using our own rule against us!
Edward almost took a step back out of sheer fear, but caught himself at the last moment. Roto passed his eyes across the three, then settled upon a target and tossed the orb straight at Nathan.
Shockingly, the boy did not panic. He kept his eyes on the orb, which appeared to be far less threatening than what he'd been faced with during the tournament, then ducked down and curled himself into a ball in order to evade the projectile. It went sailing back into a wall, and Edward and Tao breathed a sigh of relief.
Suddenly, a loud buzzer sound was heard, and Nathan's body was imprisoned in a wintergreen orb. Then, a robotic voice sounded out.
"Rule: 'Psynergy blasts cannot be dodged' has been broken."
Nathan's jaw dropped, while Edward and Tao turned to stare at each other in panic.
If we dodge his attacks in any way now, we lose. Edward's thoughts echoed solemnly in his mind. He's completely cornered us.
Roto watched his two remaining foes with a calm expression, charged up another psynergy
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orb and shot it at the bedrock.
Winslow grumbled as he watched Vance tear his way through the darkness. "Where are you going, you idiot? We need to go back there and let the others out right now!"
"Shut up!" Vance shouted back. "They’ll be fine. I can barely feel it, but something weird is happening to Eden's aura. The only reason I came here was to save her, okay? If you'd rather go kick the asses of all your old teammates, then be my guest!"
"I knew I'd regret saving you from that construct," Winslow scoffed.
"Look, no one's keeping you here!" Vance exclaimed. "If you want to leave, then leave!"
Vance could feel Winslow's aura stop abruptly, and the raven-haired youth almost froze as well. But he shrugged it off, re-focused his mind on Eden, and kept moving.
After a few more steps, Vance finally turned around. "Look, I appreciate you helping me out back there, Winslow. I really do. But I just don’t want to keep playing this stupid game with you. Can we just drop it all?"
The psynergy wafting out from Vance's hands slightly illuminated Winslow’s body as he remained silent. His blonde hair had fallen out of place and hung down across his brow, cascading his boyish features.
"Well how am I supposed to act?" the Rooster asked. "What more do you want from me, Vance? You kicked my ass. You proved you were superior. But I refuse to kneel down and lick your feet."
"Like I want that!" Vance shook his head. "Just act like a normal human being, will you?"
Winslow shrugged. "I thought this was normal."
"Stop being all defensive." Vance sighed. "You and I should be able to work together by now."
"Oh yeah?"
"Not only did we both try to kill each other, we've both even tried to kill ourselves at one point," Vance said.
"We've both done stupid things." Winslow waved his hand casually. "What's your point?"
"We have common experiences," Vance said. "And we have a common enemy now. You were a Zodiac, so you should know there’s strength in numbers."
"Hah!" Winslow snorted. "Yeah, and look at what happened to us!"
"Alright, so maybe that's a bad example." Vance pushed some hair out of his eyes. "But trust me, Winslow, there's no shame in cooperating with someone. Cliff proved it to me more times than I can count...I was just too stupid to realize it at first."
"Fine," Winslow said. "Will you shut up now?"
"Sure," Vance said with a smile, then held out his hand. "Thanks, Winslow."
Winslow shook Vance's hand briefly, and then looked down. "You know, when I joined the Zodiacs, I thought my path was set – like I had no choice but to adapt to survive. But I guess nothing’s ever set in stone..."
At last, Vance burst through the bedrock, revealing another open passage through the dark cave. They had only taken a few steps down it before Vance cried out in surprise.
"Vance?" Winslow shouted. "What happened?"
Winslow quickly illuminated his fists with psynergy, only to spot Vance hanging over a cylindrical shaft in the ground. His right arm was barely wrapped around a lone crag that stuck out from the edge.
"Hold on," Winslow said, then crouched down beside the hole and stretched out an arm to his companion. The minute Vance lifted his free arm up, his other hand began to slip. The sudden shift in Vance's weight threw Winslow off balance, and his feet skidded off the rock before he could do anything about it. The next thing the two young men knew, they were sailing down into the pit at a rapid speed.
"Great job, dumbass!" Winslow shouted.
"How was I supposed to know there was going to be a pit in the middle of nowhere?!" Vance shouted back. "Now help me get some footing here!"
The seemingly endless pit was wide enough that Vance could spread his legs and touch opposite sides. Concentrating psynergy into both feet, he pressed them into the rock on both sides and crushed enough downwards to create temporary footholds. Following Vance's lead, Winslow did the same, and stopped just before his crotch slammed into Vance’s head.
Vance looked up with a frown. "Good job. There's no way in hell I'm climbing back up there...this hole can't be bottomless, can it?"
"I don't think so," Winslow answered. "But who knows how deep it goes. I've only been to a few official meetings."
"Well, I guess we have no choice, now do we? Let's drop."
The two let themselves fall, blazing with psynergy as cool cave air blew past them. Vance reached back into his consciousness and searched for Eden's aura. It seemed much stronger now, and at last, he felt like he could fully sense it. The volume of her psynergy was ever changing, wild and volatile.
Soon, Vance and Winslow saw a soft red glow coming from the bottom of the hole. They braced themselves, equally anxious to escape the dank expanse and step into light again. The redness got larger, and Vance's eyes widened. Now, it looked more like a red floor. Then it started moving, shifting, and bubbling.
"Lava!" Winslow shouted, then shoved his feet once more into the rock and grabbed Vance's back. "This is bad!"
"Yeah, hanging over a pit of lava is definitely not good," Vance muttered. "If you lower me down a little more, I think there's a platform I can jump to."
Winslow slipped his body downward and hung on to the edge before swinging Vance out through the bottom of the hole. Using the momentum, Vance leapt over the expanse with relative grace and landed on a dark plateau of lava rock. The actual lava bubbled far below where Vance was standing, but he could still feel the sizzling heat.
"Man, it's hot in here," Vance said. "But I think we're on the right track. I can feel Eden's aura so clearly now."
After some magnetic maneuvering, Winslow landed on the plateau next to Vance. The large space they were standing in was filled with platforms and ledges between cracks and gaps leading down to molten death, while holes to other empty shafts littered the ceiling.
"It’s really hot in here," Vance said, wiping sweat from his brow. "Where’s the exit?"
As Vance finished his sentence, a hulking figure emerged from one of the dark crags farther down the cavern. He wore a leather vest pulled taut due to his robust physique and a matching pair of designer black jeans that fit snug around his enormous calves. As he approached the two, his muscles glimmered in the heat haze.
"I thought I heard something." Bruce's sandals crushed down on black rubble as he advanced. "So Victoria's little brat finally made it all the way down here." His eyes shifted from Vance to Winslow. "And with you! I can't say I'm surprised."
"Bruce," Winslow said, as he put his hands up. "Hold on. We're not here to fight you."
"The hell you aren't!" Bruce roared. "Fine then, tell me, what are you here for, traitor? To make up and be friends?"
"What did you do to Eden?" Vance suddenly demanded.
"None of your business," Bruce replied. "There's no point in getting attached to her, you know. She's just a vessel of destruction."
"No she isn't." Vance's violet aura began to swirl around his body.
"Oh yeah?" Bruce laughed. "What, you two think you're gonna stop us or something?"
"You don't even know what's going on, Bruce," Winslow sighed. "Grayson is using you! Haven't you figured that out by now?"
"Shut up!" Bruce screamed. "You were never really one of us. You don't know what the hell you're talking about!"
"Rose came here with us," Winslow continued. "If she was here, she'd tell you the same thing!"
A fiery aura exploded out from Bruce, shooting embers from his flesh. In the next moment, the Tiger's rage exploded and propelled his body forward. Vance and Winslow both leapt back, but Bruce managed to catch the Rooster in the back with his fireball fists. Hot orange psynergy seared Winslow's body, shredding his uniform and the flesh beneath it.
Winslow rolled to the other end of the platform and quickly covered his body with metallic psynergy. "Get out of here, Vance! I can take him on my own!"
"Are you kidding me?!" Vance called back. "Don't be stupid. I put a lot of work into keeping you alive!"
Bruce dashed after his prey. "If either of you two so much as laid a finger on Rose..."
Aiming to intercept the Tiger, Vance dashed over to Winslow, who stared in horror
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at the hole where her arm once was. Van Kaen skewered Eden again with the blue spike, this time through the stomach.
He cut off my arm...
He stabbed me...
He can't do this to me...
Eden reached down toward the light that had been growing stronger inside her and yanked it out.
A bright flash erupted through the stone hallway, engulfing both monster and woman as they were both swept up in the citrus explosion. Van Kaen was thrown backwards, and watched as the wound he’d just made in Eden's stomach slowly grew shut. No more blood flowed, and new neon flesh instantly regenerated from the ripped sides.
Cloaked in a thick orange glow, Eden looked down on Van Kaen with neon green eyes. "I know who I am now," she said slowly. "And no one can ever take that away from me."
Faltering, Van Kaen slowly picked himself up. As she approached, Eden increased the density of her aura even more until it covered the entire width of the hallway.
Van Kaen flared his own in response, but it was no match for the massive amount of psynergy spilling out from Eden's illuminated body. As she continued, she started to feel a strange, tingling sensation in her right shoulder. Then, slowly, a new arm phased into existence.
Eden let out a deep breath, trying to cope with the uncomfortable sensation of regeneration. Soon, it was over, and a smooth, unscathed arm dangled from her shoulder.
Van Kaen's eyes lit up in surprise, but he leapt forward and prepared to maul Eden once more. This time, the Daughter was ready.
As soon as Van Kaen reached her, Eden flipped backwards, shot her psynergy-charged legs out from her body and slammed the Dragon in his jigsawed stomach. The cyborg went careening backwards, and his neck whipped back as his body cracked into the wall of the corridor.
"Alright, monster..." Citrus tendrils leapt from Eden's lips. "Ready for round two?"
Next: Chaos Mode
