Crimson Red, Cerulean Blue

(Red)

Normally, I’d make it a rule not to beat up old ladies, but this situation wasn’t exactly what you could call normal.

“Stay on guard,” Orange warned. “Just because she’s old doesn’t mean – ”

I ignored him, instead using the opportunity to sprint toward her at top speed. Lectures could wait. Now was the time for action!

“HEY!!!” Green yelled. “GET BACK HERE, YOU IDIOT!!!”

I ignored her too. “FLAME – ”

Before I could even finish speaking, something gleamed at the corner of my vision. My instincts kicked in and I ducked as fast as humanely possible, Caelin’s blade skimming across the very top of my hair. Way too close for comfort.

What kind of old lady moves this fast? She was even faster than Keeree!

“Jet Stream!”

Blue flew past me, a streak of blue and pink as she rocketed toward Caelin using the same trick she’d used to get us out of Yellowton. At the very last minute, she dived to the side, firing off yet another spell from that angle, then wasted no time in blasting one of her flash flood spells at the old lady, making it so she had to dodge three spells at once. Ingenious, right?

Caelin wasn’t even fazed by it. She just smirked, plunged her hand into the water, and called out, “Contamination: Lindrol acid!”

Blue’s eyes widened. Whatever lindrol acid was, she didn’t obviously didn’t want to be anywhere near it. She sprinted away from Caelin as fast as she could, but a few drops landed on her skin, sizzling. Blue winced, shaking them off almost immediately, but I could already see angry red welts on her bare arms where they’d landed.

“What is that stuff?” I asked her, keeping my gaze on Caelin. The old woman smiled back, green smoke spiraling around her fingertips.

“Lindrol acid. It’s a highly poisonous, highly corrosive substance made out of magically enhanced liquid chlorine,” Blue replied, shuddering. “Terrifying stuff. It can burn through solid steel.”

“It also burns through the skin and poisons the human body, so I suggest you get back and let me heal you!” Green called sharply, running up to us. Blue turned, but I chose to concentrate on the enemy.

“Hey, but you forgot something,” I replied with a smirk, not even bothering to look back. “I’m not the one who got poisoned.”

Okay, so what I did next was stupid. What I did next was very stupid. So stupid, it probably went beyond the stupid border and into Insane Land.

I charged the murderous, poison-wielding old lady who also happened to be holding a very sharp sword.

(Did I mention that I didn’t have a sword? Or any kind of weapon at all?)

Yeah, kids, you might not wanna try this at home. I’m a trained professional. At, uh, charging old ladies waving swords. Yeah.

Plus, I had a plan. Kind of a plan. A fail plan. But it was still a plan.

My brilliant plan was to somehow light her and her sword on fire. In my experience, poison and poison gas are usually pretty flammable. I was going to use her own poison to blow her up.

Needless to say, that didn’t exactly go as planned.

The first thing Caelin did was stare at me like I was an idiot. (Which I kind of was, at that moment.) The second thing she did was laugh. (In a really creepy way.) And the third thing she did was charge me.

“Hey!” I yelled. “That’s copying!”

“No rules here, sonny! Anything goes in battle! Didn’t your mama teach you that?” Her eyes gleamed. “Or even… Reuben, maybe?”

Everything slowed.

My vision blurred.

All sounds faded to background noise.

I knew she was playing with me. I knew Argot had probably told her his name to use against me specifically.

But I couldn’t help it. You wouldn’t be able to either if you were me. The name had stung like a slap to the face, in a time and place when I hadn’t been expecting it at all.

I definitely would’ve been skewered like perfect kabob if Blue hadn’t appeared out of nowhere and shoved me out of the way just in time.

“Red? Red, are you okay?”

“I… Blue, she….”

Maybe she was desperate. Maybe we were running out of time. I dunno. But what she did next was so un-Blue-like that if I hadn’t been in total, absolute shock, I would’ve grabbed her shoulders and demanded to know who she was and what she’d done with the real Blue.

She slapped me hard across the face and yelled, “Snap out of it right now! We’re in the middle of a battle, so wake up and give us a hand!”

I stared at her, snapping out of my confusion mostly because I had no other choice. “Wha…”

My voice came back to me in a flash. “When did you and Green switch bodies?”

“We – Water Mimicry!”

Blue dissolved both of us into water just as Caelin’s sword pierced through the space where my heart had been a second ago. It was the weirdest thing I’d ever felt, and not in a good way, either. It probably had something to do with the fact that I’m a fire-user and all.

We both reformed after a second, but Blue stumbled, wincing, probably from magic overuse. “You okay?” I asked worriedly, and when she nodded, I took off toward Caelin. I hadn’t even been able to deliver a decent attack yet, so naturally, it was my turn to strike.

“FIRESTORM EXPLOSION!!!”

Firestorm Explosion was my most powerful attack spell, and took up about half of my magic to use. The spell could take out a two-story house when I was on full power, and I fully expected it to vaporize Caelin in a flash, seeing as we were in an enclosed space and she was surrounded by flammable liquid besides. Unfortunately, the old lady had a habit of defying expectations, as I learned (the hard way) in the next five seconds.

“Phase Alteration,” Caelin’s voice hissed, slicing through the smoke and fire to fill every inch of my body with fear. Blue materialized beside me, biting her lip.

“That doesn’t sound good.”

“What the – !” Green’s gasp echoed through the cavern, followed by a thud. Whatever Caelin had just done, it was enough to terrify her. And terrifying Green is NOT an easy feat. I should know, I’ve tried.

But before I could run over and see what the heck had just happened (so, you know, I could maybe copy it later to freak her out), something slammed into my stomach, hard enough to send me flying like a rag doll. Which is not something a person who would much rather prefer to keep all their bones intact wants to experience, especially when the cavern wall happens to be right behind them. Which it was, in my case.

Blue slammed into the wall right beside me with a gasp, the breath knocked out of her. Her eyes widened as the smoke cleared, and so did mine. Because the thing that had just slammed into us with the force of a hundred bags of bricks was…

A gigantic, scaly tail.

I am not kidding. We were faced with the tail end of whatever ginormous beast the deranged old lady had managed to zap up. And judging from all the yelling Orange and Green were doing, they happened to be faced with the head end. Which undoubtedly had lots and lots of teeth.

I instantly forgot about any and all broken bones I may or may not have had and leaped to my feet. Because there was no way I was going to let them have all the fun while I was stuck here watching like a total loser.

But before I could move even a single step, Orange tore past, wires trailing from his hands. “Keep it busy!” he yelled.

“What is it?!” Blue gasped before I could. But he didn’t have to answer because the head end of the thing came crashing down a second later, and we found out for ourselves.

Okay, so I’m typically a very accepting guy. I’ve fought all sorts of stuff over the years, from robots to Iron Man wannabes to teleporting assassins. So it’s really not that easy to surprise me. But nothing, no amount of experience, could have prepared me for this.

It was a snake, to use the simplest terms possible. (Terrifying monster would be a better description, actually.) A green one, with these huge fangs dripping with poison the same color as its scales. Which would’ve been all well and good, and I would’ve been perfectly fine with that (well, maybe a little disappointed at the lack of a good fight – but that’s irrelevant), if it hadn’t been about the size of a house.

I’m serious. We were faced with a snake bigger than a bus. Way bigger than a bus.

Probably bigger than two buses, plus a motorcycle.

My eyes were bugging out. How the heck are we supposed to take down that thing?

But I didn’t have enough time to debate this matter before the snake decided to stop watching us freak out and attack. The head shot forward in a blur, sinking its teeth into the ground exactly where I’d be standing if I hadn’t hightailed it out of there as fast as humanely possible just a second before.

“Where did it come from?” Blue asked in disbelief.

I shook my head. “I don’t know, but that’s cheating!”

“Didn’t I tell you, boy?” Caelin’s voice filled the air, now tinged with a strange hissing quality to it that I hadn’t heard earlier. “There are no rules here!”

I spun around wildly, fire at my fingertips. “Where is she?! Where in the world did she go?!”

“Haven’t you figured it out yet, idiot?” Green snapped, materializing on my left. She pointed at the gigantic snake. “That is Caelin. That’s what her magic does!”

My jaw dropped. “I’m sorry, but I need to learn how to do that.”

The snake laughed. It was the creepiest (and weirdest) thing I’d ever heard. “Foolish boy. Pity I’m not here for you. It would make my job laughably easy.”

“Laughably easy? I’m sorry, are you calling me weak?” My eyes narrowed. “FIREBALL BARRAGE!!!!”

Caelin managed to dodge most of them, but a single fireball smacked into her scales and she hissed. “You’ll pay for that, boy!”

“Ooh, I’m so scared.”

Her eyes narrowed, and she struck, a green, deadly blur. I jumped back instinctively, but she hadn’t been aiming for me.

Blue barely managed to escape a direct hit. She dodged, but Caelin’s teeth ripped across her back, making her cry out. Green flew toward her, but skidded to a stop as Caelin brought her tail down, effectively blocking her from Blue.

“You’re not going anywhere, Green,” she laughed. “Most definitely not.”

Green’s eyes narrowed. She might be the most annoying girl in the entire world, but sometimes, that stubbornness comes in handy. Like at that moment, when she stomped her foot and up shot a thorn bush, right under Caelin’s fat snake butt.

Imagine how much a snake of that size has gotta weigh. Now imagine all that weight squishing into a sharp, prickly thorn bush.

All I can say is, ouch.

Caelin howled, and Green used that moment to dart past her to Blue, who was already standing up and yelling, “JET STREAM!!!” A focused blast slammed into Caelin with a force strong enough to break a grown man’s bones (I knew, I’d asked Blue exactly how strong it was once), cracking some of the snake’s scales. But that was all. No serious damage. She flung some more spells at it, but they only served to annoy the snake, making her snap at Blue again.

How strong was that thing?

“We need to get out of here!” Green yelled. “Orange, what in the world is taking you so long?!”

Orange didn’t reply, but I heard him curse. He was kneeling on the ground, wires trailing from a metal device I immediately recognized as… a bomb.

I wanted to ask him why the heck he was building a freaking bomb when (hello) one of us could use fire magic, but then the snake’s tail whipped toward me and my attention was diverted to the task of flipping over it so I didn’t get smashed into the wall a second time. (It really hurts, as you can probably guess.) Blue skidded to a stop beside me, her clothes ripped, but the huge gash in her back was gone.

“We can’t win this,” she informed me worriedly. “What’s Orange doing?”

“Making a bomb. Don’t ask me why.”

She opened her mouth to say something, but then dived to the left. I leaped to the right as a gob of something gooey and green flew past. Poison.

“Anytime now, RT!!” I called, trying not to sound like I was freaking out. Which I (ahem) definitely wasn’t. Why would I, when we were all about to be killed by a ginormous, deranged snake lady?

Green screamed as she moved a little too late and was smacked into the wall like a fly, with a sound that definitely did not sound healthy. She dropped to the ground, and I couldn’t tell if she was still conscious. Not good, seeing as she was our only healer.

“WATER BLADE!!!” Blue screeched at the top of her lungs, and water flew from her hands, slashing a few deep gashes in the snake’s skin. She coughed, knees trembling, and I knew she was almost out of magic. So I ran toward Orange, since being the only other person there with knowledge of bombs and how to make them, I’d probably be able to make the process faster if I was helping.

He was almost done, actually. Just dumping nails into his concoction, probably to use as shrapnel.

“RT, what else do you need done?” I demanded. “We gotta hurry up and find a way out of here before one of us dies!”

“Done!” Orange snatched up his bomb and yelled to the girls, “LET’S MOVE!!!”

Blue grabbed Green and ran as fast as she could, dragging her behind. But the extra weight slowed her down, so much that when Caelin spat poison, it slammed right into her, knocking her off her feet. I cursed and ran to help her, Orange right on my heels.

Blue pulled herself to her feet, then told us to “DUCK!!!” Orange and I dived for the ground as she spun, poison and water flying everywhere, some of it even hitting Caelin. The snake just laughed, however, and with a chilling jolt, I realized that it had positioned itself between us and Green, who was definitely not conscious.

I gritted my teeth. Of course Green would have to annoy me when she wasn’t even awake. “How do we get her out of there?”

Blue bit her lip. “I don’t know!”

Orange didn’t say anything, but he had that look in his eyes, the closest thing to panic I’d ever seen on his face. And that was what worried me the most.

“I could kill her right now, with one flick of my tail,” Caelin hissed, laughing. “What’s to stop me from doing that, hmm? Tell me, silly brats. What?”

I folded my arms, keeping my voice as level as possible even though I was this close to freaking out. “Us.”

“Oh?” The snake grinned, a terrifying sight. “You… and what army?”

I was totally prepared to just charge her and hope I’d get in a lucky attack somehow when out of nowhere, she froze.

“What?”

And that’s when a gigantic tree branch shot up from the ground, effectively pinning the gigantic snake to the ground. Another flew up just as fast, then another, and another, until Caelin looked like some kind of botanical experiment gone terribly wrong.

My jaw dropped. Whaaat?

“Who said we needed an army?” Green’s voice asked smugly. “Your loss, Caelin.”

She hopped down from the wood, then did this complete 360 and reverted from smug winner to her usual bossy self. “That’s not going to hold her forever,” she hissed. “Quit looking so freaked out and let’s move!”

“When did you wake up?!” I demanded as we took off down the tunnel we came in from.

“I was never passed out, idiot. Ever heard of playing dead?”

“You could’ve been killed,” Orange said, as calmly as if he were telling her that the weather was nice outside.

“The look on her face was worth it,” declared Green with an unnatural sharpness in her tone. And Green’s tone is usually pretty sharp already, so we all knew there was some kind of hidden meaning under that sentence. I was going to ask, but then Blue interrupted me with a more important question.

“How’d you grow those plants without any dirt?”

“Caelin messed up,” was the reply. “She didn’t look beyond what she could see.”

“What do you mean?”

“That cave… It wasn’t natural. There was dirt under the rocks. I thought it was strange that I could still feel my magic working even though it wasn’t supposed to. So I gave it a shot.” She shrugged. “And it worked.”

Orange’s brisk steps faltered for a second, apparently musing this over. "Hmm."

“Never mind that,” I interrupted hastily, not wanting to hear another one of his conspiracy theories. “Where in the world are we supposed to be going? And what’s this big plan of yours, anyway, RT?”

“We’re going to blow our way out of here,” was the reply. “There’s another exit here, but it’s also blocked. The good part, though, is that it’s not as clogged up as the tunnel we came in from. A small explosion should be able to set it off.”

“But Red can blow things up,” Blue pointed out. “You didn’t have to waste your time making a bomb.”

“Red’s a fire-user. His explosions are pure fire, no shrapnel, no extra force. And we’re going to need that extra force to bust out of here.” Orange’s expression didn’t change. “Besides, his Firestorm Explosion spell can only be used twice before he needs to fuel up; three times, if we can afford to have him pass out on us, which we can’t right now. I didn’t want to risk using it and having him on low power for the rest of the battle, if it didn’t work.”

“So what you’re saying is, Red’s completely useless in this case,” Green broke in with a smirk.

Orange shrugged. “Pretty much.”

“Hey!” I complained as they exchanged amused glances.

But before I could say anything else, the ground shook, something thundering in the distance. Caelin was out (in record time, I might add), and she was angry.

“You guys, I think the crazy snake lady’s coming this way,” I warned.

Green gave me a sardonic look. “You think?”

“We’ve got a good head start,” Blue stated nervously. “It’ll take her a while to catch up.”

Unfortunately, this was not true.

Caelin exploded into the tunnel, rocks flying everywhere. We all hit the ground without a word, nobody wanting to get a concussion. I braced myself for an attack – but the snake didn’t even try to come after us. Instead, she was doing some kind of crazy dance, flailing around like a dead fish.

“What is she doing?!” Green demanded in a very shrill voice.

Blue’s eyes widened. Apparently, she’d just figured out what the old lady was trying to do, something that I was trying to figure out myself. “Is she suicidal?!”

“The tunnel’s gonna collapse on us if you don’t quit, you crazy lady!” I yelled as a few dangerously large cracks appeared in the ceiling. Dust and pebbles rained down on us, the ground shaking in a way that wasn’t good at all.

That’s when I realized what Blue had. And none of what I realized was good.

Sweet cupcakes.

We had to get out of there right now!

“Oh, that won’t bother me at all,” the snake replied with a sneer, confirming my awful suspicions. “You, however, being little, tiny, vulnerable humans…”

The end of that sentence probably didn’t hold a very happy ending for us, but I didn’t want to stick around to find out. Unfortunately for me, the part of the tunnel right behind us completely gave way right then, spilling rocks and dust everywhere. Everyone was reduced to a coughing mess as Caelin slammed her tail into the ground, making the earth tremble yet again.

“We have to get out of here!” Orange yelled. But any hope of doing that had collapsed with the tunnel behind us. Caelin blocked the way in front, and the path behind was completely sealed.

I realized then just how serious the situation was, and my body went numb with icy fear. Not a good feeling for a fire-user.

“We’re not going to make it!” Blue cried, eyes wide with panic. Which seriously scared me, because Blue never seemed to panic.

This had to qualify as a desperate situation, so I turned to Orange, knowing that there was only one way out.

“RT, you’ve gotta do it.”

He gritted his teeth, shaking his head. “There has to be some other way!”

More of the tunnel collapsed. We had maybe two minutes before the whole thing went down. And once that happened, we were toast.

“Orange, there is no other way!” Green cried. “Just a little bit. Just enough to get us out! Can’t you do that much?”

We were all depending on Orange, but the look in his eyes was at borderline panic. “I can’t, Green. I can’t!”

“You have to, Orange! If you don’t, we’ll die! Do you really want that?!” she demanded. “Do you really want to see everyone you care about die again?!”

Even more dirt rained down on us as Orange’s eyes widened. It was a low blow. Really low. And it’d hurt us all (even Blue, I’d noticed, had stifled a gasp – but I’d have to ask about that later) like nothing else ever could.

But the important part was… it just might work.

Orange stared at his hands. In an uncharacteristically soft voice, he warned, “I can’t control it, you know.”

Green simply replied, “Yes, you can.”

Blue interrupted the moment, her voice shrill with fear. “Orange, not to be rude or anything, but whatever you’re going to do, do it now!” A huge crack appeared above us, and I knew we only had seconds left before the whole thing caved in.

“Orange!” I yelled.

“Don’t distract me!” he snapped. His hands were clenched so tightly, I was sure it was gong to leave some kind of mark, but I knew it was his way of making himself concentrate, his way of forcing out the pain. He looked even paler than usual, and for a single, heart-stopping second, nothing happened.

And then, suddenly… Everything did.

The world exploded around me in a sea of rocks and dirt, the ground blowing itself apart like nothing I’d ever seen before. Dirt slammed into my face, getting into my nose and mouth, choking me until I was gagging and spitting out stuff I didn’t even know the identity of. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t even scream, because of all the dirt in my mouth. Terror filled every cell in my body because the ground was eating me alive, and there was no way to tell who had won: Caelin, or Orange. Whether the tunnel had collapsed, or Orange had blown it sky-high.

Whether we were alive…or dead.

My back slammed into something I would later recognize as solid ground – I hadn’t even realized I’d been off it in the first place. I tried to open my eyes, but couldn’t. There was a massive ton of stuff on top of me.

I almost gave up right then and there, thinking that we’d been buried alive for sure. But then I heard Blue’s voice, slicing through all the rubble like the most amazing thing in the world.

“I-Is everyone all right?!”

I tried to reply, but all I could manage was a kind of muffled groan. Blue must’ve had good ears, though, because a second later, the stuff on top of me vanished, blasted away by a ton of water.

I sat up, spitting out mud, coughing and gagging like I’d never done before. Bright sunlight spilled over everything, temporarily blinding me until I fumbled for my sunglasses and slid them on. At that moment, it was the most beautiful thing in the world.

I couldn’t believe it. We made it out of there.

“You okay?” Blue asked, standing over me. She was a mess. Her clothes were tattered, the pink ribbon that was usually in her hair had completely vanished, and she was scratched and bruised all over. I probably looked the same way, minus the ribbon.

“Are we alive?” I asked hoarsely, because that was seriously the only thing that mattered to me anymore.

She managed a shaky smile. “I think so, yeah.”

“Little help over here?” Orange’s voice called. I looked around and spotted him pinned under a mountain of rocks. For obvious reasons, he didn’t look like he had the strength to lift them off.

It took both Blue and me to pull him out of there, since she’d apparently run out of magic. “Water Mimicry’s like the equivalent of the Freeze spell,” she explained once Orange was free and spitting out dirt. “Takes up half my magic to use. So after blasting all those spells back there, I’m a little depleted.”

“Yeah, I’m almost out too,” I admitted. “I really need to go fuel up sometime soon.”

Orange finished clearing his mouth of unidentified dirt-related objects and got to his feet, ignoring our small talk. “Where’s Green?”

Both Blue and I looked at each other. Then our gazes swiveled back to Orange.

“Um,” Blue said.

“Uh,” I added.

Orange looked as if he didn’t know whether or not to slap us both. “You don’t know – ”

“I’m right here, no thanks to you,” Green’s voice grumbled. She slid down one of the many piles of rocks and dirt that now dotted the landscape, landing in a heap at the bottom because Green’s just that uncoordinated. (And lame.) Some of the worry in Orange’s eyes faded as she stomped over to us and jabbed a finger into my face.

“I told you it was a trap,” she seethed. “But nooo. You didn’t listen. When’re you going to learn, Red? Crazy old lady in the middle of nowhere, random cave-in right when we came strolling in the door, of course there’s something fishy going on here, but nooo, you follow the psycho lady and now look what happened! You just don’t ever think, do you? Of course not. We could’ve died in there, do you understand?! That’s the second time today we could’ve been killed because of one of your lamebrained ideas! One time wasn’t enough for you, was it? The flying motorcycle wasn’t enough! If it weren’t for Orange and Blue, we would’ve been absolute toast! Honestly, you’re such an idiot!”

She paused to take a breath, and no doubt would’ve continued screaming at me if Orange hadn’t stepped in.

“Are you done?” he asked dryly.

Green folded her arms, scowling, but managed to calm down slightly. “Yeah.”

“Then if you are, some of us need a healing.”

She glanced at each of us, the scowl slowly being replaced with a concerned look as she took in all the injuries. I’d gotten away with only a couple of scrapes and bruises, but Blue was limping, and Orange had a huge gash down his arm. Green herself hadn’t really come out of it unscathed either; there was a nasty-looking cut across her cheek. None of us were exactly the definition of completely fine.

But then, of course, before Green could even lift a finger to try and heal all of us, Caelin exploded out of the ground like a freaking nightmare.

“Oh, come on!” I yelled, exasperated.

“You can’t be serious,” Blue groaned.

The snake leered at us. “Did you really think you could get rid of me that easily?”

Nobody replied. The answer was obvious.

Orange glanced at Blue and me. “How much magic do you two have left?”

I told him the grim truth. “Maybe enough left for one attack. After that, I’m done.”

“Me too,” Blue added.

Orange frowned. “Then I guess we’ll have to try the flight method instead of the fight one.”

We pretty much blasted out of there at the speed of light. But you try running away from a snake as big as a house. Not an easy thing to do.

Caelin actually busted up laughing when we all spun around and started tearing out of there as fast as we could. After all, we were on foot, while she was on, well, snake. We had to come up with a plan, fast, or else we were snake chow.

And to my complete and utter surprise, it wasn’t Blue, but Green who came up with the plan we needed.

The snake, once she stopped cracking up, struck at us with lightning speed, actually slicing off a few strands of Blue’s hair as she dived to the side. I leaped out of the way, but Green simply sidestepped the attack. It missed her by an inch.

I stared. Had she gone totally crazy? Green was never this reckless!

“Hey, Caelin!” she called. “Guess what?”

Caelin smirked. “Trying to put off your imminent death? Well, I must admit, I do like playing with my food a bit before I eat, so I think I can oblige. What?”

“Catch!”

Green hurled something through the air, right into Caelin’s laughing mouth. The snake’s eyes bugged out – the last we’d see of her for a long, long time.

And then the bomb exploded with a force that sent all of us flying backward like paper dolls.

I smacked into the ground for the second time that day, my breath flying out of my lungs with a WHOOSH. Only this time, unfortunately for me, my head slammed into something hard. Something really hard.

Hard enough to knock me out on the spot.

You can probably guess why everything went completely black right after that.