162 Phase 131: Stepping into the Marshes

At that time, Colin and Alicia were just around the corner. It was a very big corner, to be sure, a corner roughly the size of Sunshine Town, but on the very same land mass, a bend away from the respawned and trapped casualties.

They had no idea that the Cult had raised such a barrier, or that there were more and more knights respawning nearby. They still thought that any knight who died up there (such as Katrin) would simply respawn somewhere far, far away. To them, the battle above was just another fight between Cult and Allied Knights. They weren't really concerned about it and weren't looking to join in any time soon.

They were, in a word, skulking. They were sneaking through the tangled plants and thick, muddy ground, trying not to be spotted by the Gaian Saucers as they surrounded the Uber Marshes and came in for a landing. Several of them were fighting flying Frenzieds who had gotten hit by stray shots during the earlier battle and had decided to take revenge. Several more were patrolling the vicinity. About ten more were still fighting the allied knights' air force. But some of the second wave of Saucers were landing on the beach across the marsh from them, and Colin and Alicia weren't keen on being found by any means. Not by the Green Men, not by the Frenzieds, not by the Knights, not by anybody.

The Frenzieds, however, disagreed. They figured that this was their territory and made it a point to find Colin and Alicia pretty much from the beginning. What looks like a marsh serpent and a three-tailed fox-bat or something took one glance at the newcomers and decided to give them a full-force welcome.

"Raiki. Sonia. Eclipse." Colin drew his new stave (replaced by warranty, though apparently getting crushed by a giant metal fist meant the warranty only worked once) and extended it, but used it to pole vault out of the way of a stream of acid rather than to attack. "Take 'em one at at time! Raiki, you're in charge!"

"Dirge squad!" Alicia called. "Target the fox-bat!"

It was a wise decision, Colin realized. The snake, they could corner at close quarters. The fox-bat might take to the skies and then they'd be discovered by everybody else for sure. "Raiki! Back Alicia up!"

Meanwhile, the serpent didn't seem to like being ignored. It hissed at Colin, glowering at him with eyes that alternated red and yellow.

"Don't worry." Colin assured it. "We haven't forgotten you."

He lunged at it, and it lunged right back. Colin skidded aside, using the staff to parry, wincing as he felt the force of the serpent's impact on it. {OW!}

His lunge turned into a stumble. Colin struggled to regain his feet only to get mired in the mud. The serpent swiped at him from left and right so fast, he could barely respond.

{Not good!} Colin switched tactics and switched weapons. His hands found the trigger and the segment parts. He thumbed the pressure points on the staff, twisted and pulled… and his staff split into three parts, linked together. {There's a reason they call it a tripartite staff. This is it.}

He used it defensively at first, taking advantage of all three parts to block the serpent's quickest strikes from left, right or center. The power of its lunges stung his arms, but Colin had given up trying to maneuver in the mud and just stood his ground, taking a low pose and digging his feet in deeper. {I can't last very long like this, but I don't have to. Raiki will…}

Sonia went tumbling past, blown away by the fox-bat's sudden sonic boom. She righted herself, struggling to move in the mud, and countered with a Hypersonic Bolt.

{What's going on…?} Colin took one look and suddenly realized that his orders couldn't have been followed. Raiki wasn't even there to take charge. Sonia and Eclipse were flanking the fox-bat on two sides with Alicia's ravens swooping down the center, but they didn't have that much firepower to bring to bear. Colin risked a bit more stealth for the rest of his Comrades. "Kirin. Foxie. Cour. Shiro."

Kirin appeared. Foxie and Cour warped in. But Shiro, like Raiki, did not respond.

{What's WITH those two?!} Colin felt rather vexed. {I'll have to manage without them, somehow.} "Sonia! You're in charge!"

Sonia made her decision on the spot. She left the fox-bat to Alicia and directed the full force of Colin's Comrades to him.

{Well, I did say she was in charge…} Colin half-groaned. To be honest, it was probably the right thing to do; his arms were already aching and the serpent only seemed to be warming up. Still, he couldn't help feeling a bit irked at having all his commands and intentions countermanded.

Alicia had her squirrels out and taunting the fox-bat while her ravens made attack runs from every side. She held her own and somehow held the fox-bat down. Colin allowed her grudging appreciation and focused on his own fight.

Sonia had Foxie on Kirin and Eclipse in the air doing bombardment on the snake from above. She and Cour were circling the thing, matching it lunge for lunge, slide for pounce, and basically keeping it too busy with their direct attacks to bother either Colin or their air support. {I get it. Sonia's keeping me safe. That's what Comrades do for their Travelers, after all. That's how this world is SUPPOSED to work. Travelers weren't meant to go charging in with a three-section staff while their Comrades help out someone else. I'm not originally supposed to take part in the fighting in this Dreamworld.}

Somewhere along the way, he'd forgotten that. Colin had been taking part in the fighting so often now, he did it out of sheer habit. {But a lot of things are happening on this Dreamworld that really weren't meant to happen. Green Men invading. Comrades gone Frenzied. Adults starting a civil war. Import Link weaponry and Travelers taking part in battle. None of these were originally part of Nakama World.}

Colin switched from defense to offense. He swung his weapon like a flail, whipping it into the serpent's head from afar. The snake spun at glared at him some more, but Sonia scored a direct bite in the thing's neck, Cour had his fangs in its tail and suddenly the snake was caught, held in mid-air between them as Foxie, Kirin and Eclipse hammered down on it with everything they had. Colin threw in a few more whacks for good measure.

It struggled. It flailed and writhed, and almost broke free, but Foxie jumped down to help Cour hold the tail, Kirin, Eclipse and Colin went on hitting it with all they had until Colin was panting and he felt like his arms were about to fall off before finally, the thing went limp.

"Sorry. That wasn't very fair, I know. It was six against one." Colin noted to the dazed Frenzied. He tapped it lightly on the nose. "No more trouble from you, now."

The snake turned into stone. There was no other way to describe what happened. The five-foot creature simply petrified on the spot, became a statue, and then the statue shrunk and sank into the ground, which also turned to stone, until at last, there was nothing remaining but a stone disc small enough to fit in Colin's hand with a tiny little worm-figure embossed in it.

"What the-?" Colin blinked. There was writing on the disc. It said 'Frenzied Venom Worm. Sealed.' He gulped. "Wait. We were fighting a worm? Weren't Venom Worms supposed to be like… six inches long?"

Well, normal ones were. Apparently a Frenzied one grew really, really big. {If this was a worm, I'd hate to see what a Frenzied Sonic Wolf looks like.}

But Colin had a bad feeling even as he thought that. A bad feeling that said it was very, very likely he was going to.

"Colin!" Alicia called. "Come seal this one too!"

{Seal it…? Was that what just happened? But how did I…?}

"Colin!" Alicia grabbed him. "Hurry! Before it recovers or someone finds us!"

The fox-bat was bigger than Sonia, but it looked almost timid and pitiful when Colin went over to touch it.

"Sorry. I know you just wanted to be left alone. You're just… grumpy." Colin tapped it on the nose. "But that's enough now. No more trouble from you."

It turned into a stone disc too. This one said 'Frenzied Pixie Foxbat 3'.

"Something tells me that thing used to be really, really small as well." Colin grimaced. "Small enough to fit in your hand. Considering the size of the normal Wilds… if they were Frenzied…"

"With our luck? There's no need to speculate. We're sure to run into the biggest ones around." Alicia cut in. "Let's find a place to hole up. Dirge squad, scout around please. Wist, Whim, you're on sentry duty."

"Sonia…" Colin glanced at her.

Sonia gave him a brief nod. She and Eclipse vanished into the thick growth. Kirin meanwhile, sat back and offered Colin a lift. Cour and Foxie kept watch.

"Thanks, Kirin." Colin got on her back. "Alicia?"

Alicia gave it a moment's thought, then shrugged and climbed up behind him. Sitting on a Storm Swan's back beat trudging through the mud any day, and Kirin didn't seem to have any trouble either walking through wetlands or hovering just above the ground.

Colin stretched out his mind, searching for Sonia and Eclipse. He found them, one ranging on the right, the other dipping around tree branches on the left. Neither had found anything useful. A long abandoned rabbit burrow or so, yes. But nothing like a sizeable cave they could use as a base.

"Straight ahead." Alicia pointed. "Dirge found something."

Foxie hopped onto Kirin's back in front of Colin, somehow having managed to keep her paws clean from the mud. With either of Alicia's squirrels hopping from branch to branch at their flanks and Cour bringing up the rear, Kirin bore Colin and Alicia forward to see what Dirge had found.

And then something humongous and gray and spiky slammed across their path. It shattered whole trees, made the ground shake, and pretty much knocked Alicia's squirrels out of the branches. Cour didn't fare much better.

"What's that?" Colin stared, thinking some sort of tower had just fallen across their path.

But the 'tower' reared back up, and was withdrawn to an even larger form, this one about the size of a hotel block…

"That's… a squirrel." Alicia noted almost clinically.

Colin eyed Alicia's squirrels, comparing their size with that of the one looming over them. Alicia's squirrels came up to Colin's waist. This one… this one could have crushed Colin's house by sitting on it. Its' tail was what almost squished them.

"It's a gray flying squirrel." Alicia added, as if that helped.

Oddly enough, help came from the most unexpected places. It came from above. A quad of brilliant green beams lanced out from two passing Saucers and fried the squirrel.

Oh, and a doll-faced girl with long, tawny curls and a pink sequin dress ran up to it and stabbed a knife in its foot.

The Frenzied Squirrel went down. It just toppled over and lay still. Colin inspected it; the thing had many burn marks all over its body, probably the result of earlier Saucer fire. It lay still, glaring at him with red eyes, but not attacking.

"WHOOPIE!" the girl who stabbed it exulted, throwing up her hands in an explosion of delight. "I DID IT! I took down the Frenzied in ONE SHOT!!"

"Um, no, I think the Gaian Saucers shot it down…" Colin said, counting more than ten burn marks from beam fire on this side alone.

"THEY were shooting at it for ten minutes!" she snorted. "I only took one shot and it went down already!"

"Like I said…" Colin began, but she cut him off, suddenly leaping right in front of him and giving him an unnervingly intent look.

"Hey…" she said conspirationally. "Do you know? What's the greatest invention ever made?"

"Uh… electricity?" Colin guessed.

"Hot water?" Alicia suggested, coming up to join them.

"WRONG!" She screamed at them. She spun round in a full circle, and with an excited flourish, drew something from the pocket in front of her dress. She held it up and beamed in absolute triumph. "It's TOOTHPICKS!"

"Uh…" Colin didn't know what to say. At all.

She started rattling on like a machine gun. "Oh! Oh! But, you know! There's also toothpaste. And toothbrushes. And {dental floss}! And root canals and scaling and dentures and, and, and… {crowning}! I mean, the dental kind, not the sit-on-the-throne kind. And by that, I mean the kind of throne that people rule from, not the kind you have to flush…"

"Is she a relative of Rita's?" Colin had to wonder. "They seem to have a certain trait in common."

"Eh? You look bored." She was suddenly right in Colin's face, peering at him from mere inches away. "Oh! I know! You're a guy, right? And guys like things…" she stopped, twisted to one side, brushed her hair over a shoulder, then threw back a wide-eyed glance at him and swiveled her torso a bit. "…sexy."

"Hey. I'm standing right here." Alicia raised her hand.

"Huh? So what?" she demanded crossly.

"He's with me." Alicia said with a totally straight face.

Colin darted a glance at her, but she shot back a warning glare. [Not ONE word.]

[I didn't say anything!] Colin protested, then suddenly realized what just happened. [Hey! You can mind-speak!]

[Duh.] Alicia narrowed her eyes at the girl in front of them. Out loud, she said, "Who are you, by the way?"

"Me?" For a brief moment, the girl looked almost shy, but then she strutted up and opened her arms grandly, saying, "{I} am the magnificent, incredible, globally acclaimed, grand and most austere, wise and witty and all-winning…"

Colin tuned out her tirade for a moment, his mind still catching up to recent revelation. {Alicia can mind-speak. Since when…?}

The moment she jumped when he'd thought 'JUMP' at her had been a pretty good clue. Being able to know what Dirge had found even with the comms down and being nowhere near Dirge had to mean she was contacting her mind to mind the same way Colin contacted Sonia and Eclipse. Exactly the same way. Not to mention she seemed to have understood during the times when Colin conversed with others mind-to-mind.

Maybe she had one of those psi-phones Lynn was always talking about. Or something.

"…noble and glorious {Mandy}!" the girl finished her long-winded speech with a flourish and bowed as if expecting applause.

Colin and Alicia just exchanged glances and shrugged.

"Stunned into stupor! Absolutely speechless before my awesomeness!" Mandy exclaimed. "Well, that is to be expected, although it could get a little troublesome later on, you know, when I want you guys to do things for me…"

"Nobody offered to do anything for you." Alicia said stiffly, and stalked away.

"Why, how {rude}!" Mandy jumped. "You know, that sort of behavior should be corrected at the {highest} levels! We should enact an inter-galactic {law} against rudeness! Fellow sensitive people of the universe, {unite}! The time has come for the great battle against rudeness!!!"

Colin left her as she went on a rambling speech and shook his head. "That… had to be the queerest thing that's happened to us all week. It tops even respawning with you and talking to you mind-to-mind."

"{Those} were the things you considered queer?" Alicia snorted. "Guess I was worried for nothing."

"What?" Colin blinked. "What else was queer?"

"For one thing, you haven't complained for hours." Alicia answered.

Colin snapped his mouth shut. He didn't feel like talking any more.

"Still." Alicia mused. "It's odd, but I actually agree. That girl was pretty queer. I mean, what kind of girl would we find in a place like the Uber Marshes?"

An answer came to mind instantly, and Colin almost smacked himself for not realizing it earlier. {I knew it already. There was another of the J-Knights Most Wanted in the Uber Marshes. Someone else they were having trouble handling.}

He told her. "Alicia… I think we just met the Drama Queen."

***

"Scarlet! Hey, SCARLET! Guess what?! You'll never guess what just happened!"

"Mandy?! What are you doing, calling me on Trans-Planar Comms?"

"I {met} him! I met the Destroyer!"

"What Destroyer?"

"The Destroyer of Lamico! The ex-Forester, Colin! He looks exactly like the Most Wanted posters! I met the Most Wanted's Number ONE!"

"{That's} all it was?! Don't call me on Trans-Comms for something like that! It's expensive for {both} of us!"

"I even gave him my sexy glance! Oh my! What if he falls in love with me?! What would the J-Knights think?! What would my {mother}…"

Scarlet hung up.