The Champions: Part 6

I sat up wearily. My head spun. 

“Maya isn’t dead!” I shouted through my dizziness. “She and Celeste saved me, me and my friends! We’d be dead if they hadn’t rescued us!”

“Maya and Celeste died,” the boy said. “I don’t understand how they could have saved you. They didn’t leave the school, especially not for a rescue mission...you must be confused. Or another Maya and Celeste saved you.”

“And how many former-Champion duos have you met with the same name? Dude, it was them!”

“...Former Champion...as in, like...are they still alive?”

“Where am I missing you?”

“They died. I’m so sorry, but you must be confused. But at the same time...how would you know that about them?” 

“They told me. I lived with them.”

“You are starting to convince me... only I know no one survived. It would be impossible.” The boy shook his head.

“Did you find their bodies?”

“There were so many bodies it was hard to tell who was who, and they could’ve been burned to dust so we’d never find them.”

“They survived! They did! I know they did, because I was with them! Maya had this crackpot plan about locating possible Pyline spies and pretending to date them and one of them found us and locked us in there--the burning building! His anime was Franklin Fennel, and he was crazy evil.”

“Maya...Maya sent you?”

“Yes!” 

“She’d never risk a Champion like that. She’d never risk anyone like that--except for that one time…”

“You okay?” a small girl with a robotic hand walked up behind me, gesturing to the boy. “Isaac?” she asked him.

“Does this mean that they were right about Maya?” he asked no one. 

“I bet they were,” a nearby girl said, pushing her black-faded-silver hair out of her soot-streaked face. “And that’s the last time I’m trusting a seemingly-dead traitor. Ever.”

“Maya wouldn’t betray us!” robot-hand girl cried in alarm. “Wait, who’s Maya?” 

“The freak who sent these girls out to die!” the angry girl with thr soot-streaked face spat on the ground.

“Saph, it was a while ago. She was only ten.”

“Yeah, and it wasn’t a mistake, either,” she spat.

“Maya didn’t mean it! She was only--”

“I know, the same old stuff. But I was there, Isaac. I was there…” Her eyes narrowed. “Maya betrayed you. There. I said it. Your little sister just sent the Champions to die.” 

“Maya wouldn’t!” I interrupted. 

“She totally would. And did. She’s done horrible things before.”

“Saph, I don’t think I believe you.”

“She’s evil.” 

“Saph, Maya was--or is, if the redhead’s telling the truth--no more a villain than you are.” 

Saph bristled. Isaac(I’d figured out that was his name)had hit a nerve. 

“Look--your kid sister is an evil maniac. How did I not see this coming?” Saph spat on the ground again, turning around and walking into the sea. A transparent bubble appeared around her head just before she disappeared under the water.

“Maya wouldn’t send you to die,” Isaac asked me nervously, “would she?” 

“She’s a good person, she--”

Suddenly I was tackled from behind and went sprawling over the sand, pushed down the slope left by the low tide. My attacker was right on top of me, pressing down with her full weight and wrapping something dangerously soft and as silky as the cloths of heaven around my entire body. I struggled against it, but the angel-feather texture was devilishly soft and had tangled around my limbs cocooning my entire body in a wave of cloud-soft fabric. And then…

Then there was darkness.

“Well, I think we should…”

“Hello, do you know anything about how their minds work? It’s so…”

“B, I never…”

“If you asked me, which you didn’t, I’d say…”

“Have you even…”

I blinked slowly. 

“Look, Isaac, you don’t get a say in it. You’re…”

“Sorry for talking to you about…”

“This evolved quickly, I think, considering…”

“Come on. She doesn’t…”

A hazy, tanned color appeared in my vision. I realized it was canvas, above my head, some kind of tent maybe?

“I don’t think that is fair…”

“Nothing is…”

“I think I found the…”

“If you’d just stop fiddling with the…”

“Pardon me, but you just…”

I blinked. The harsh light filtered into my eyes as I blinked in confusion. I tried to move, but couldn’t find the effort in me to lift a finger--not that I could. My arms were strapped to the cot I was lying on. My legs were, too, as well as some kind of thing as well as around my waist. 

“Hello?” I asked. 

“YAAAAAAAH! YOUAREUNDERARRESTFORWHATEVERYOUDID!”

“What now?” I blinked at the face in front of mine. The serious eyes and sly smirk belonged to the girl with the robot arm, B. 

“I said… YOUAREUNDERARRESTANDSTUFF!”

“B, chill,” Isaac said calmly. “She isn’t under arrest, she’s…” 

“Confused, disoriented, strapped to the bed?”

“Pending,” Saph said. ‘Until we can have some real leaders in here to decide whether or not she was conned into following the betrayer. But whether or not you knew what you were doing, you’re still needed alive right now. Otherwise, we’d definitely kill you when we found out if you were evil--which you are, but innocent until proven guilty.” 

“I’m not evil! I’m confused!” 

“Horribly confused,” Saph hissed, pushing her long, sleek hair out of her eyes. The silver fade at the end shimmered in the faint light. I looked around and saw that we were in a tent, my rescuers standing around, angry, annoyed, or sad. 

“Okay, let me get this straight,” Saph said, adjusting the strap of her black tank top as she looked at me like I was some trash-eating possum. “Maya was supposed to have died. The only way anyone would have survived that was if they were an ally. Then, she reappears, apparently sending you to find a potential Pyline-minion--which is fifty kinds of illegal. Now, we’re wondering whether you were working with her on purpose or were tricked into working with her, and we’re almost certain you’re evil.” 

“I’m not,” Isaac interrupted. 

“All of us who are in our right minds think so.”

Saph frowned at him.

“So, yeah. Laws state we can’t just kill whoever we don’t like, but all of Talented society rests on the decisions of the Champions.” 

“So you think I’m evil?” I asked. 

“Yes.”

“I don’t,” B said. 

“Because she’s eleven and sweet and innocent and stupid,” Saph snarled. 

“Am not!” 

“I woke up to her screaming in my face.”

“She freaked.”

“I don’t like you,” B said to Saph, who frowned at her before turning towards me. 

“You know, this is horror movie 101,” I said. “Person wakes up tied to a bed with no idea what’s going on. Weird, possibly-vampire girl gets closer and closer to them while talking about their thirst for blood.”

“I said I wanted to kill you, not that I was a vampire!”

“That’s comforting.” 

“I’m no vampire,” Saph sang. “Vampires are immortal. I’m mortal as a dead cow.”

“You’re dead, then.”

“No. I am not dead.”

“Great. I’M NOT EVIL! LET ME OUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUT!” I screamed at her.

But all Saph did was lunge forward and hit me in the head faster than any normal person could. Everything went black as I thought do vampires move really fast? Or is that zombies? No, zombies are slow and stumbly, so…

“Wake up.”

A cool breeze blew across my face. 

“But don’t talk because I’m saving you.”

Another breeze,someone pulling the straps off my legs. 

“This is a rescue mission,” someone said. I recognized them as Celeste. 

She undid the strap on my waist, then my arms.

“Hurry! I brought a telestone,” she said as I sat up, stretching my achy, burned, sore legs. 

“What?” I asked.

“A telestone. Basically, a magic rock from the homeworld that can bring us back there.”

“Is Maya really...evil?” I asked as we slipped out of the tent. 

“No. But I’ll tell you something--one of the people there was. When the Pyline...when it came, three people were spared: me, Maya, and a betrayer.”

“Who was it?” I stepped carefully over Isaac, sleeping outside the tent. Why had they rescued me if that bossy Saph girl just wanted to kill me?

“No one knows. But I bet it’s one of them.” Celeste gestured to the people sleeping outside the tent. 

“Isaac...he’s Maya’s sister. He must be conflicted over whether he should trust Sapphire--Saph--or you, since you admit to knowing her. It isn’t him, I knew him.”

Celeste nodded to the girl next to him.

“I don’t know her, but I heard them talking before they fell asleep. She’s Adoree--new to this and afraid of fire and cats. Wouldn’t work with the Pyline for everything in the world--it can’t be her,” she turned towards the girl with the robotic hand. “That’s B.w. sweet, innocent, and short-fused. Lost her left hand in a Pyline attack, hates anything to do with the Pyline’s side. Not her.”

We walked across their makeshift camp on the beach, seeing Saph and a scar-covered girl with blue hair lying on the sand, fast asleep by the water. 

“That’s Sia--if I remember correctly, she was a prisoner of the Pyline for a year. Loathes him. Maybe he tortured her into following him, but it’s been two years since then, so she’s back to normal, I think.” 

“Now, Sapphire. She’s always been an odd one, but she wouldn’t side with the Pyline for a million dollars--she’s creepy, but loyal. Not them.”

Sitting by the campfire, falling off her chair and snoring gently, was a teenager dressed in purple. 

“Amethyst. A good friend--I was friends with her when I was younger--and as kind and funny as anyone. Can see the future. Has nightmares of the Pyline, too scared of him to side with him, if you ask me. Not her.”

That’s all of them, though,” I said. 

“Someone could have left to chat with the fire-cat-of-death in question. I don’t know what their team looks like.” Celeste shrugged. “Oh yeah, we usually have teams. The Champion team is a little small, but you’re good at working together.” 

 “But can we? I mean…” 

There was a loud crash and a string of curses from the other tent(there were two)as Luna tumbled from it, one leg still strapped to the cot she’d dragged behind her. 

The sound woke Saph, Amethyst, B., and Isaac, Sia and Adoree waking at their shouts. 

“YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO BE DEAD!” Saph shouted, pointing a long, silver blade at Celeste. 

“I can do that too, you know,” she said, drawing from her cloak a long, curved purple blade like a sickle or question mark. She brandished it like it was a much longer, more powerful thing. 

A beam of violet light shot out of it and hit Saph in the chest. 

Okay, it was powerful. 

Saph dropped her sword, screaming in agony as purple electricity sparked around her body; her muscles spasmed as she screeched like a banshee. 

“My mother was a thunder-welder,” Celeste said. “This was her Channel.”

I heard the capital letter but didn’t have time to notice the rhino charging at me. 

The rhino with a metal horn. 

B.W.

It was speeding too fast for me to get out of the way, and I knew that the blow would kill me. There was nothing I could do.

I was gonna get killed by an eleven-year-old in a rhino form.

But then she switched into a girl and stopped right in front of us. “Stop it! We’ll sort this out by talking nicely, not by shooting electricity and throwing swords!”

“CELESTE!” Isaac screamed, running even faster than Rhino-B. He threw two stone swords behind him as he leapt forward to hug her. 

“I...missed you too,” Celeste said, the taller boy almost crushing her with his hug. 

Luna grabbed something from her back pocket and used it to cut the strap off her leg, slipping into the confusing mob. 

Adoree and Amethyst were ready to attack, their weapons--a golden bow and a broadsword--in position, Isaac was hugging Celeste, Luna was escaping, Saph was writhing on the ground, I was standing there, staring at the insanity, and B had turned into a cat with a metal leg. Sia was sneaking up on Isaac and Celeste, a silver, triangular-bladed knife in her hand. I noticed a black shard of stone set in the golden handle-thingy(what did they call the handle of a sword?)as she raised it above Celeste’s back--

Oh no. 

I dove at all three of them, the huggers oblivious to their impending doom, Sia screaming and jumping backwards. 

I slammed into them like a missile, my vision a blur, my ears filled with confused cries, the only thing clear the small blue stone falling from Celeste’s cloak and hitting the ground in slow motion--

Hazily, I thought look at the pretty magic rock of wonder hahahahhahHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH before being nearly blinded by a bright flash, a jerking feeling in my stomach, and an odd feeling of being home.

I looked around.

Everything was the way it was before--battle-ready Adoree and Amethyst, Saph lying on the ground, gasping, B as a metal-legged cat, Luna, slipping free from the straps holding her, Isaac, Sia, and Celeste in a pile on the ground. 

“SIA JUST TRIED TO KILL YOU!” I screamed. 

“No, I swear I wasn’t!” she protested. “I was trying to kill the Raxthorn on your back!”

“RAXTHRON? WHERE?” Celeste shrieked, dancing in a circle. 

“I got it off. But, weird redhead girl, I promise I wasn’t trying to stab her. I don’t think you know yet, but Raxthrons are the Pylines spies. Evil beetles.”

“Oh.”

“They can only be killed by a Channel, and this knife happens to be mine. Or, hold a shard of mine, they were broken in battle.” 

“What is a Channel? And why…” I trailed off. 

I realized everything wasn’t the same.

We were not on the beach at night.

We were on the Homeworld during the day. 

And not any part of it--we were right outside the main cave, which was blocked up with bright-blue boulders, on the cliff I’d spent so much time trying to talk to plants!

Only...something was wrong.

I reached out for a plant. Surprisingly, I connected with it easily. 

What happened, my friend? I asked. Plants on the homeworld only listened to those who addressed them as “friend”. I considered them my friends, after talking to a few and finding them kind, helpful people--err, plant-people. 

Who? It asked. 

Me. The friend, the Nature-Champion. 

Hello, friend! 

Yes. I am a friend. Do you know what happened?

Bad sprite. 

Bad sprite?

Bad sprite bind wings lock up did evil hurt Maya.

The bad sprite did what?

Bad sprite evil hurt Maya break wings tear mane stepped on leaves. 

(They hated when their leaves got stepped on.)

I still don’t understand.

Bad sprite break Maya holds in cave bad sprite evil works with Them.

I think I got it. Thank you!

A “bad sprite” had done something to Maya. Something similar to leaves being stepped on? Plants didn’t speak English--I spoke Plant. It was not an easy language. Not many words.

Saph got up slowly. 

“So you decide to electrocute me with magic thunder and teleport me to your homeworld? Bad move, Champion. Bad move indeed, if I say so myself.”

While she was talking, her voice changed to a raspy, silvery one.

I turned towards her and saw a strange sight. 

Her black hair turned silver, then white, bleaching from the tips to the roots as her eyes became glowing orbs. Her skin faded to the color of bones and she started floating, her ears pointed, nose sharp. She had gone from thin and pretty to bony and angular, like some sort of demon. 

“You too, Isaac. Do not mess with the Jak’hessi’vaan.”

“Jack-a-what-now?” I asked the thing that used to be Sapphire. 

“I was speaking to the brave boy with the stone swords. You want to see your Maya again?” she hissed, swimming through the air. “Because she’s mine. Raise your weapons against me and I will kill her. Even a gravity manipulator cannot survive a fall off this cliff--especially if I’ve eaten her power. It was delicious.” Not-Saph licked ler dry, white lips with a forked tongue. 

“WHAT DID YOU DO TO HER?”

Oh, nothing. Just some classic torture. Magic, too--I made her hit her face into a stone wall for an hour before it got old. Telekinesis is awfully fun.”

“GET AWAY FROM HIM!” I screamed, brandishing a stick. 

“I have someone you want, too,” Not-Saph said. 

“What’s going on?” someone asked. It was Fearless and Nainika, walking around the side of the cliff into what looked like a scene from a weird movie--Fearless and Nainika! They could help! Nainika could turn into anything and Fearless could manipulate stone. They’d be able to fight Not-Saph!

“Look who showed up,” Not-Saph hissed. I’m happy to say that you can’t fight me either. I have a hostage for each Champion, and I don’t think you’d want to find out the hard way who they were.”

She turned towards me, looking more like a skeleton stitched together by pale skin than the pretty girl from before. 

“Trying to fight me, ay, little Champion? We all know you’re the weakest. A--I believe you humans would say--Mudblood.”

That was all it took for me to go full-on wild.

I swung my stick at her skull, hoping to break it and kill her. But she just dodged out of the way and, with a laugh touched the pile of boulders blocking the entry to the main cave.

“For that attempt, I’ll let you watch him die,” she snarled, the boulders collapsing, revealing a room full of what looked like dead bodies. 

But one was definitely alive. 

“Let’s see what you think of this, huh, Emerald?”