Flag Race Read online

  “Don’t you worry, babe, I won’t do anything you don’t want me to do,” the girl lied. “All I want is a little kiss!”

  “But... you’re from the other team...”

  “That’s not important! All that matters is that we’re together!” Their lips were coming close to each other. “Just let me be the woman of your dreams!”

  All of sudden, Dante seemed to wake up. He held Lilith by the shoulders.

  “You’ll never even come close to the woman of my dreams! You’ll never be even half the woman she was!”

  Lilith was freaking out, angry at herself for such a poor choice of words.

  “Calm down, my beloved Dante! Don’t think of that now, just kiss me...”

  “No way!” He was leaning back further. The succubus was all over him.

  “Don’t say that, my darling! You don’t want to make me cry, do you?”

  “If it’s up to me, my darling, demons may cry as much as they want to!” And with a quick spin he got rid of the lady, causing her to tumble down the lava and disintegrate.

  He took a deep breath, feeling his foe’s influence dissipate from his mind. As he returned, he tried to contact his partner through his Neurolink.

  “Kerah! I’m coming back! Are you all right?”

  She couldn’t answer. She was too busy fighting the shadowy version of herself. She’d tried everything, to no avail: her shots, her tanks, and even her powerful spaceship, were taken down by her copycat opponent, who was acting faster and faster, attacking her with her own weapons.

  Kerah knew she had to do something new, but she was afraid her stability would drop too much. She realized, though, there was no other way. She had to improvise. As soon as her foe shot its rifle again, Kerah enclosed herself in a cocoon, which was only scraped by the bullet.

  Puzzled, Kerah’s shadowy copy observed the chrysalis. In the videos of Kerah’s previous matches it’d studied it had never seen her do something like this. It kept firing. The cocoon’s outer shell was barely affected. Shadow looked at Kerah’s stability on the scoreboard. It had dropped by 20% ever since she’d covered herself with that structure. It had no idea what the girl had in mind, but it didn’t seem to be working! There was only 15% stability left for Kerah! It kept on firing.

  The cocoon was opening at last. Shadow watched, mouth agape, while a new Kerah emerged. Her body was covered by a green exoskeleton, her hair had taken on a horny aspect, and large bony structures came out of her back. A desperate Shadow began missing most of its shots.

  Step by step, Kerah advanced against Shadow, who didn’t know what to do. The girl took advantage of her foe’s lack of focus to make horrible dog-sized aliens appear all around her foe, all of them immediately going toward it. Her opponent tried to defend itself, shooting at the creatures, but there were too many and quickly swarmed on it. Kerah smiled. In a matter of seconds, down went another foe.

  Meanwhile, Asuka and Sigurd saw themselves on a great island, surrounded by a jungle, the flag nowhere to be seen. Seforth had grown a single black wing to help him catch them and soon started attacking, but his blows were readily parried by Sigurd and his giant sword. El Blacko came right behind, floating as he piloted his flying ship.

  “Go ahead, my lady!” Sigurd cried. “I’ll have to stand back and save you from this bastard!”

  Sigurd and Seforth landed just a few feet from each other, amidst the jungle. With a scream, they both charged at each other until their blades clashed. The energy from the impact made an explosion of light and sound so powerful that it was enough to bring down the trees around them, opening up a large clearing in the jungle. The exchange of blows that followed was just as violent.

  El Blacko began firing his cannons at Asuka. The winged girl easily dodged the incoming fire as she flew higher and higher trying to find the flag. After another cannonball passed by a few inches from her wings, she finally found a great “X” marking the spot on the beach hundreds of yards ahead of her.

  “Illusion power!” the girl shouted while tossing a card up high, in order to make several decoys around her, causing her stalker to miss his shots in confusion.

  She quickly headed down to the “X,” then shouted again.

  “Earth power!” The card used was bringing up a mountain from the depths of the sand, so that soon the flag that had been buried deep below the mark was ready to be captured.

  Asuka stretched out her hand toward the flag, but was suddenly forced to halt. An intense pang came over her arm. She heard El Blacko’s laughter just a couple of yards behind her. The pirate had a little voodoo doll of her with a needle sticking out on the same place where she’d felt that pain.

  Every time Asuka tried to take any action, she felt that stinging pain somewhere in her body. El Blacko was having fun with the suffering he caused her. Every prick was draining more and more of her stability. She’d soon be disintegrated. But El Black had other plans.

  Leaping out of his ship, he came closer to the defenseless girl, now vulnerable because of all that pain, to cast one of his most powerful spells on her.

  Sigurd was still trading blows with Seforth. Surprisingly, none of them had the upper hand. Despite this being his first time on the Neuralnet, he was barely spending any stability at all.

  “Sigurd, help!” Asuka yelled, before having her communication interrupted. The boy opened his eyes wide. He had to save her!

  No matter how much he tried to disengage Seforth, his foe would always position himself ahead of him, stopping him from going after Asuka.

  “So, you’ll stay in my way, right? Enough fooling around, then!” said Sigurd, as he transformed his sword into a slab of ice.

  “You may try any trick you want! No sword can be stronger than mine!” Seforth answered.

  As they ran toward each other, the two swords clashed again. Sigurd’s blade, however, was shattered by the impact. Seforth grinned for tenths of a second, before being astonished once he understood his opponent’s plan. All of the ice sword shards kept on moving toward Seforth, piercing him on several spots. Nodding his head in acceptance of the fair victory his opponent had earned, he was disintegrated.

  Sigurd started running after Asuka at once. He had to save her! She was under his guard!

  As he came to the shore, he was scared to see what El Blacko had wrought. By the red flag stood a statue of Asuka, with her hand outstretched toward her goal. Next to her, El Blacko stood with an ear-to-ear smile.

  “You monster! You’ve turned her into stone!”

  “Oh, no, not stone! Porcelain! Keep an eye on yer movements near her, mate, or she might shatter! And ye don’t want her to shatter, aye? Th’ pain she be feelin’ can wreck her last 13% stability easy!”

  Sigurd was panicking and breathing fast. How would he save her?

  “En garde! Touché!” El Blacko cried, drawing his saber.

  “Come on, that’s so cliché!” Sigurd replied, forging his huge sword again and coming to meet the pirate, who hid behind Asuka’s statue, easily avoiding the warrior’s blows.

  Sigurd’s performance was being seriously hampered by his fear of hurting Asuka. The pirate managed to hit him several times, filling him with pain as well as plenty of small bleeding spots on the vulnerable parts of his armor.

  He drew back for a couple of moments. There was no way he’d beat him if it went on like this. He had to save Asuka! Pedro had explained to him that you’re not supposed to go against other players’ creations directly, trying to undo them, but he didn’t know what to do anymore. Maybe that would be the only chance he’d have to save the little witch.

  Focusing as much as he could, Sigurd started dispelling the effect Asuka was under. The porcelain layer that covered her was being slowly removed, from the bottom to the top, starting with her feet. Sigurd made it so the energy he drew from the effect that had been cast on his friend would be redirected against El Blacko.

  “Arrr, that can’t be!” he screamed upon realizing his hands were turni
ng into porcelain. Sigurd was turning the pirate’s curse against himself! He tried to attack Asuka, but his joints weren’t moving anymore. The freer the girl became, the more El Blacko was being paralyzed by his own spell.

  When the switch was over, El Blacko shattered and Asuka fell on her knees. Sigurd held her shoulders and looked her in the eyes.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes!” she answered, smiling and embracing him. “And it’s all thanks to you!” Then she got up before adding, “Come on! We have a flag to capture!”

  Chapter 22

  “You’re not coming through, Ace!” Blazkowicz yelled, still firing at the boy. “You have to learn where you belong, loser!”

  Ace made a large metal plate stuck on the ground for him and Mary to hide from the shots fired by Nohman and the captain.

  “Mary, get ready! I’ll find a way for us to come through, but we have to act fast! Ready?” She nodded to confirm.

  Ace fired a small energy sphere against his foes. A few inches from them, it became something like a tiny black hole that caused them to float.

  “Now!” The couple advanced as fast as they could toward the game line, passing underneath their foes as they floated around out of control, wildly missing their shots.

  The effect lasted briefly, since soon Blazkowicz took control of gravity to make him and Nohman return to the floor.

  Ace and Mary soon caught themselves in a maze filled with challenges. The landscape resembled an eerie lab with several rooms, whose doors would only stay open while large red buttons on the ground remained pressed down. Gray cubes were lying around here and there and could be used to keep the buttons pressed. Though it had been created by a Hitter, those defenses could hold them back a great deal.

  There was no time for these puzzles. Mary decided to risk it.

  “Ace, we have to get to their flag! I’m gonna spend a lot of my stability, but I think it’ll be worth it!”

  The girl’s hair began billowing and shining in hues of orange and teal while she made portals connecting their current room to the next. They lasted only enough seconds for them to go through and she always made them where she could see them, so her stability wouldn’t be drained so much.

  Even so, by the time they finally got to the flag, she had only 3% left. Ace quickly strapped the banner to his back, getting himself ready to come back.

  “Oh, how cute of you two lovebirds!” Blazkowicz yelled once he came down to the room where they were, followed by Nohman. Ace and Mary immediately hid behind a pile of cubes. “You think you can come back, huh? You still don’t get it, do you? Nobody survives Warfear! Did you stop to think about how we have so much more stability than you?”

  Nohman caused several pieces of the walls around the room to open and reveal short white turrets with a red sensor in the center. Anyone who activated that sensor would be shot down by a hail of machine gun fire from the automatic weapons attached to those bots. There was no way back without entering the line of sight of either Blazkowicz, Nohman, or the turrets.

  “Enough talking now! It’s time for me to wreck you! Have fun logging out!”

  The barrels in Blazkowicz’s gun had began to spin, getting ready to fire.

  “That’s how you treat the girl you wanted to take to the prom?” Mary cried, gaining time for Ace to think of a way out.

  The gun stopped spinning. Blazkowicz frowned. He signaled Nohman, telling him to wait.

  “Letícia?” asked the baffled G.I. “Is that you?”

  “Yeah, that’s me! We were texting two days ago, remember?”

  “How can you still be with that idiot after all he’s said to you? Don’t tell me you don’t know who your teammate is?”

  “What do you mean?” The girl played dumb.

  “This chump next to you is the same guy who dumped you in real life! Get real! That’s Pedro!”

  “I don’t believe it!”

  “I know it’s a little hard to believe, but now you can take your chance to kick his ass!”

  “No, you don’t understand! What I can’t believe is that you have the guts to lie like that right to my face!”

  “Why, you little—!”

  The Gatling gun began spinning again, opening fire against the cubes that gave Ace and Mary cover. Nohman spent a good deal of his stability firing a single missile that blew up all of the cubes on impact, leaving Mary and Ace’s hiding spot totally exposed.

  But none of them were there. Blazkowicz scrunched his eyebrows, thinking Nohman had them disintegrated.

  “You dumbass! I told you Ace was mine!” he screamed at the robot pilot.

  “But, Captain, I didn’t get them! Look at the scoreboard! They’re still in the game!”

  “What!? But where could have they gone!? She’s got no stability left for portaling!”

  They drew near the smoking debris of what just seconds ago was their opponents’ hiding spot. As soon as the smoke began to disperse, they caught a glimpse of a round hole on the ground with a blowtorch lying next to it.

  While they were beginning to understand what had happened, Ace and Mary were busy returning to the center of the court, sliding upside-down on magnetized roller blades under the game line.

  Ace had taken advantage of Blazkowicz’s delay in attacking to produce a blowtorch and use it to cut a round piece of the floor. The way back was free on the underside of the game line. All they needed was a way to stay in touch with it, without falling. To do that, he’d magnetized his roller blades and made a brand new pair for his partner.

  Putting his head down the hole, Blazkowicz could see them far away, already near the center of the court.

  “No!” he screamed, undoing all of his game line defenses so he’d be free to go back to the center. Eventually, Ace and Mary would have to come up to the upper surface of the court in order to put the flag down, and then they would be vulnerable again.

  While he created a jetpack to propel him back as quick as possible, he could hear the play-by-play announcer’s commentary.

  “What an amazing turn of events! Who would have thought Dante’s Chaos would still be in the game? Not only do they have all three flags in hand, but they’ve also managed to disintegrate El Blacko, Lilith, Shadow, and Seforth! I can’t believe it! Warfear must react quickly, or it’s game over for them!”

  “No!” the G. I. repeated. He got in touch with Nohman and ordered him, “Hit the gas, you fool! We have to hold them back!”

  Nohman activated his robot’s propellant jets in compliance, so he too could return as quickly as possible, following right behind his captain.

  Ace and Mary returned to the upper surface as soon as they came near the edges of the center of the court, regrouping with their friends. They all smiled to see Asuka, Ace, and Dante had the flags with them. But there was no time to celebrate. They knew the foes they had defeated would rematerialize any second now, and Blazkowicz not only still had a lot of stability to spend, but he was also followed by Nohman, who remained a formidable foe.

  While Dante’s Chaos was returning to their base by their team’s center line, their opponents were back in the game, almost simultaneously. They gave chase at once. Every player on Ace’s team had extremely low stability, except for Ace himself, who still had about 15%, and Sigurd, who kept an impressive 32%. Most of the Warfear members still had something close to 20%, with the head of their team being their strongest link, at 37%.

  “Wipe them out! Wipe them out!” Blazkowicz was bellowing. “Use up all of your stability if you have to, but destroy them all!”

  Marta and Antônio were holding each other’s hand tight, in apprehension. Pedro had a chance, but the other team seemed to be so much stronger! He and his friends had to find a way to come back to the base with the flags!

  The game line was still engulfed by the thick darkness Asuka had made early in the game. Mary’s traps were still in position. The girl, with her red billowing hair, followed ahead, guiding her friends’ steps.
r />   Her resorts worked on their enemies’ first few advances, delaying them in time, stretching the space ahead of them and even teleporting them several yards back when they tried to go through. Asuka had also made a sticky sludge on some spots, hampering their foes’ movements. Even so, Warfear was so near Dante’s Chaos that both teams were running after the same path, avoiding the traps.

  “That’s enough!” Sigurd cried, as he halted and turned to his enemies. “It’s about time for you to stop right now!”

  With a howl, the warrior quickly began his metamorphosis. In a few seconds he’d increased five times his size and kept on growing while parts of his armor became metallic scales. In moments, he’d become a huge silver dragon.

  El Blacko didn’t have time to react and was swallowed by the giant lizard. The Shadow tried to copy the transformation, but was crushed underneath the creature’s spiny tail. Nohman, Lilith, and Seforth were enveloped by its freezing breath, their bodies shattered and disintegrated right afterwards.

  In his desperation, Blazkowicz had his jetpack torn to pieces while narrowly avoiding another attack from the giant creature. He then used a good deal of his remaining stability to create a whole tank division that immediately opened fire against the mighty dragon. He grinned when he heard Sigurd’s long roar of pain. His attacks were being effective.

  Hold him down just a little longer! Ace hoped. We’re almost there!

  “One to zero!” cried the announcer as Dante put the first red flag down at the blue pedestal.

  The tanks kept on attacking. Amidst those explosions, the dragon was tossing and turning, trying to protect himself, in vain. With its motions, some shots were landing close to the blue base, exposing his friends to danger.

  “Two to zero!” the announcer resumed. “Dante’s Chaos is about to win the championship!” Asuka had done her part. Two of those flags were already safe in their base.

  With a final roar, the dragon tumbled down. His fall made the whole court tremble. Blazkowicz then focused all of his attention on the remaining opponents. All tanks started firing against the blue base. The explosions caused by the heavy artillery was tossing the players around. Asuka, Kerah, and Dante almost fell off the court. Mary hid behind the base, as she realized the slightest shot against her would be enough to log her out. The team’s hopes rested on Ace, who was still sliding toward the base with the flag in his hand.