Crimson Red, Cerulean Blue

Chapter 21

(Blue)

“And then we totally kicked his butt! Gorilla failed so epically, it was almost beautiful!”

Orange and Green slowly raised their eyebrows at Red.

“So let me get this straight,” Green said very slowly, sounding annoyed. “You had a nightmare. Blue woke you up. And for absolutely no reason whatsoever, you decided to take a walk, risking getting caught by Argot, by the way, picked a fight with a bunch of thugs, and somehow got info about Violet out of it. If you hadn’t given us a decent chance at saving Violet, I would just rip you apart right now for your stupidity, so you’d better be thankful you did, idiot.”

“Please,” he snorted, in true Red fashion. “I’d like to see you try.”

“Who were those guys, though? You called them the Collectors, right?” I inquired before Green could actually hit him.

Red’s eyes instantly hardened. “Slave drivers. They’ve been kidnapping kids all over Rogue City to take them to the mines. They work for Mask.”

“What?” I stared at him in horror. “Why would they do something like that? Doesn’t Mask already have enough minions on his side?”

“It’s more of a threat than an actual need for slaves,” he replied bitterly. “Rogue City and Indigo Island are the most anti-Mask cities in Spectrum. So obviously, he wants to break us. And the best way to do that is through the kids.”

Anger welled up inside me. “It’s always the kids, isn’t it. He always targets the kids.”

No one responded. Everyone knew what I was talking about.

“And that’s where he made his mistake,” Red said firmly, breaking the silence. “Because adults and normal people know fear. They know what greed is, what fear is, how to get what they want. They can be bribed, or blackmailed, or anything else in the world for Mask to get what he wants in the end. But we’re different. He took away everything from us, sure – but then now, what have we got to lose?”

He was right. And that was why Mask hadn’t been able to kill any one of us yet.

“We’re all pretty desperate, huh?” I sighed, smiling.

“Being desperate’s okay,” he shrugged. “Desperate people do desperate things. And desperate things usually seem to work.”

“You do have a point, there.”

Green changed the subject back to the more serious stuff. “Anyway, the Collectors’ Mines are our next targets, right? Orange, will you be coming with us?”

“No,” was the flat reply. “Two missions in a row are enough for me. I’ll stay here and monitor your communications, tell you where the bad guys are, that kind of stuff.”

“All right, then. By the way.” She turned to me. “The leader of the Collectors’ Mines. What did you say her name was?”

“Caelin,” I replied. “Why?”

“Caelin…” she mused. “Hmm…”

“Sound familiar?’

“As a matter of fact, it does. I wonder why.”

“I dunno, Green,” Red broke in with a smirk. “Maybe you heard it in like a dream or something, like déjà vu. Ooh, scary.”

Green threw her fork at him. “As I was about to say before Matchstick here started talking, we’d better take off. No need in waiting here until the whole week’s up.”

I stood up. “So let’s go.”

Unfortunately, right then, the window shattered.

I shielded my face with my arm, glass shards flying everywhere. There was another explosion, and this time the entire wall was blasted away. I dived to the ground to avoid most of the rubble, melting into a puddle of water.

From my position, I could see the others climbing to their feet, taking defensive positions. I reformed and ran to join them, blasting water in the general direction of the broken window.

“What happened?” Orange demanded. “Did you two get followed?”

“Well, obviously they did!” Green snapped. I’d never seen her look so furious. “We need to get out of here. Do you see any ways out?”

“There’s a trapdoor in Orange’s room!” Red was already running toward it. “We need to make it there before – ”

KA-BOOM!!!

Another explosion shook the ground. Orange gritted his teeth.

“We can’t go that way.”

Red and Green didn’t even question him, just nodded and ran the other way. I didn’t bother questioning him either, we had better things to do than asking Orange about things he looked like he’d probably rather not talk about.

“You want an explosion?! I’ll give you an explosion!!!” Red roared, sprinting toward the window and jumping right out it. “FIRESTORM EXPLOSION!!!”

There were a few yells from outside, and the sounds of fighting. I didn’t hesitate, just blasted through the window just like Red had, ignoring the shards of broken glass.

“OCEAN SYNTHESIS: FLASH FLOOD!!!”

Water burst from me with a force strong enough to knock most of the enemy off their feet. I kept up the spell for as long as I could, just long enough for Green and Orange to run out the door like normal people and join in the fight. Smashing my elbow into one of their faces, I spun around to kick another in the shin, then knee him in the chin when he bent over in pain.

The area around the hideout was flooded with people in black suits and masks, all with Mask’s symbol on their chests. More and more kept coming, and a freaking helicopter overhead delivered even more to the fight. I was spin-kicking and destroying as many as I could, but it wasn’t enough. Not against this many.

“How’re there so many of them?!” Red yelled, spitting flames everywhere. He backhanded one in the nose, then while her eyes were watering, kicked her so hard she went flying.

“Cloning,” I responded grimly, finishing off the one he was fighting and taking on yet another. “Or did you expect Mask to rely on his normal followers to capture us?”

“How do you even know this?!” He grunted as one of them managed to slip past his defenses and knee him in the stomach. “I thought you were new to the whole on-the-run business!”

“I read, of course. What’d you think I did all the time when I was in Sapphire City?” I kicked the one attacking Red in the back, taking away her breath, then used the momentary distraction to punch her lights out. Green somehow materialized next to me, panting.

“There’re too many. We have to get out of here,” she told me urgently.

I bit my lip. “How in the world are we supposed to do that?”

One of them lunged at me, but I caught the punch. His leg swept up in a powerful kick, so I dodged to the left. Orange used this opportunity to materialize out of nowhere and slam a foot into his side while he was off-balance, sending the guy flying.

(A move that made my jaw drop, because to me, Orange still seemed like the quiet techie, not the deadly terror Red and Green made him out to be.)

“The Protectors’ Mountains,” he replied, still unnaturally calm. “They’ll never find us in there.”

“Are you kidding? I’m a Rogue City native, and even I can’t find my way through there!” Red hissed.

Orange simply raised his eyebrows, punching a charging attacker without even looking at him.

(Which took even more of his usual image as the quiet techie away. I was beginning to see why Red and Green listened to him.)

Red blinked. “Ah.”

I caught the fist aimed at him, then twisted, making the attacker howl in pain. “Great, now we have a plan. Now does anyone want to explain to me how the heck we’re supposed to make it over there before dying?”

Red looked at me, a wicked grin on his face.

“Blue, have you ever wanted to fly?”

This was not flying.

I should know, I can fly a third of the time.

This was insane reckless endangerment.

Which just so happened to be the number one candidate for Red’s middle name. (That is, along with crazy and possibly suicidal, of course.)

So of course it was his idea to do this.

Of course it was his idea to strap jet engines onto a motorcycle and hope it would fly.

Of course he would think it was a good idea.

Of course this had to be our only way out of Rogue City.

We were all going to die. And there would be nobody to blame, because like idiots, we had all agreed to do this.

I hadn’t really grasped the meaning of the phrase, “Desperate people do desperate things” until today.

On Red’s command, I’d sprayed mist everywhere, temporarily blinding the enemy while we dove back into the hideout. He’d immediately run to the wall left of the window and opened a freaking secret panel I hadn’t even known about until then. (And trust me, I make it a point to inspect my living area extremely well.) He then turned around and grinned.

“So what do you think?”

“Uh,” I said. “What is it?”

I should’ve known the answer wouldn’t be pretty.

“A jet-pack-powered motorcycle!” Red looked extremely proud of himself. “Tell me I’m awesome!”

“You are not awesome,” Green told him, her voice rising in volume and pitch. “Look at that thing! It’s held together with duct tape and twine!”

She meant it literally. Red’s “motorcycle” looked more like a heap of junk than a motorcycle. I could faintly make out two wheels and a seat of sorts, but that was pretty much it. I had never seen anything that looked less like a vehicle. Or anything that looked less like a way to not die.

“For your information, duct tape and twine are actually really strong,” Red shot back, folding his arms.

“That’s it, we’re doomed,” I threw up my hands. “We can’t ride on that thing! We’ll die for sure!”

But then Orange was inspecting it, and his eyebrows rose. “Hmm… Where in the world did you find the materials to build this?”

“I have my ways,” Red replied. “So? Think it’s usable?”

“Only one way to find out.”

Green’s eyes widened. “You cannot be serious.”

Orange looked at us, and I could swear there was a hint of a smile on his face.

“Buckle up, girls,” Red said happily, dragging his contraption out of the wall. “Looks like we’re going for a ride!”

Normally, I’m not afraid of heights.

But then again, normally, I wouldn’t on a flying “motorcycle” with a deranged reckless idiot, a grumpy techie, and a screaming control-freak.

The faces when we blasted out of the hideout on that thing, however, were priceless.

“SEEYA, SUCKERS!!!” Red hollered, grinning maniacally. Much to my horror (and recalling of the last time I rode in a vehicle driven by him), he was supposed to be driving. “Supposed to” being the key words in that sentence.

The clones stared at us like, Sweet cupcakes! They’re insane!

And then, all at once, they all smiled simultaneously, because they’d probably just realized what I had a long time ago, and figured out that it would actually make their jobs a whole lot easier if we crashed and died.

It was incredibly creepy, if you really want the truth.

“WHY COULDN’T SOMEONE SANE DRIVE?!” Green screamed at the very top of her lungs. (A very valid question, if you ask me.)

“Because Red is the only person who fully understands how this contraption works,” Orange replied, still unnaturally calm. (I was beginning to think he wasn’t human.)

For a split second, I thought I saw a shadow pass over Red’s face, but almost instantly, he was back to his old, grinning self. “There’s your answer, so quit panicking. I’m not going to kill you guys. And what do you mean, I’m not sane? I’m perfectly sane, thank you very much!”

“Uh, from what I’ve seen of your driving skills, I kind of doubt that,” I injected, making him frown.

“Oh, come on, Blue! You can’t say stuff like that! You’re supposed to be my best friend!”

Orange and Green both shot him these mysterious sharp looks after that statement, to which he replied with an annoyed glance. “What? Blue, we’re best friends, right?”

He glanced back at me, which seriously freaked me out because his driving skills were bad enough already without him taking his eyes off the road – sky.

“Yeah, yeah, sure!” I told him frantically. “Just keep your eyes on the ro – sky!”

“There’s nothing to look out for,” he pointed out. “We’re higher than the buildings.”

I swallowed. “Oh. Did you really have to tell me that?”

“So… Protector’s Mountains?” he asked, ignoring my question.

“No,” was Orange’s reply. “Now that we’re out of danger, we need to get to the Collectors’ Mines and find Violet. Finding a new hideout can wait.”

“We could always use the one in Greene Wood,” he pointed out. “No need to go exploring in the mountains and probably fall off a cliff in the process.”

“That’s our last resort. Do you really want to be fighting Argot without magic if he finds us? Because I’m pretty sure Green wouldn’t let you singe a single leaf.”

“And don’t you forget it,” Green cut in, slightly more calm now that we’d been in the sky for more than five minutes and weren’t dead yet.

Red somehow managed to steer the flying contraption toward a south-ish direction, the engine making a disturbing grinding sound as he did. My fingers dug firmly into the seat as I tried not to look down.

“Nice view,” he remarked, and that was all it took. Natural instinct dictated that I had to look down, so of course, I did.

The view took my breath away.

We were seriously high up. Like, high enough to see the whole of Rogue City and beyond high up. High enough so that when a flock of birds flew by, they flapped past under us, probably thinking Gee, humans are really crazy! What in the world is that thing?

People were tiny specks in the city below, buildings children’s alphabet blocks. I could see a large black mass near our now ruined hideout below, which I recognized as the dumbfounded clones. The wind was whipping through my hair, the sky was perfectly blue, and suddenly, in spite of everything…

I smiled.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Red asked, catching my expression and grinning back. “We should get caught more often.”

“You did not just say what I think you just said.” Green rolled her eyes. “Do you want to die?”

“Uh, nope. No interest in dying. Doesn’t seem like a lot of fun.”

“Yeah. That’s why people don’t do it. That’s also why people don’t tempt death by flying motorcycles like they’re airplanes.”

“Please. You think this thing’s gonna malfunction?”

At which point, there was a BOOM and the engine went dead.

Everyone froze.

That’s when we started losing altitude. Fast.

So, of course, we began to panic.

“DO I THINK THIS THING’S GOING TO MALFUNCTION?!” Green screamed, eyes wide with terror. “DO I HAVE TO ANSWER THAT FOR YOU?!”

“SHUT UP!!!” Red yelled back, frantically trying to get the engine working again and completely failing. “ORANGE, WHAT DO I DO?!”

“THEY SHOT A BULLET INTO THE SYSTEM!!! YOU CAN’T DO ANYTHING!!!”

“MAKE IT WORK!!!” I shrieked. “CAN’T YOU CONTROL MACHINES?!”

“YEAH!!! WORKING MACHINES!!!”

We were dangerously close to the tops of the buildings now. And as everyone knows, people plus extreme heights plus ground equals an extremely unfortunate fate.

Fifty feet from the top of the buildings.

My mind raced, and suddenly, an idea popped into my head. An idea so crazy, it might actually work.

“Green, how big can you grow plants in the span of five seconds?”

Green’s eyes were wide. “What?!”

We passed the tops of the buildings in a flash and were now about eighty feet from the ground.

“We’re going too fast! They’ll rip if we use them as parachutes!” Orange yelled.

“I’m not going to use it as a parachute! Grow the biggest carnation you can! About five feet to the side! AND HURRY!!!”

Seventy feet from the ground.

Green looked at me like, Blue, have you gone nutso? but then a spot of yellow bloomed from the ground, rapidly widening as it shot upward toward us. Bright yellow petals unfurled to the sky as we plummeted toward them.

Sixty feet away.

“Blue, whatever you’re thinking, you’d better do it fast!” Red screamed. I swallowed, watching. This had to be timed exactly right.

The instant we were about fifty feet from the ground (and ten feet from the flower), I yelled, “JUMP!!!”

And then proceeded to do exactly that.

I crash-landed into the carnation, which was now about ten feet across, sinking into the petals. It leaned dangerously to the side, but I didn’t have time to worry about that – Red had just landed on top of me.

“OOF!!!”

“Sorry!” He scrambled off me, and I managed to roll to the side just in time for Orange and Green to smack face-first into the flower, Orange barely managing to snag a petal with his fingers. It tipped again, but I dug my fingers into as many petals as I could grab at once, trying to catch my breath, and it righted itself.

The motorcycle hit the ground with a huge BOOM that shook me even from up here. The carnation swayed yet again from the explosion, almost tipping me off, but Green grabbed me just in time. She was breathing hard.

“That,” she said, “was way too close.”

“You can say that again,” Orange muttered, dragging himself upward to a safer position. “Never. Again.”

Green rounded on Red. “What were you thinking?! We could’ve died! If Blue hadn’t been genius enough to think of that idea, we’d have been screwed!”

“Not my fault,” was the immediate reply. “One of them shot a bullet into the engine. They had guns. The really good kind that just came out.”

“You mean the SA-657 model,” Orange corrected mildly. “Almost strong enough to punch through solid steel – but not quite. You should really have put some kind of covering over it.”

“I know, I know,” Red snapped. “Quit nagging at me.”

He turned away, arms folded, but I’d seen the hurt in his eyes, saw the way he pulled back the petal as if to take a look at the damage, but then stopped. The flying contraption had been important to him, somehow. He must’ve worked hard on it.

“You can make another one,” I told him quietly, because drawing from my limited knowledge of friendship, comfort is something friends are supposed to do.

He forced a smile. “Yeah, sure.”

But there was something else in his voice, an undertone that hinted it wasn’t the actual flying motorcycle that was important to him, but rather, the story behind it. I suddenly recalled the shadow that passed over his face when Orange mentioned that he was the only one who knew how it worked, and I had a feeling there was more to that thing than he let on.

“So.” Green broke the silence. “Where exactly are we?”

“We’re past the Rogue City border. You can tell that from here,” I answered, squinting against the bright sunlight. “We’re probably somewhere in between Rogue City and Orange Village, closer to Rogue City than Orange Village.”

“The Collectors’ Mines should be about southwest of here, then.” Red raised a hand as if to point, but then froze. “Uh. Which way’s southwest?”

Orange reached into his pocket and pulled out a small metal box, which he unfolded to reveal…his laptop.

“When did you find time to get that thing?” I asked, dumbfounded.

He fixed me with a level gaze. “Do you really need to know?”

I decided that I didn’t.

He flipped it open, pulling up some kind of program and scanning it for a second. “Southwest would be that way.”

He pointed, across the sea of dry grass that lay between Rogue City and Orange Village. To my right, a road snaked its way into the city, the only sign that anyone had ever dared to venture into the field of waving gold. I bit my lip, studying it.

“How high do you think the grass is?”

“Last I checked, it was up to my waist.” Green gave said grass a worried glance. “It’s gonna be a real chore trying to wade through that mess.”

“Well, then, let’s get going,” Red announced, grabbing a petal and pulling, plucking it off and falling backward in the process. Right over the edge.

“Red!”

I made it to the edge just in time to see him float softly to the ground, using the petal as a parachute.

“Come on down, you guys!” His voice carried up to us, laughing. “This is sweet!”

Grinning with relief, I grabbed a petal and pulled, letting the force shove me over the edge the way he had. There was a terrifying two seconds of free fall as I struggled to get the petal over my head, but next thing I knew, it had blossomed out and I was floating gently to the ground, the breeze caressing my cheeks.

It felt just like flying.

Laughter bubbled up from inside me and spilled out from sheer joy. This was amazing.

“YOU KNOW, I COULD’VE JUST GROWN THE FLOWER DOWN!!!” Green’s voice shouted, sounding exasperated.

“BUT WHAT FUN WOULD THAT BE?!” Red shot back, having landed on the ground by this point.

My feet hit the ground about ten feet away from him, the petal fluttering softly to the ground. My hair had fallen out of its usual ponytail, so I shoved it back, jogging toward Red.

“They’re no fun,” he remarked as the carnation shrank, getting closer to the ground.

“Their loss,” I replied. He slapped me a high-five just as Green hopped off the flower.

“Blue, don’t go taking after this loser,” she sighed. “Unless you want to die.”

“Don’t listen to her,” Red shot back. “Unless you never want to live a little.”

“Yeah, well, your definition of living is what normal people call getting killed.”

“If you haven’t noticed, we’re the complete opposite of normal.”

“Well, normal people’s rules happen to apply to those who have an IQ of over ten.”

“I have an IQ of over ten, and those rules do not apply to me.”

“Well, they should.”

“Should and do are two very different things.”

“Unfortunately for everyone in question.”

“Hey, I like who I am!”

“Against logical reason!”

The argument continued as Orange walked right past them, heading southwest.

“Just go,” he muttered to me. “They’ll realize soon enough that they’re getting left behind.”

I shrugged and waded through the grass after him. It seemed easier than trying to interrupt them.

We made it a quarter mile away before Red finally looked around, bewildered. Then he started sprinting toward us, Green tearing after him.

“Took them long enough,” Orange sighed.

I smiled, pausing so they could catch up. The moment was picture-perfect, the grass waving around me, the sky brilliantly blue, my friends charging after me. I wouldn’t have minded living like this forever.

I should’ve known it wouldn’t last.