Sword of Darkness: Part 19A So close yet so far. By: W.Bob Yankovic (minor editing by Fragraham Lincon) It is appearant that no one else cares about disclaimers so I am not going to write one. But you have to know that I don't give a d*mn about ripping anything off. So sue me. Mac and I stood in the shadow of the huge monster that was Armewgeddon. He was taller than us all and had us easily overpowered. He stood there and let out a throaty laugh that chilled me to the bone. I never thought that anything could be this ugly. His face was wrinkled and the portion under his mouth was sopped in drool. His ears were long and actually extended and merged with his lengthy horns and his eyes glowed with a faint black. With the Sword of the Whole in his posession we were in deep crap. I was reminded of an old Godzilla movie where the monster was easily more powerful that Godzilla but always got beat. I hoped that the outcome of this battle ended the same way. "NOW THAT YOU HAVE SEEN MY FULL POWER YOU WILL FEEL MY WRATH AND THE POWER OF THIS SWORD!" he screamed at the top of his lungs as he lunged at us. Mac dodged to the left just in time to miss the swing of the blade and I fell into a portal and came out of another one right above Armewgeddon. I didn't have a sword so I just flew at full throtle straight down at his spine. When I hit it cracked easily under my weight, but Armewgeddon just turned around and laughed at me again. "Hey Mac!" I said, "this might be a good time to pull out some big guns!" Mac nodded but I really didn't know what he planned to do. Then it dawned on me, if we died the fate of the universe would be sealed, destruction. That kinda gave me a little bit of a boost and I flew straight at Armewgeddon. Mac did the same and right when we were about to fire some major ki blasts into him, Armewgeddon flashed out of sight. We almost automatically stopped, spun around, and began to scan for him. That is when I noticed Gomisaki. "Shane we have a problem!" Mac said right before I could. We both flew over and knealed down in front of Fudo's tree. Gomaski looked really pale and was barely breathing. "When a Jurian dies its tree dies with it," Mac explained. It was obvious that he was right because at that very moment Gomasaki's body began to phase out. She became stuck between life and death right before our eyes. "HOGO! GET YOUR LOUSY BUTT OVER HERE!" I screamed, "If you wanna score some points with the lady keep her alive, no matter what it takes." I told him. He lost his ever present smile and furrowed his brow as he looked at the dieing tree. He nodded solemnly as Mac and I returned to the middle of the arena. I noticed that Katrina was making her way over to the trees and she gave me a little forced smile. I was really falling for her. "Mac, we really stand no chance against this guy," I said. I flew up behind him and we stood back to back. "I understand, and I am prepaired for the worst. And Ray isn't dead, because his tree isn't in the same shape as Gomisaki," he said. I knew that Ray wasn't dead because I had a gut feeling. My gut is never wrong. We just stood there wondering where Armewgeddon was. Then all of the sudden he portaled in right above us and began to dive straight for us. We both moved out in time to dodge the blade. But we couldn't last that much longer. We were strong but this guy was brutal. He made another huge swipe with the Sword that cut my shirt and almost spilled my guts. I was definatly getting tierd of this guy. "Hey Mac, why don't we just give him everything that we have at once, maybe that will be strong enough to stun him until Ray gets back," I said. Mac nodded and began to power up. And when I say power up I mean like serious power up. He was drawing every particle of energy that he had at his disposal. Before I could start powering up myself Armewgeddon shot a huge solid black ball of energy at me that caught me right under the rib cage and shot me up into space. As I flew ever farther out into space I saw the tiny speck of light that was Mac charging up to his max to fire one huge blast at Armewgeddon. Then I realized that I was floating around in space and that I could only hold my breath for so long. So I called my ship over to pick me up. As I ran down the halls to the control room my anger began to grow and I gradually changed over to Mega-Fighter. Hogo's voice began to talk to me as I changed direction and began to walk to the power core. I just ignored his voice and let my anger charge me up. When I entered the engine room I asked for a visual of the planet. I saw Mac, muscles straining and teeth gritted together in a grimace of pure rage. He was stronger than we all thought. Maybe we did stand a chance. I asked for the view to switch over to Armewgeddon and as Hogo moved the view over I opened the energy core. "HEY THAT AIN'T A VERY SMART THING TO DO!" Hogo yelled at me. I told him to shut up and to keep the camera on Armewgeddon. He was laughing at Mac. And it wasn't a "I'm going to kill you" laugh it was a "Are you really trying this?" laugh. That ticked me off even more. "Hogo patch me in to where I can talk with Mac," I said. He did so and I began to explain the plan. Mac was going to launch Armewgeddon into space and I was going to sacrifice myself and my ship to destroy him. Mac agreed without a fight, he knew that it was possibly the only way. When Mac was through powering up he had enough energy to easily blow up a dimention, if he shot it right. He leaned over and focused it into a ball. "ARMEWGEDDON! NOW YOU DIE!" he screamed. His responce was just more laughter. Then Armewgeddon got a nasty surprise. "BREATH OF THE HEAVENS!" Mac yelled as he shot the blast. It went surprisingly slow, but I could sense its power. Right as it got to Armewgeddon he raised the Sword to bat it away. But right before it hit him it sped up like a million times. It exploded on contact but the energy didn't fade out. The immediate effects were visible as the blast regathered itself and hit him from the bottom. Armewgeddon was shot right out through the atmosphere and was flying right into my open sights. "Hogo began to charge the BIG-GUN," I said. Hogo pleaded for me to change my mind but I refused. Then following my command every gun made its way along a preplaced conveyer belt to the helm of the ship. There they all began to merge together to make one huge cannon which was the BIG-GUN. "Now, reroute ALL power to the cannon and patch me into the core," I said. He complied and I began to charge up to my max. About five minutes later when Armewgeddon was in my firing range and clear of any planets, I released all of my energy to the BIG-GUN. Hogo quickly began to move into firing position. "THIS IS SUPREME GAURDIAN SHANE MCINNIS SIGNING OFF! THANKS TO ALL THE ONES WHO HAVE FOUGHT BY MY SIDE! THIS IS THE END OF THE EVIL! FIRE! CORE CANNON! The huge blast of energy lept forth like someone had flipped a big deadly light switch. It was so big and so powerful that it began to rip holes in the Vortex, which just fed it more energy. Armewgeddon saw the huge blast coming and raised the Sword in a blocking position. But he couldn't block the whole blast. The giant ball of energy sped toward him. Right before I lost conciousness I saw it hit him and explode in a flash that blinded me and sent Hogo spinning. "YO, Shane you can't be dead man come on wake up," I heard a familiar voice say. I tried to move, but I couldn't seem to make anything work. I opened my eyes just enough to see Mac, Katrina, Hogo, the Renegade Force, Kyusai, and Kousei standing over me. I leaned my head over far enough to see that I was laying beside Gomisaki who was getting worse, she was almost gone. "Shane, wake up, you aren't dead, you can't be dead I just met you," I heard Katrina say. I forced my mouth into a smile and opened my eyes up as much as I could. One was almost totally swolen shut the other was cut really bad because my vision was blurry. When I gritted my teeth and commanded my hand to move I made a half-thumbs up. Everyone shouted and Katrina leaned over and gave me a little kiss. "What.....hap...ened?" I craked out of my bruised and bleeding mouth. Mac and Hogo picked me up and set me in a reclining position so that I didn't have to strain to look around. "When you shot Armewgeddon you lost almost all of your power. Then to make things worse Hogo didn't have enough energy to maintain an orbit so he had to make a crash landing on the planet. You are very lucky to have such a strong will, and even more lucky that we got you out of the core before anything exploded," Mac said. I realized that when I blasted the h*ll out of Armewgeddon that I had given up all my power, I was planning on dieing. And I was cool about it. I guess that I had grown up alot in the last few days. "Is...he..?" was all I could force out. Mac gave me a big smile and said that no traces were left of Armewgeddon or the Sword of the Whole. I smiled again and tried to make myself move. I managed to stand up long enough for Hogo to get behind me to catch me when one of my legs went out, must have been broken. Things hurt a whole heck of a lot more when you don't have the Force to calm them. "Hey anyone object to a little elixer?" Clink asked. I reached out and grabbed the little jar of elixer and chugged it down. I felt immediate change and some of the pain went away. i felt my leg and it was still definatly broken. I told everyone to turn around and I pulled a Heero as I set my own bone. Katrina wrappped it up with some cloth she found somewhere. I stood up and grabbed another one of those elixers from Clink and drank it down. I felt almost as good as I did at the beginning of the fight. "These things are good," I said as I grabbed another. Clink gave me a "STOP" look and explained that those things don't just grow on trees and that they were very expencive. "Write me a bill," I said as I downed it. I tried floating then when I found that much of my power had returned I flew in some small circles. I got dizzy and almost flew straight into Mac. "Calm it down, you lost alot of blood!" he yelled and I landed and sat down next to Katrina. We all just stood there in wonder. We had defeated Armewgeddon, and the evil was gone. "Hey Mac, that was some kinda weird power blast back there," I said. "Yeah it took alot out of me, but I could control it like it was an extention of my hand," he said. Then we remembered Gomisaki and turned around to find her just about as faint as a pencil drawing. "We have got to do something!" Mac said and he moved into action. He pulled a mega-elixer from Clink's belt which made him even more angry, but I gave him a look and he dumped his whole stash in front of Gomisaki. No one was really qualified to take care of a tree without a symbiote. Kyuusai said that she knew that it would be almost impossible to bring her back without Frag. But when a portal opened right behind us and Tsunami stepped out we all let out a sigh of relief. "Move out of the way," she said quickly and sharply. We did and she walked over and put her hands on what remained of Gomisaki. A strange aura came around the dieing tree and Tsunami beconed over the other trees. She gave them some instructions that I couldn't understand and they also put their hands on Gomisaki. "When a Juraian that is bonded to a tree is injured their tree will devote some of its power to heal them. Usually the tree is immensly more powerful than the host so it's not detrimental. I never thought a host would consume as much energy as Fudo did. But now with Fudo gone her body keeps trying to supply him with energy untill he is healed. But there's no where for it to go. So it's just being dissipated, and that is quickly depleating Gomisaki's life force. For now I've placed a seal on it, but I can't maintain her forever. If it had been one of you I would have been able to break the bond and release her. But she and Fudo have been tied for most of their lives. It's too deep to sever now." Tsunami said. Katrina suddenly started crying. "You can leave if you want, it is over for now," I said. "I can't leave," she said and pointed over to the back of the arena. As I turned around to see what she was pointing out I almost fell over. There stood the battered and beaten form of Armewgeddon. ---------------------------------------------------------------------