163 Phase 132: Ruin (1)

Katrin, on the other side of an oversized clump of trees, was trying to put together some sort of escape plan.

"Look, we'd fight our way out if we could, but most of us can't even stand up." Rita told her, lying flat on the ground, his eyes closed. "The respawning sickness is worse than it usually is, probably because of whatever the Green Men did to keep us from respawning back at our bases."

"The J-Knights will notice we're missing." Henry added. "Our forces were routed and fell back to regroup. Once they figure out that we haven't respawned back where we're supposed to, they'll come looking for us."

Tomoe forlornly fed her fallen Helijet some batteries. She didn't say anything.

"That's going to take too much time…" Katrin said, looking about wildly. "I can't stay here and hope for rescue."

"You're right. We can't let them take you." Rita said. "We'll be okay, I think. They're not after us. The one they want is you. Katrin, you have to run away. We'll try to hold them off as long as we can…"

Henry shook his head. "Scrap that. It's going to be more like a diversion while you sneak into the marsh and find some place to hide. Maybe if you left your winged horse with us, they might think you were still here."

"My horse comes with me." Katrin said. "I'm not leaving my only Comrade behind."

"Won't make much difference if you meet a Frenzied." Henry muttered. "She's got the respawning sickness too. Your best hope is to hide."

"He's right, Kat." Rita said. "Your horse is a lot easier to notice than you are."

Katrin gave Grace a measuring look. Grace looked back wanly, tried to struggle to her feet. Katrin sighed.

"No, rest easy, Grace." Katrin patted Grace on the nose. "Take it easy. I'll be fine on my own. You need to recover soon, so you can help me sooner."

Grace whinnied uneasily.

"I'm going." Katrin said, giving Henry, Rita and Grace one last look before almost tripping over Tomoe. The little girl spared her a single glance, gave her a grimace that was probably meant to be a smile, and then lay back to rest.

Katrin slipped through the growing crowd as casually as she could manage. She wasn't the only one, she saw. Other casualties had seen the Saucers coming down for a landing and were slipping into the marsh to evade capture as well. {Good… the more of us there are, the less likely it'll be that they'd find me.}

Still. A lingering regret began to grow in Katrin as she stumbled into the thick growth and got her shoes stuck in mud. She sank up to her knees in three steps and had to go back and find her way around that patch of ground. Then she dropped a clean four feet down into what appeared to be solid ground covered by light brush. A lot of that 'brush' had thorns. Katrin was sorely regretting her decision to leave her horse behind by the time she crawled out of that.

{Grace would never have fallen in. She could just hover and skim over the ground without setting a hoof down. On top of that, the trees here are so big, the growth so thick, an elephant could trample through unnoticed.}

{Why, oh, WHY did I listen to Henry and Rita?!}

A Saucer swooped overhead. Katrin dropped as low as she could and lay still for a while. A creeping centipede lazily went by as she froze there, a centipede roughly the size of a monorail train. Katrin had to bite her lip to keep from screaming while the Saucer made a lazy circle overhead, fired a few beams and bolts randomly into the marsh and received about ten times as many shots in return from whatever it had hit below.

Still, it hovered, exchanging fire with the Frenzieds it had roused. Another Saucer came by to offer fire support.

{What's taking so long? MOVE! Get out of here already and let me get away from this BUG!} Katrin fought to keep down a rising panic. The centipede, as if sensing her tension, turned in mid-stride and inspected her with glaring red eyes. It wiggled tendrils the size of lamp posts at her.

{Please, please just leave me alone…} Katrin silently begged both the Frenzied centipede and the pair of Saucers above.

But her pleas went unnoticed, or else they incited the exact opposite response from what she wanted. Instead of leaving, the Saucers came closer and lower.

The centipede clacked mandibles at her for a moment, then took three steps towards Katrin and opened its jaws wide.

That did it. Katrin fled screaming. She didn't know where she ran or where she put her feet or how she managed to keep from falling into some hidden pit or the other, but she went flat-out and didn't stop until she quite literally crashed into someone in a pink sequin dress.

"Colin?!" the girl in the pink sequin dress exclaimed, but then saw who it was and looked disappointed. "You're not him. Where is he? I know he's here somewhere!"

"What?!" Katrin gaped for a bare moment before a shadow covered her. A single glance told her the game was up. The Saucers had seen her and both of them were now converging on her. They were coming down for a landing.

"More FANS!" the girl exclaimed, spreading arms wide.

Katrin ran for it. This time, however, she wasn't quite so lucky. She ran over fallen trunks and branches rather than growth, thinking to avoid pits that way, but roughly twenty steps from the red sequin girl, the trunk she was running on snapped straight down the middle and plunged her into a hole. As if being down wasn't enough, the hole was half-filled with muddy water, and Katrin had a mere moment to remember the centipede when {something} stirred inside that water.

***

Colin heard the screaming. He couldn't imagine anyone within a mile who couldn't. "Katrin?!"

It was definitely Katrin's voice. She was screaming in fear. No - 'Afraid' didn't begin to cover the way she sounded. Katrin's scream held the sound of mind-blowing terror.

"Colin, wait!" Alicia hissed in a low voice, but Colin was already on the run.

Or at least, he tried to run. A massive tangle of undergrowth and mud under his feet turned his dash into a stumble. Colin tried to grab hold of something for balance, but the twigs he managed to grasp simply broke off and he landed face-first into a thick mass of weeds.

He leapt forward, trying to brush off the tangle with brute force but the tangle proved much, much stronger and much wider spread than he thought. Colin only managed to gain a couple of feet before he went sprawling once more. {Second down!}

With a valiant gasp, he raised his head as Alicia caught up. Colin pointed toward the sound of Katrin's screams and said, "G-go..."

"Leave you behind to rescue her? And who's going to rescue me when I get stuck like you?" Alicia demanded. "We'll both end up stuck and then we'd be the ones screaming for help next. Calm down! We'll make our way through quicker by being careful than by crashing and stumbling through everything."

Kirin arrived just then, with Sonia by her side. Without Colin even asking for it, Sonia blasted the undergrowth with a quick sonic bolt, then set to work on it with her teeth. Kirin pecked with her beak as Foxie caught up and joined in the effort to free Colin. Cour and Eclipse came back from scouting the perimeter and clawed or pecked at the weeds too.

"It's not working." Alicia observed. All her Comrades sat around watching Colin's Comrades try to get him loose. "It's like the vines are regenerating, or tightening every time they try to pull them away."

"What are you saying? The weeds won't let me go?" Colin growled and stomped on them angrily. "Cour! Hit the thickest bunch of weeds here with the strongest fire attack you've got!"

Cour gathered a smoldering hot fireball and blasted the mass five feet to Colin's right.

That did it. There was an explosion of fire immediately followed by a spasm that reminded Colin of his knee-jerk reaction at gym class. Suddenly the entire ground came alive as vines and tendrils and foliage began thrashing around...

"Colin... I don't think those are just weeds." Alicia said politely.

"You {think}?!" Colin spluttered as he found himself hauled sixteen feet into the air by the left foot.

There was a roar, and a horrible, horrible smell as a gust of wind blew into his face from the right. Colin turned to see himself staring into a gigantic maw filled with teeth. {Wait, isn't that supposed to be a venus fly-trap? How come it's got so much TEETH?!}

"Yep. It's a plant-type Wild." Alicia said, sipping tea. "Or rather, it's a plant-type Frenzied."

{Where'd she get TEA?} Colin found himself wondering as his Comrades opened fire and started attacking every leaf, branch and vine within reach.

That really wasn't a good idea. See, not every vine and every root was connected to the same plant-type Frenzied. There was more than one of them basking in that nice muddy clearing. Colin saw that very, very clearly within the next ten seconds.

"Colin..." Alicia said seriously. "I think we should run."

"Oh, {really}?" Colin asked, as the vine snagging his foot drew him nearer and nearer to the teeth-filled maw. Meanwhile, Kirin was being chased around by a trio of thorny branches, while Foxie turned into a purple colored popsicle in order to hide from a Frenzied Tigress Lily. Sonia was still trying hard to attack the Frenzied Venustrap that had Colin, but Cour was getting bombarded by water attacks from a Frenzied Blue Lotus. Only Eclipse managed to get free from the mess, flying far and high away from them.

Colin saw then that Eclipse wasn't the only thing in the sky that he needed to pay attention to. There were two Cult Saucers nearby.

"Go!" Alicia ordered her Comrades, and her birds swooped in to flank Eclipse just as Colin's Shadowhawk made an attack run on the vine snaring his foot. Their combined firepower tore him free, and their talons bore him safely away from those teeth before he could fall into that maw.

"Wait! Kirin..." Colin turned around in time to see his Storm Swan killed back to base. Cour was already gone, and Foxie stayed very, very still to avoid any Frenzied nearby noticing her. Of Colin's Comrades, only Sonia accompanied him and Eclipse as Alicia bore them away.

"Arf!" Sonia barked to Colin. {Climb on my back!}

"I would, just as soon as my feet touch the ground." Colin glanced up at Alicia's flock still carrying him in their claws. {If this were the waking world, my shirt is going to be full of holes...}

"Webbing ahead. Get down, guys." Alicia told her Comrades calmly.

Colin glanced to the front, only now seeing what she saw. Before them were huge webs, almost rope-like in their thickness, but in places so shaded, they went almost unseen...

"Caw?!" One of Alicia's Ravens made a protest as a spray of thick, sticky stuff knocked four of them out of the sky.

Colin dropped ten feet through the air before his flailing hands caught a strand of Big Sticky Webbing. It slowed his fall, then stopped him entirely about two feet off the ground.

Meanwhile, acid was flying and Alicia's Ravens were going poof. Alicia was yelling orders and her Comrades were going on a warpath, but Colin took one glance at the creature they were fighting and figured they were in yet another situation were running seemed to be the wisest option. {That's a really REALLY big spider! It's as big as an adult Storm Swan!}

"Eclipse, help Alicia..." Colin began, then frowned. "Eclipse? Hello?"

He stretched out his mind to find her, but Eclipse was already gone. {Don't tell me... she got killed back to base already...}

"Au." Sonia told Colin seriously as she tugged at him. {We have to go.}

"Right." Colin let go of the sticky web, then found that the web wasn't quite so willing to let go of him. He tried to wipe it off with a nearby leaf, but it stuck to just about everything...

"Au." Sonia barked, and a small sonic bolt blew the webbing away. Colin wiped off what remained of it on a nearby tree stump and then made his getaway.

"Alicia?" Colin called, searching for her with his mind.

Alicia was ten feet in front of him, but the plant-life was so thick, he couldn't see her even from up close. She sent back a sense of urgency. [Hurry!]

"Why?" Colin tried to ask, as he scrambled after her, trying his best to avoid getting into any more tangles. Sonia offered him a ride, but with so much webbing around, doing that would only get them tangled quicker. Gritting his teeth, he forged his way forward on foot, urged to urgency by both Katrin's screams and Alicia's tension.

{Not far now! Hang on, Katrin, we're almost there!}

***

Katrin couldn't stop screaming.

Whatever was in the water was only just starting to stir. Katrin scrabbled at the walls of the pit when it started to move, and felt something slimy and slippery slide past her foot.

But it was no use. The walls of the pit fell apart as soon as her hands grasped them. The stirring in the muddy water began to grow stronger as she shrieked her lungs out, leaping as high as she could to grasp at something, anything that looked like a root that just might hold her weight.

{I should have exercised more! I shouldn't have eaten so much! I should have lost more weight!!} Katrin clawed at the walls as she felt {something} behind her start to rise up out of the water.

She did the bravest and perhaps dumbest thing she'd ever done yet today. She turned around.

Behind her was an eye. It stuck two feet out of the water on a thick tendril and stared at her balefully.

Katrin lost all control at that point. There was so much mud falling from the pit walls at her mad scramble that she felt like she was digging her way out or something. Mud went into her mouth, stones and rotting twigs and dirt, but Katrin didn't stop, {couldn't} stop the terrified shrieks that burst out from her throat.

{Something} dropped from above. Something cool and dark and scaly. At first, Katrin only screamed more, but then she saw that it wasn't a snake of some sort. It was a rope. A strong black cable.

She grabbed it with both hands before realizing there was a foothold at the bottom of the rope. She stuck her foot in and tugged at it urgently, begging whoever held it to hurry up and get her out of there...

The cable responded with expediency. Katrin was smoothly raised out of the water and then up from the pit in seconds. She dared another glance back down then, only to see three eyes where there was one, each held up by a single tentacle. The water below was still too thick with mud for her to make out what was down there, but from the shifting and movement, it seemed to be somewhat... longish.

Hands reached down for her. Katrin grabbed one, babbling "Thank you, thank you, thank y-?"

She froze. Those hands wore gloves, matching leather gauntlets.

Green gloves.

***

{They have her.}

Colin watched, eyes wide, as the Green Men found Katrin screaming and trying to claw her way out of that pit. In spite of everything, Katrin actually looked glad to see them.

They pulled her out safely with a retractable cable. They set up a small camp centered around a thermo and gave her a folding chair, a cup of hot chocolate, and a towel.

"I'm going to get closer." Alicia told him in a low voice. The pair of them were sneaking around the campsite, hoping that the Green Men wouldn't send out perimeter patrols. "Stay back and if anything happens, run."

"We have to save her." Colin bit his lip.

"She seems to think they already did." Alicia nodded to Katrin.

"I think she's acting." Colin said.

"Maybe." Alicia paused. "But maybe she really is thankful. They surround her with guards and guns, but at least they treat her better than some giant slithering creature at the bottom of a muddy hole."

Colin said nothing. Alicia saw the grim look on his face and decided not to say any more either as they crept closer through the thick undergrowth.

It took some doing, but at last they got close enough to hear when the talking started.

***

"Katrin. At long, long last." The man who approached her wore robes, not armor, and green lined with yellow, not purple as the guards were. "We can do this the easy way, or the hard way."

"What?" Katrin stared blankly.

"Normally, we'd take you back to base, have a nice, long chat and then make sure you can't blab about it afterward… but we're a little short on time." The man said. "You've delayed us for far too long now, and I'm very, very tempted to give you the full extended treatment you rightly deserve."

Katrin shivered. She didn't like the sound of that.

"But my orders were to give you a chance at being civil about this." The man sighed. "So I'll ask you one question. Answer it nicely, and we'll let you go free. How does that sound? Just one question."

"Depends on the one question." Katrin said, trying her very best to put on a bold face in the current circumstances.

"See, we're looking for someone. Someone very specific." The man cleared his throat. "He started on the same night as exactly seven others of you."

{'He'. A boy. Definitely a boy.} Katrin struggled to keep a straight face. {I know who they're after. I know. But they mustn't find him. They mustn't know what I know.}

"So. Where is he?" the man asked, narrowing his eyes at her. "Where is the prince?"

Katrin gambled everything on her acting skills. "You mean the Mountain Prince? But Sora started long before I did."

The man grimaced. "Not him. It seems you don't know either. Very well, then. Give me a name."

"A name? You want me to name you?"

The man peered at her dangerously. "I want the name of another one of you Eight. Someone we haven't found yet."

{This was it.} Katrin realized. {This was how they found us. This was how they knew our names. We told them. We told them how to find the next one of us, and the next…}

{Henry was taken first. He was upset with Rita, so of course he named her. She was next, but she thought Jonah, Alicia and Larry could get away from anyone, so she named them, always talking more than she should, as usual…}

{And they… named me. Why? I thought they were enemies with Colin or something. Oh. That's right. The Green Men ask for a location as well as a name. They couldn't know where he was going. He was always traveling. But they knew me, and they knew exactly where I would be. At Edward's farm.}

{And now it's down to me.}

"We have…" the man glanced at a datapad. "A hundred and six knights captured from the recent battle. If you don't answer my question in the next twenty seconds, they will all suffer together with you."

"What?!" Katrin blurted. "Why?! That's not…"

"Eighteen. Seventeen. Sixteen…" the man counted down.

"Why are you even after us? We're just kids! We just want to… to…"

"Twelve. Eleven. Ten…"

{I can't tell him! I can't tell him where to find the one they want! The stakes are too high! Even for everyone… what are they going to do to everyone…?!}

{Multiple re-killings. Everyone losing their Comrades to Frenzy. The knights' alliance falling apart and admitting defeat at the hands of the invaders. Nakama world under Green Men control.}

"Five. Four. Three."

{Even so. I can't give them the one they want. I can't give them Phillip.} Katrin sobered. {I'm sorry, Colin. But I don't have a choice.}

"Two. One…"

"Colin." Katrin answered at last. "The Destroyer of Lamico."

The man paused. "And his location?"

"He's here. Right now." Katrin said, glancing at the pink sequin girl, who was somehow also at the camp but chatting with the guards and trying to tease them or something.

She stopped and gave Katrin a wave when she saw her looking her way.

"Ask her." Katrin nodded towards the girl.

The man did exactly that. "Is Colin the Destroyer here?"

"Why, yes!" she exclaimed at once. "I just saw him but a few minutes ago! We talked for a bit, you know, about galactic concerns over rudeness, and the greatest invention…"

"Find him!" the man ordered. "He's {here}! Find him now!"

***