The Fall of the Gemini

The Fall of the Gemini

  Luca—I mean Sacul sat in an oak chair, worn smooth by hundreds of plastic bottoms sitting on it every day. In front of him was an oak table worn by hundreds of meals, drinks, and occasionally some plastic bottom which didn’t read the “don’t sit on the tables” sign. Across the table sat Thi—I mean Yuggniht on yet another oak chair worn smooth by the aforementioned reason. A fire was burning in the corner (In a fireplace, of course. Don’t worry, the building wasn’t burning down) and it cast mysterious shadows across the room.

“So,” Sacul prompted. “What of the big cheese?”

“Say what?” Yuggniht replied.”

“That’s code for Dimlat.”

“Dimple?” Yuggniht repeated.

“No, Dimlat,” Sacul clarified. Say it backwards and it will make sense.

“Dimlat backwards it Talm—oh, I get it now. No, unfortunately I am unaware of his fate.”

“What of the Gemini?”

“The Gemini? Oh, you mean Nosredliubogajninderonohdelliks and Avalfoajnin.”*

Sacul took a moment to process what that sounded like backwards before replying, “yes, them. Do you know what happened to them after the disruption?”

A tidal wave of sadness and regret slammed into Yuggniht and threatened to throw him off his feet, even though he was sitting in a chair.

            He remembered, fifteen years ago, a battle where great walls of water rose up into the sky, wooden boats tossed from wave to wave, and mechanical Barneys that shot laser from their heads, shoulders, knees, and toes. 

            Shard and Blaze (Those are our new codenames since Avalfoajnin and Nosredliubogajninderonohdelliks are WAY too long) were destroying any enemy vessel that was unfortunate to come near them. Blaze shot streams of fire right from his hands, setting the enemy vessels on fire. Shard stayed hidden in the crow’s nest with a bow, systematically eliminating enemy personal of importance. A ship could easily be thrown into chaos once the commander or whatever the guy steering the ship is called was smashed. 

“When you torch the enemy ships make sure they are well away from our ships so that the fire doesn’t spread to ours,” Shard called out to his brother.

“I can handle my own ninja powers, Shard. How about YOU start using that bow a little more instead of hiding up in the crow’s nest up there?”

“It’s called the element of surprise, dummy. I smash them right when they don’t expect it. Like this.” He quickly raised his head drew back the string of his bow, and released the arrow at a pompous captain marching about on the deck of an enemy ship. However the arrow flew at least a yard above the paradox rouge’s head.

“So much for the element of surprise,” Blaze commented, rolling his eyes.

“That should have hit him!” Shard complained. I don’t get why it would do that unless…”

“Unless…?”

“Well, if the gravity of the moon is strong enough to cause the water to rise into the air, it’s probably messing up gravity for my arrows as well.” Shard dropped the angle of his bow and fired another arrow, smashing the enemy ship’s captain.

“Am I awesome or am I awesome?”

“Is ‘none of the above’ an option?”

I’ll bet you twenty coins that I can hit that BarneyBot from here,” Shard challenged. Suddenly a wall of mist rose between them and the enemy ship blocking his view.

“You’d better have twenty coins ready.”

“No fair! Mega moons mists shouldn’t count!” Shard challenged.

Their ship was quickly consumed by the growing cloud of mist.

“This moon mist stings,” Blaze commented as little droplets of water slashed at his face like the blade of a liquid sword.

“That’s because the skyfalls are growing stronger,” their navigator interjected. “At the peak of the event the moon will be the closest to the earth than it ever will be again until the next skyfall eighteen years from now. During this ten minute period the gravity of the earth and moon will cancel each other out and there will be total weightlessness.

“Now THAT’S awesome,” Blaze said, “unlike your shooting, Shard.”

At that moment the mist to their starboard side parted and an iron bow rammed into their ship.

“It’s an enemy ramming vessel!” Blaze shouted. “Everyone, prepare to repel enemy boarding parties.”

“Did someone say party?!?!” a BarneyBot called out gleefully. “I love parties!”

Shard turned to the navigator. “Are there ally ships nearby?”

“Well, according to regulation 563 of the king, during battle if vision is decreased to less than thirty meters vessels are to…”

“Just tell me whether or not there’s a nearby ship!”

“Well, I, yes, of course there is, twenty meters off port side.”

“How long is a meter?”

“Approximately 3.2808 feet.”

Shard did some quick calculations in his head before emitting out a rapid volley of commands. “Attention! When I say jump, everyone on this ship is commanded to jump as far as they can to our sister ship over there.” He pointed toward the ally ship twenty yards away.

“But that’s twenty yards!” the navigator protested. “No one can jump twenty yards!”

“Jump!” Shard exclaimed.

“But that’s twenty yards!”

“You’re starting to repeat yourself.”

“Twenty yards!”

“Blaze, give me a hand here, will you?”

“My pleasure.” Blaze walked up to the navigator, picked him up with one hand, and threw him into the air. A few seconds later he belly flopped onto the deck of the ally ship. The crew were stunned. Murmuring erupted across the ship.

“Did you see that?!”

“I sure did. The commander just threw that guy twenty yards!”

“With one hand, too!”

“You guys don’t know what you’re talking about. He didn’t throw him twenty yards, he threw him twenty meters. Get your facts straight.”

“Is a meter more or less than a yard?”

“I don’t know. But I know they can’t be the same thing.”

“Attention!” Shard yelled. The murmuring stopped. “Blaze was able to throw the navigator twenty yards—“

“Meters!” someone shouted.”

“Whatever, twenty METERS. This was because decreased gravity caused by the nearby moon. You can easily jump twenty meters to our ally ship. Or you can stay here to get smashed by paradox rogues. The choice is yours.”

Everyone chose to jump. One by one the crewmembers leapt from their sinking ship to their allies ship twenty yar—I mean meters, away.

            Meanwhile, the on the other ship, its commander, Sir Seton was planning their attack strategy. 

“So, if we encounter any hostiles we should go into maneuver alpha uber centuri,” Seton said.

“How does that maneuver work?” the first mate asked.

“I don’t know, but it sure does sound cool.”

At that moment a deckhand barged in shouting “Sir! Sir! It’s raining people!!!”

“Don’t talk nonsense, what do you mean it’s raining people?”

"I just happened to look up and I saw a navigator falling from nearly 20 meters in the air."

“Yeah right, let me see.”

Seton walked out of the cabin onto deck.

“See? No raining people.”

At that moment the navigator that had been tossed by Blaze face planted onto the deck.

Seton fainted.

Back on the sinking ship…

“The enemy is boarding! Has everyone evacuated?” Blaze shouted.

“There are still ten more crewmembers left.”

“You and I should hold off the enemy while the rest escape.”

Shard and Blaze silently made their way to the point that the enemies were boarding.

“You charge in the front and keep them distracted while I sneak around to the back,” Shard whispered.

“You always get to do the sneaking! One about you try being the distraction for once? It’s not as easy as it looks.”

“Yeah, but it’s easier for you cause you can shoot fireballs from your hands. Plus, fire isn’t a very good sneaky weapon. My bow is.”

“What do you mean it isn’t a good ‘sneaky weapon?’ If you ask me it—”

At that moment they felt something metal pressing against the back of their heads. It was a pair of metallic, green and purple, laser shooting dinosaur arms.”

“Now what do we have here? Are you guys arguing? Arguing is bad, and bad things have to be taken care of. Heh heh heh.”

“Before I brutally cause your upper body to be completely and painfully blown apart, I want you to know that this shouldn’t stop us from being friends,” Barney reassured. “We should all be friends,” he said in a monotone.

“You’re right,” Blaze agreed. “In fact, we’re such good friends that I could give you a nice warm hug.” At that moment he rolled backwards between the BarneyBot’s legs, wrapped his arms around its neck, and then set unleashed flames from his hands. At the same moment Shard pulled out his bow and started rummaged through his quiver for the right arrow.

“Normal arrow, fire, splinter, non-lethal, here we go, electric arrow,” he murmured to himself.

He fitted the arrow into his bow, quickly took aim, and imbedded the shaft into a gap in Barney’s armor where its arm connected to the torso. The BarneyBot gave Shard this look of “What? You seriously think that an arrow’s gonna hurt me? I’m a robot you dummy” before the electric arrow started emitting pulses of electricity, short circuiting the BarneyBot.

“Hey, watch it!!!” Blaze cried as the electric shocks zapping Barney also shocked him, since he was holding the BarneyBot in a chokehold.

“Sorry,” Shard replied.

The BarneyBot’s lasers had overheated due to Blaze’s fire hug, but it still madly swung its heavy metal arms in all directions, causing the two ninjas to back up.

“He’s blocking our escape! There’s no way to get past him so we can jump to the other ship,” Shard stated. A splintering sound was heard from the belly of the ship, and the mast fell into the sea.

“This ship’s going down, we have to get off it somehow,” Blaze replied. He looked up at the towering metal ramming ship. “I’m afraid that’s our only option.”

“Let’s do this then,” Shard said.

They leapt into the air and let the decreased gravity carry them to the top of the ramming ship.

With a mighty groan, their old vessel slit in half and was consumed by the sea. The BarneyBot, who hadn’t made it off the ship, screamed “BUT I CAN’T SWIM!!!” before being engulfed by the hungry sea as well.

The two brothers dropped down into the shadows of the massive ramming ship and crept along.

“So what’s the plan?” Shard asked.

“I don’t know, why would I have a plan?” Blaze retorted.

“I’m not actually asking you, none of your plans are ever good; this is just a rhetorical question I’m asking so you can’t complain that you never get to make the plan.”

“I never complain that I don’t make the plan,” Blaze objected.

“You did last week.”

“That was because you didn’t even tell me the plan.”

“I DID tell you, but YOU weren’t paying attention.”

‘What do you mean I wasn’t—”

At that moment a squad of Paradox Rogues surrounded them.

At that moment a squad of Paradox Rogues surrounded them.

“Now look what you’ve done! All your yelling alerted the enemies to our presence!” Shard yelled.

“What do you mean MY yelling? You’re the one yelling!”

“Yeah, but you’re the one yelling the loudest.”

Blaze couldn’t think of a reply to this, because he HAD been shouting the loudest, so instead he vented his anger by smashing paradox rogues. He drew his broadsword from a sheath on his back, and held it facing the paradox rogues.

“This is why they call me the Ninja of Lava!” he screamed, as two tendrils of fire snaked their way up the sides of his sword and created a burst of flame as the met at the tip. He then spun his flaming sword and stabbed it into the floor of the ship. Flames traveled from behind him and quickly made a ring of fire around the frightened paradox rogues.

“Seriously Blaze, that’s just fire, not lava. Any old fire ninja/wizard could do that.”

“Yes, but there’s no dirt around here (other than that which your brains are made of) so I have nothing to turn into lava!”

“So then next time don’t say anything.”

As the ninjas continued arguing, the paradox rogues sat huddled in the middle of the ring of fire with their eyes closed, begging their captors not to smash them. However, they soon realized that their captors weren’t even listening to their pleas, so instead they drew their weapons and charged.

“Look out!” Shard exclaimed.

Blaze turned around, pointed his sword at one of them, and smashed it with a bolt of fire. Two more fell from well-placed arrows from Shard. There were to left, one of which Blaze dispatched with a swing of his fiery sword. Shard fired an arrow toward the last one just as Blaze moved in to smash it via sword. The result was that the arrow missed the paradox rogue and was two inches away from piercing Blaze’s neck. Blaze turned away from the rogue and looked at shard with fiery hate, before outstretching his hand and causing Shard’s bow to burst into flames.

“First you shock me, then you nearly impale me! What’s wrong with you?” Blaze exclaimed.

“You moved in the way of my shot! And now how am I going to defend myself? I’m probably going to die because of you!”

The Paradox Rogue thought to himself “Now would be a good time to make my escape,” and crawled away whilst the brothers argued.

‘You still have your shurikens,” Blaze said.

“Yeah, but the bow got much greater accuracy and range. I only keep the shurikens because they can be easily hidden in your sleeve. But if I didn’t have those I’d be dead.”

Suddenly an alarm started blaring on the ship. The rogue that had escape had alerted the ship to their presence. In moments they were surrounded by hundreds of enemies. Blaze drew his sword, but instantly a net enveloped him from behind. A BarneyBot stood there with a net launcher in his hand. Shard was alerted to the presence of the BarneyBot by Blaze’s fate, and he quickly leapt to the side before the net could restrain him. However, when he jumped he did not calculate the decreased gravity and he slammed right into a metal wall. Shard heard something crack, and then felt agonizing pain rushing at his leg. He looked down and saw his knee was bent—in the wrong direction. The pain and shock immediately caused Shard to black out.

***

“Tell me exactly what happened!” Sir Seton shouted at the navigator from Shard and Blaze’s ship.

“Of course Commander Seton. Well first, Commander Shard said that we were supposed to jump twenty yards, but it was really twenty meters, but obviously no one can jump twenty meters so I said—”

“Just get to the point already!” Seton cried in exasperation.

“Well we all the crew escaped unharmed while the commanders covered our retreat.”

“Did the commanders escape?”

“Well, no, I guess not…?”

“Then not all of the crew escaped!!!”

“Well technically, according regulation 7.63 the term “crew” does not refer to the commander. Hmm, regulation 7.93 says that only one commander is to be in charge of a ship at a time, I’ll and the duel commandership of Commander Shard and Commander Blaze is a strict violation which would mean—”

“I want all the crew who are not currently working a necessary job to report on deck,” Seton interrupted. Once they had lined up, he ordered “I want lookouts posted to keep an eye out for them in case they escaped and are stranded in the water, and I want the rest of you to prepare boarding parties. If what Mr. Regulations here says is correct and they were surrounded by four BarneyBots and one hundred Rogues, then chance that they excaped is not likely.

Shard opened his eyes. The first thing he noticed was that he had a headache so bad it felt like someone had detonated a flash bang inside of it. The second thing he noticed was that his leg was throbbing painfully as if the blood running through his leg was on fire. The third thing he noticed was that trying to move his leg was a very bad idea.

“aaaaaaah!” He moaned softly as the excruciating pain flooded his body. He faintly heard Blaze’s voice saying “Are you okay?” and he opened his eyes. And the fourth thing he noticed was that he was lying on the cold, hard, metal floor of prison cell 17 in teh dude’s ramming ship. Shard closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on anything but the pain. Blaze grimaced just at the thought of the pain Shard must have been feeling, and wished for the millionth time that day that the paradox rogues hadn’t taken his backpack with all his healing kits. Blaze slammed his fist into the metal wall in rage and screamed at the guard

“You have to get Shard some healing supplies! You hear me!!! I’ll smash you if you don’t!!!”

“No, I don’t, and there’s no way you’re gonna smash me from in there,” the guard replied, yawning.

Blaze was going to shout something back, but then he had another idea.

“Oh yeah? You think I can’t smash you from here?” Blaze challenged

“Of course you can’t, you in jail.” The guard leaned against the wall opposite their cell. Blaze smiled, and started heating up the air in the room.

“Wha-what are you doing?” the guard asked, surprised. “I’m telling my officer.”

“You are not telling anyone!!!” Blaze shouted. He focused more intently on the heat and flames erupted around the guard. “For I am a mythran! Tremble before my might! I could easily break out of this cell, I just stay here because I like it here! So go get my backpack before your existence is ended!!!” The guard shrieked as the flames erupted higher around him.

“Oh yeah, and I have x-ray vision so if you try to tell your commander, I’ll know. In fact, I can also read your mind if you even THINK of telling him, I’ll know.” The guard nodded his head and fled the room. The moment he left, Blaze collapsed onto the floor.

“Wasn’t sure how long I could keep that up,” he panted.

Seconds later, the guard returned with Blaze’s backpack and Blaze gave a Shard a healing potion. Minutes later, the pain in Shard’s leg had dulled, and he was feeling good enough to pull out some shurikens he had stowed in his cloak and break out of the cell, thanks to the guard who willingly handed over the keys to the cell. The two brothers moved along as fast as Shard’s leg would allow down a long metal hall studded with numerous metal doors. Although the pain in Shard’s leg had decreased, it had by no means disappeared. Suddenly, they heard footsteps.

“Quick, into one of these rooms,” Shard said, pulling open a door and limping inside. 500 faces turned to stare at him. He had unknowingly walked into the cafeteria.

“Wrong door.” Shard slammed the door shut and everyone continued eating.

“Quickly, let’s try this one,” Blaze said, pulling open another door. This revealed a dark room with no one inside. “Perfect, in here.”

They tumbled into the room. They heard footsteps growing louder. They waited tentatively, both holding their breath in case whoever was outside should somehow hear them. After a couple of seconds, all was silent, and they exhaled loudly and reached for the door handle. At that moment, the door opened form the outside. Teh dude and a BarneyBot walked in. Shard and Blaze stood petrified, but the door opened toward them and sandwiched them between it and the wall which meant the dude was unable to see them and he walked past through the door. The door swung shut behind teh dude and the BarneyBot, leaving the brothers standing shocked, right behind teh dude. Miraculously, neither teh dude nor the BarneyBot turned around. The ninjas slowly inched the door open and started to sneak out, but froze when they heard what the dude was saying.

“so den wi acdivate dah cloakin divice so dat wi is competly inisble! an den wi smash keeng matis ship wid us ship an we smash dem!!!”

“That’s right boss, our ship can reach speeds of up to one hundred and sixty miles per hour using our Cyton Plasma power generator, and our armor is easily strong enough to withstand the impact of our ship with King Mathias’ ship. Don’t you feel so happy inside?”

Shard and Blaze felt anything but happy.

“We have to stop them somehow!” Shard whispered

“Cyton Plasma generators can reach tremendous speeds but are very volatile,” Blaze whispered back. “If I could reach the generator I could—”

“Intrudah ulurt!!!” teh dude screamed at the top of his lungs. Teh dude and Barney had just realized that there were two people standing behind them. The BarneyBot immediately unfolded a pair of gatling guns out of his arms and opened fire. The ninjas did a bunch of flips and stuff and jumped out of the way.

“You get to the generator, I’ll draw their fire,” Shard panted.

“But you’ve got a broken leg! And there’s got to be hundreds of paradox rogues on this ship.”

“That’s why you have to go, I’d never make it to the generator in time with this leg. Don’t worry, with the decreased gravity I won’t have to put all that much weight on in. And I’m Shard, I could easily take out a hundred Rogues broken leg or no broken leg.”

“Yes, but—“

“Besides, you’re the one with the fire powers, you will be able to detonate the generator.” Shard paused, and said with a small smile “we’ll get to see how much of a sneaky weapon fire is.”

Blaze smiled and said “this is it then.” They looked at each other and with a single look conveyed much more than words ever could. Then they parted ways. As Blaze ran ahead, Shard delayed long enough so that the following Paradox Rogues could catch sight of him, before he used the decreased gravity to push off from the ground and floor across the hall. He continued this until he emerged on the deck of the ship. In seconds, he was surrounded by Paradox Rogues and BarneyBots. They rushed toward him, and he waited until they were so close they could have chopped of his head (which they did try to do) before fling his arms open and hurling shurikens in all directions. He then proceeded to do ½ of a flip, land on his hands on top of a BarneyBot’s head, and shoot himself skyward just as they fired their weapons at him and hit the BarneyBot instead. He slowly descended while picking of paradox rogues with his “explodikens” —an invention where he strapped a detonator on the side of a shuriken with some weights on the other side to balance it for throwing. One of the BarneyBots leaped into the air as well and grabbed him with its metal fist. It lowly increased the pressure, intending to squeeze Shard to the point of smash. Shard felt a wave of panic because his arms were trapped to his sides.

“No way am I going to die this way,” Shard said. “That’s got to be the most disgraceful way to go, squeezed to the point of smash by a metal version of a cloth purple and green dinosaur. I’ve always wanted my last words to be in olde speech anyway.” He managed to wriggle an “electroken” out of his sleeve and imbed it into the BarneyBot’s fist. Its arm short circuited, and Shard dropped free of its grasp. This continued for some time, with Shard jumping a flipping across the deck of the ship, taking down many paradox rogues. But more kept just as fast as he took them out. Faster than he took them out, actually. No more BarneyBots emerged, but he had only taken out two of the three, and one of them had been defeated just through luck. Shard looked down at his watch, but then realized that he didn’t have a watch. “Whatever, Blaze, has probably made it to the generator by now.”

Blaze had made to the generator, in fact, and was using one hand to bath the generator in flames to overheat it, while using the other to blast the paradox rogues advanced through door to the generator room. The door only allowed one of two to enter at a time, preventing them from drowning Blaze from sheer number, but still continued to advance through the doorway almost as fast as Blaze shot them down. I say almost because Blaze was making some headway and was smashing them faster than they could enter. At least, until a BarneyBot blasted an opening in the wall, allowing many more Rogues to enter at a time.

***

By now, Shard had run out of shurikens, and was leaping from one place to another, letting them shoot each other as they tried to shoot him.

***

Rogue archers lined up and began firing arrows at blaze. Even while using one hand to heat of the generator, Blaze used his free hand to blast the arrows out of the air before they could hit him.

***

Shard leapt in front of a Rogue, grabbed his bow, and proceed to fire arrows at the others. They rushed at him and Shard flipped out of the way. However, as he jumped into the air the last BarneyBot swung its metal arm at him and managed to slam the back of its hand into Shard’s leg. His broken leg. A sickening snap was heard across the deck as Shard screamed in unbearable pain and dropped to the ground.

***

Blaze blasted arrow out of arrow from the air. But one flew past his ninja flames and buried itself in Blaze’s chest. He gasped and all flames ceased.

***

Though it took every bit of willpower he had, Shard lifted himself to his feet and imbedded an arrow into the back of the BarneyBot. The BarneyBot’s eyes flickered and it fell to the ground. At that moment shadowed figure walked up, knocked the bow out of Shard’s hand and kicked Shard to the ground.

***

Blaze was in agony, but, gathering all his energy, he placed both his hands onto the generator and unleashed a stream of fire.

***

Shard knelt on the deck of the ship with his head down as the figure marched over. It pointed a sword at Shard’s head and said in horrific grammar capable only by one person

“id’s oveh.”

Shard looked up and teh dude was startled to see that he was smiling.

“Yes,” Shard replied. “It is over—oh wait, I wanted my last words to be in olde speech.”

At that moment the generator reached overload.

***

Seton stood at the head of his ship, scanning the surrounding mist for any activity. Ahead of him, he saw the mist parting and furrows in the water even though there was nothing there.

“Everyone to the battle stations, something isn’t right here.”

As he continued studying the anomaly, he heard a boom, and saw some flashes of light and explosions come from the seemingly empty air. Then for brief moment, as the cloaking devise was destroyed, a behemoth of a ship appeared in the water twenty yards (or meters, or whatever) in front of them.”

“whoa,” Seton said, too shocked to faint.

“That’s the ship that attacked us,” Shard and Blaze’s navigator commented. “The commanders are sure to be held prisoner there.”

But they didn’t have time to consider any possibility of rescue, because there was a brief moment where nothing seemed to happen before flames burst from inside the ship, sending a shockwave of deafening sound and blinding debris in all directions. Nothing was left.

***

An orb of red energy slowly lowered itself to the ground a few miles away from the battle site. The sphere disappeared and teh dude was left standing there.

“mi powehs ar wiek i musd have mi sord bak” teh dude said to himself. “But onse i’s haves it dah nites shal be doomed!!!!

******

Fifteen years later Yuggnith stared across a worn oak table at an innkeeper named Sacul. He said four words

“They are no more.”

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