Chapter 15
Naji looked around himself. The dark gray clouds in the
sky were swirling around each other and drifting off in one direction way too
fast like water in a river, and the ground looked like it was composed of dried
mud complete with all the cracks in it, but the material was of steel, not mud.
It was also like a mosaic of jagged knives. It was a good thing he had his
shoes on. Buildings that looked like greater collections of knives decorated
this bizarre realm.
“NAJI!!”
”NAJI, HELP US! PLEASE!!”
He looked up. Through those darkly-colored sunglasses of
his, he could see that at the top of this metal tower right in front of him,
his friends, Noshi and Fyooshi, seriously needed him. Unfortunately, he could
also see a person with silver skin and long, white hair.
“Yes, Naji, help them. You wouldn’t want anything bad to
happen to your friends now, would you?” Cutlass waved a sword threateningly
above a rope tied to a spike in the ground. This was what was keeping the rope
from just sliding through the ring hovering above the cage that Naji’s two
friends were in, causing them to plummet into a deep pit with a lake of boiling
lava at the bottom of it. The two of them clutched desperately at the cage’s
bars, looking equally frantic.
“CUTLASS!!” Naji yelled with his fists clenched. “YOU
WON’T GET AWAY WITH THIS!! MARK MY WORDS!!” He ran onto the ramp and started
sprinting his way up this spiraling path that twisted its way around the tower.
“How amusing,” Cutlass chuckled. He looked at a mob of
silver men, just like him. They were armed with sais, daggers, spears, and
clubs. “Kill him,” he ordered. He said this in an unnaturally deep voice that
obviously wasn’t his.
His minions all yelled, “YES, SIR!” and they started
descending the ramp Naji was trying to climb. Cutlass stayed behind with a
devilish smile crawling across his face.
Naji was pumping his Yo’ster legs furiously. He could
feel sweat beginning to creep onto his big nose and adrenaline firing away in
his veins. For a while, he thought he was covering a good amount of distance in
a good amount of time. Then the freaks were upon him.
“Back for more, eh?!” Naji growled. He made a shape like
a white sun materialize before him for a moment, and then he let it loose.
TSSEEEWWW!! He fired a laser beam right at the one coming for him with a pair
of sais.
“AAAUUURRRGGHH!!!” The man screamed bloody-murder as his
right arm was blown off by the spell in an explosion of silvery liquid
splattering everywhere. One sai clattered to the shiny floor, and the other one
fell off the tower. The man, himself, just came crashing down as an unconscious
body. Naji didn’t waste any time. He flutter-kicked over the fallen fighter and
ran some more.
Before long, two more were asking to be pestered. “OUT
OF MY WAY!!!” Naji roared. They didn’t obey. They leaped through the air,
daggers and spears in hand. Naji jolted into a stance, made a yellow lightning
bolt shape appear, and sent two crooked lines of merciless electricity flash
out of nowhere and pierce right through their chests.
“URRGGHH!!” they cried. They fell to the floor as the
first victim did. Steam arose from their fried bodies. Naji flutter-kicked over
them as well and started running again.
Naji was drenched in sweat. He couldn’t let it bother
him. In the middle of his racing, he lifted his right hand, tucked it beneath
his shades, pinched his eyes shut and rubbed them for a second, then returned
his hand to making the pumping action the other one was doing to help him keep
running. He thought the top of the building was coming pretty close, but his
thoughts turned elsewhere the instant ten of those goons showed up.
“RRRRAAAAAWWWWWGGGGGHHH!!!” He roared in fury as he made
the symbol of an orange hexagon appear, slam both palms forward, and blast out
of them a stream of jagged boulders. At the last minute, the gang tried letting
out yelps of fear and turning around and/or ducking, but it was futile. They
were plowed down and made into a mess of silver blood, torn clothes, broken
bones, and even weapons sticking out of their own severed body parts.
“RRRRGGGGG!!!” Naji vocally expressed his rage at the same time he ran through
this ugly pile of limbs and body fluids, not caring how much it would ruin his
shoes.
Blinded by anger and frustration, Naji raced onwards. He
refused to stop or let a few annoying enemies get in his way. No matter what,
they wouldn’t stop coming. Not cutting back in the least, he would always let
them have it. His spells chopped off heads, and his feet ran and jumped for
what felt like hours. At last, he was able to burst up the ramp, see his
smirking, silver-skinned nemesis, and get on with the real fight. Naji slammed
his legs apart, closed his eyes, put his hands together like he was praying,
and made the symbol of a red flame. By the time his eyes could fly open and his
hands could unleash the wave of flames, he could see something truly
disturbing.
A giant, purple arm flew up and took the blow of the
flames. They splattered against it and disappeared. The arm returned to the
side of a hip. Naji craned his head back to get a full view of this thing. “How
do you like my new form?” Cutlass said in that scary voice again. He was 20
feet tall, and completely naked, wearing only a pair of boots, a pair of
sunglasses, and a flowing cape with patterns all over it. They all looked very
familiar to Naji. All this, and his body was muscular, purple, and scaly. It
had a long, reptilian tail and a white oval going down its chest. The new
Cutlass tilted his relatively unchanged head forward and looked at Naji above
his new sunglasses. “Can you save them now?” he taunted.
“AAAUUUURRRGGGHHH!!” Naji screamed some more and made a
blue teardrop shape form in front of him. He sent his palms forward, and made a
tsunami come into existence right in front of him. It surged out of nowhere and
went crashing against this massive, new opponent, relentlessly. Naji stood back
and watched patiently, waiting for the waves to die down so he could see what
damage he dealt. Once they did, a look of horror appeared on his face. All he
did was make his enemy sopping wet.
Cutlass was still smiling. “Is that the best you can
do?” he said. Naji clenched his fists tightly, making them rattle by his legs.
He snorted, got into another stance, made a light blue-colored snowflake symbol
show up, and set loose a barrage of icicles and freezing wind stampeding
against this purple monster. Again, he was horrified to see that this didn’t do
a thing to the beast. Cutlass shook his head. “You’re wasting my time. I shall
finish you off now, and your friends will get to watch you go,” he threatened.
He lifted his arms in front of himself, and started flexing them so hard, they
trembled.
Noshi and Fyooshi remained watching helplessly behind
the bars. They were no more pleased to see Cutlass taking action than Naji was.
They started yelling to him.
“NAJI, DON’T LET THIS FREAK BEAT YOU!!” said Noshi.
“C’MON, NAJI!! YOU GOTTA HELP US!!” said Fyooshi.
Still sweating, Naji looked at them and nodded. His
gigantic enemy was beginning to make the wind pick up around himself, causing
his cape to start flapping, dramatically.
“Alright, punk, you asked for it,” Naji growled. He got
his hands and feet into the right position, closed his eyes, concentrated with
all his might, made the symbol of a silver hourglass in front of himself, sent
his eyes open, and thrust his palms outward. He sent a humungous blade of
rippling air with purple lightning bolts flying off of it go slicing through
the space between the two fighters. Cutlass was still in his intimidating
position when the dark attack exploded against him, making the air around him
look as though it was mutating with purple electricity and all. Naji’s jaw
dropped open once he saw that this made no results either. At this point, his
mind started to draw a complete blank.
“NAJI!!!” his friends cried out.
The gray symbol of an explosion showed up. At last,
Cutlass’s eyes flew open. He put his arms up into the air with the wind still
around him. The swirling clouds in the sky started getting darker and faster.
Naji only stood there not knowing what to expect. Finally, Cutlass threw down
one arm and used it to point at Naji. The one that remained in the air snapped
its fingers very loudly. It sounded like a whip cracking. Something started to
fall from the sky. Naji looked up, and panic struck him.
SHING! SHING! SH-SHING! It was raining swords. Here,
there, and all around him, they kept falling and jamming themselves into the
metallic ground of the tower. Naji ran around frantically, trying his best to
not get sliced. A few of them even went clattering against the top of the cage.
Noshi and Fyooshi yelped and ducked at both the occurrence and the noise it
made. Completely distracted, Naji went on with the dance of dodging. Cutlass
cackled menacingly with his arms folded. Then suddenly...
SNAP! A sword struck the rope and Naji’s friends went
falling in. He jerked his head to the right to witness his failure.
“NAAAAAAAAJJIIIIIIII!!!” they screamed. Naji watched in
horror and despair as the cage fell from the air and got swallowed by the pit
of lava. Smoke started pluming from where they hit. All Naji could do was stand
completely still, barely moving and barely breathing.
“Huh huh huh...” he heard the monster laugh. “You see,”
he added, taking a step forward, “I told you I’d win.” He said that last part
in his normal voice. Naji heard this and his blood started boiling unstoppably.
It made him feel as though he was suddenly lit on fire as though it, too, had
become a mass of raging hot lava.
He looked over his shoulder, hate thrashing about in his
eyes as he saw the enemy coming closer. He turned his head back forward, closed
one quaking fist tightly, concentrated, and made the symbol of a gold star
before him. He was about to perform a forbidden star-elemental attack.
“You must be so lonely now,” Cutlass said, even closer.
“Perhaps you’d like to join them?”
Naji turned his head around again. “You...” he growled.
He spun his body completely around and, in the blink of an eye, shot like a
bullet against the fiend’s right leg. He clung to it and ignited into a body of
sparkling, golden flames. “DIIIIIIIIEEEEEE!!!” Naji screamed for the last time.
Feeling an indescribable pain starting to devour his
leg, Cutlass suddenly started screaming while losing his balance.
“AAAUUUURRRGGGHH!!” he bellowed. He fell to the left and over the side of the
pit. Cutlass was a giant monster with its leg being eaten away by this
unforgivable force, falling harshly without a prayer into this boiling pit of
lava. The two opponents were about to experience a draw...
Then Naji found himself in the middle of a grassy field.
All around him, there were mounds sticking out of the ground, all of them with
different arrangements of assorted flowers. Each of these mounds had dead
bodies buried beneath him. He was in a graveyard. However, not all of these
corpses were buried. One of them was still up and about. One of them started
walking towards him. It was a Yo’ster with cuts all over him, a ragged blanket
where a saddle would have been, and a skin-color that once was light blue, but
now was more of a morbid gray.
Naji looked at him disbelievingly. “Blushi,” he said to
it, “is that you??”
“It was me,” the dead Yoshi said to him, “you
traitor...” Blushi made fists out of his hands and started cracking his
knuckles.
“Blushi...” Naji began. As his old friend commenced
striding towards him, he could hear a certain raven laughing hysterically and
uncontrollably. This wild laughter came from the starlit sky, and it haunted
Naji throughout the rest of the nightmare...
In reality, Naji was one of many poor souls that had
been captured by these foul space aliens. He, along with many others, was in a
vast, circular room lined with big tubes filled with green liquid like the one
he was stuck floating in. Various hoses were coming out of his body doing
things to it he was not aware of. This was the curse of the magical Yo’ster,
and all he could do was sleep right through it until it was over...
♠♣♥♦
Yoshi was unconscious. He couldn’t really
think anything, but he could feel soft, cool grass beneath his body. Then he
started hearing people talking. Was it worth paying attention to? He wasn’t
sure. Regardless, he slowly pried his eyes open anyway.
“Mmmm,” he moaned. “What happened?”
The guy sitting right next to him bolted upright and
looked down at him. “Oh! You’re awake!” said Fyooshi.
Yoshi picked himself into a sitting position on the
grass. He rubbed his sore head. He heard what the person said, but he didn’t
comprehend it. “What?” he asked.
“What?” Fyooshi asked. He didn’t understand, either.
Yoshi looked at him confusedly. “Do you speak Yoshish?”
he asked.
”What?” Fyooshi said again.
“Nevermind,” Yoshi mumbled. He looked away from the
magenta-colored guy and started paying more attention to a bigger crowd of
Yoshies a ways away from where he was seated.
I guess he’s not him after all, Fyooshi moped in
his mind. The two of him and Raphael had finally returned from Ren’s big tree
and were in the process of being about to determine whose tree it truly was.
Fyooshi sat next to the dazed Yoshi and the gigantic bird stood with these
colorful Yo’sters surrounding him.
“Citizens of Lava Lava Island,” the oversized fowl said
to them, “it is a long story, but I, Raphael, the Raven, have finally returned.
I hoped to do so to cheerier faces, but word has reached me that your spirits
have been broken by my brother, Ren, the Raven, who has been ruling in my
absence. I know that he has been doing monstrous things to you since I left.”
The Yoshies knew exactly what he was talking about.
Memories of statue-building, sucking up, killing, and brutal punishments never
ceased to cloud their minds. Raphael’s speech went on.
“However, recently, I was given the opportunity to
negotiate with him. Unfortunately, instead of agreeing to step down, he
challenged me to a dual.” The Yoshies all gasped at his words. Raphael spoke
some more. “Yes. Tomorrow at this time, our bout will take place here, and it
will determine who will become the new master of the island.” Raphael was
somewhat referring to how the orange sun was setting on the horizon at that
moment. Everyone started murmuring amongst themselves about what this could
possibly turn out to be. “Citizens of Lava Lava Island,” he continued, shutting
the audience up, “never again will you have to build anymore statues,” he
promised. “Never again will you have to degrade yourselves,” he promised some
more. “Never again,” he went on, “will you have to put up with... My brother.”
The crowd started murmuring more excitedly this time. Then Raphael went for the
big finish. “I swear to you,” he said, louder, “I WILL win back the island! You
will all be free!” The crowd erupted into an applause of cheering. They were
jumping up and down, praising the former ruler. Neither Yoshi nor Fyooshi could
ignore this. Unfortunately, only Fyooshi understood it.
“You wanna know what this is all about?” Fyooshi asked.
Yoshi looked at him, stared, and shrugged his shoulders.
Fyooshi began a different approach.
“He,” Fyooshi said slowly, pointing to Raphael, “is
going,” he made a gesture with his hands, “to fight,” he punched the palm of
his hand with his fist, “his brother,” he finished.
Yoshi just kept staring at him, dumbfoundedly. He shook
his head and shrugged his shoulders again.
Fyooshi hung his head. “It’s no use,” he sighed. He went
back to looking around. Upon doing so, he managed to see that a certain Yoshi
with dark orange skin was speaking with the village’s new hero.
“Raphael,” he said, “we have total faith in you. Good
luck.”
Fyooshi observed this Yoshi, and thought about some
things pertaining to him. He let out a humming sound. “Hmmm...”
What the excited Yo’sters didn’t notice was that two
female Magikoopas were right above their heads in the darkening sky, flying
away on their broomsticks.
“Kammelina,” said Kammeo, “what do you suppose those
silly Yoshies were getting all worked up about, hm?”
“Like I have a clue, dear sister. Now quit your yapping.
We’re wasting precious time,” her grouchy sibling replied.
“Fine,” Kammeo grumped.
“Marinotropolis, here we come!” Kammelina boasted. The
two witches flew off, resuming their journey to the city beneath the waves...
♠♣♥♦
After the session with the Blushi, Naji found
himself standing amidst a white circle in the middle of nothing but pure
darkness. This circle faded into the black surrounding it, not allowing the
ill-fated Yo’ster much of a way to see what the deal with this new place could
possibly be. Then something walked out of the nothingness and into the light.
It was a Yoshi that looked a lot like Naji, but with red skin, three scars
going across his right eye like scratch marks, but no sunglasses. The blanket
was almost the exact same one Naji was wearing.
“Long time, no see, Naji,” he said. “How’s my son?”
Naji hesitated. “Father,” he spoke, “is that really
you?”
“Yes, Naji, it’s me,” the red Yo’ster responded.
“Listen, Naji,” he ordered, “I worked really hard to raise you. Do you know
what you’re doing right now?”
Naji stared. “What am I doing?” he asked.
“You’re sleeping,” his father said. Naji had a confused
facial expression. “That’s right, you’re sleeping. Do you know where you’re
sleeping?”
Naji shook his head. “I don’t know, father.”
“You’re in a spaceship,” he said. “THEIR spaceship. Do
you know why they captured you?”
”Why, father?”
”Because you’re powerful,” Naji’s father stated, making
a fist out of one hand. “And do you know why you’re so powerful?”
“Why, father?” he asked again.
“Because I raised you,” his father answered. “I raised
you to be powerful... Fearless, quick, and powerful... Like me.” Naji stood
silently. His father continued. “They want your power, Naji. They want it
really badly. So they captured you, they hypnotized you, and they stuck you in
one of their tubes. They’re trying to break you, Naji. They’re trying to rid
you of all the free will you have. And then you know what happens?”
“What, father?” Naji said slowly.
“You become their mindless, little puppet.” Naji’s
father made a claw out of one hand, and gradually let it close up, tightly.
“You’ll become one of them. They’ll use you in their little army. Their little
army to conquer the world.” He swung an arm to one side, harshly. “Is that what
you want, Naji?”
Naji kept quiet, then shook his head. “No,” he replied.
“No, it isn’t.”
The father cracked his knuckles and got into a stance.
“Then come on; fight me.” A wind started to pick up around him. “Show me what
you’re made of.” The wind got stronger. “Prove to me you’re my son.” He closed
his eyes and made the symbol of a purple swirl. The wind got stronger and the
father tore his eyes wide open. He raised his arms into the air. “DON’T LET
YOUR MEMORIES EAT YOU ALIVE!!” He swung his arms forward, palms out, and fired
a gigantic swirling tornado at his son. Seeing this massive spiral of gray on a
collision course toward him, Naji thought fast and conjured up an enormous
force-field. The invisible wall he created caused the cyclone to suddenly just
splash into it and dissipate into the dark empty air. Naji let the shield down,
created a green leaf symbol, and sent a stampede of poison needles come hailing
down on his own parent, but he thought fast, too. Naji’s father brought a
similar wall into existence, and the venomous pins went clattering against thin
air. They vanished the instant they went falling to the ground. The elder of
the two let his shield drop, and he brought his hands together as he got into a
sideways stance, facing his son. A light started blinking between his fingers.
“That’s it, son,” he said, “fight for your freedom. It’s the only way...”
Naji got into a slightly different position, and started
concentrating his thoughts once again. The two fighters were very ready to give
it their all. Naji’s body started to glow, and his father’s hands were getting
blindingly bright. This was going to be a nightmare the purple Yo’ster wasn’t
ever going to forget...