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Volt lay close to his winged ally. It was very late, but the young lightning bender could never stay asleep for too long. He just maintained his position, almost molded into the ground, for he didn’t want to wake Vamprina. He turned his head a little to look at her face. She looked so pretty when she slept. But her peaceful expression would twist every now and then into one of deep sorrow, as if she had suddenly come upon a painful memory in the dream world. He reached out, and stroked her hair hesitantly. Vamprina’s sad face returned to normal, and she smiled as she slept. It was a smile that he had never seen before. It wasn’t evil, or there because of a successful kill. It was just one of joy so pure that he could almost feel it. Volt began to smile too. A sudden sound caught his attention.
He looked up, and saw a flash of bright yellow in the darkness. The color frightened him, but he couldn’t understand why. Slowly and carefully, he slipped away from Vamprina’s side as silently as she had taught him. Then, with even more caution, he began to advance towards the light with all his illumination dimmed to avoid possible discovery.
The yellow light became stronger, and seemed to be dimming and intensifying as he continued. The sounds of combat reached his ears, and he picked up speed, racing soundlessly through the woods. Volt reached a clearing, which had been created by the absolute decimation of trees caused by the battle. In the center of the circle of embers, was a red Stick with no arms or legs, just a very long serpentine body with jagged yellow lighting stripes along its length, all of which were glowing and sparking with energy so powerful that he could sense it from his faraway position. Its tail had a tip that was glowing with energy, and every now and then, it would glow brightly, charging up a deadly blast of yellow electricity to fire at foes. And there, darting around the creature was his creator…V-arX.
Volt’s energy suddenly spiked to extreme heights, and he shot towards the foe like a white bullet, a freed star from the lightless wood. His creator hung back, attempting to heal himself, while the red serpent, Electrode, turned towards the offender with an ear-piercing shriek. V-arX had the natural ability to pass into an ethereal channel that would open in the air at his command, and this was how he managed to get to other planets without the need to waste endless hours travelling through space. However, whenever the portal opens, V-arX isn’t the only one who could pass through it. Whatever foe or follower he has can enter as well. Since V-arX was the one who discovered this travel method and also knows who to deal with it, it is not uncommon for an explosive imbalance to occur if an extra member passes through the tear. In other words, V-arX and whoever came through with him would suffer serious damage to their bodies once the journey is over, and in extreme cases, disintegration could occur.
A small section of air began to collapse on itself, ripping open and revealing a yawning hole that threw purple energy everywhere it could reach. Sensing the extra power spike, Volt opened his hands, raising them high. The stars above him dimmed, and energy leapt from their cores, searing towards the target in jagged patterns. Electrode coiled his body like a spring, covering himself in a temporary electrical shield. V-arX used the distraction to his advantage. With a quick nod of thanks, he vanished through the portal, leaving Volt with the enemy.
Electrode had not been a new sight for V-arX, but for Volt this was all a fresh experience. He had never seen an enemy like this before. It could bend energy just like him, but of a different color, yellow instead of white. Also, he seemed very upset that V-arX had gotten away, leading Volt to think that this creature was somehow connected to his master in more ways than just its element. The wounds that V-arX had contracted also suggested that Electrode was not one to be underestimated. Volt dodged a yellow bolt of energy, still hesitant. Was this enemy purely evil or could he be turned? He would always have to find that characteristic in combat.
Energy flew through the air, yellow and white, crisscrossing and snapping all over the place. Volt evaded most of the attacks, throwing very few bolts back at his foe, while Electrode tried to get him in a corner where he could simply concentrate the full electric power of his energy on all at once. Volt soon figured this out, so it was very easy to discourage Electrode by using his lightning speed to move from place to place in a constant ever-changing fashion to avoid giving Electrode the chance to memorize his moves.
Then the battle got faster.
Volt ducked under a tail swipe, twisting his body to avoid the nasty bite that followed after, and landed a purposefully weak strike on the back of Electrode’s neck. The serpent snarled and sent a beam of electricity towards him. Anticipating a spreading shot, Volt generated an energy shield around him, leaping back and forth to test the intelligence of the projectile. Truly enough, the blast split apart into sixteen more lightning bolts, all of which could home in on his position wherever he went. Ten of them snapped harmlessly into the shield. The slower ones were coming up. Expecting there was a reason for their speed, Volt charged his shield up even more, and was suddenly struck from the side by Electrode, who wrapped his body around the sphere, enveloping it in temporary blackness, which was lightened a little by Volt’s arm and eyes.
Suddenly the dark disappeared and five projectiles slammed into his shield. Volt staggered in his vanishing barrier, and the final bolt found its mark. Instant paralysis shocked him into submission, and he fell to his knees, collapsing fully onto the forest floor despite his desperate efforts to ignore the pain.
Electrode slithered over to him, hissing, and just as he was about to strike, the great serpent stopped. He twisted his neck, looking all around suspiciously. A stick snapped in the distance. The beast lunged for the noise, recoiling suddenly in pain. Twin slash marks appeared in his neck, and a few seconds later Vamprina was fully visible. She had her fangs sunk deep within the flesh of the enemy, and the intensity of the lightning bolt patterns scattered across the red length of Electrode’s body dimmed to darkness as she drained him dry. Just as the creature was about to die, Vamprina let go, and he dropped like a dead weight, for so great was his weakness.
Volt smiled. Vamprina had cleverly distracted the enemy by shooting one of her energy bolts from her wing blades at a stick ahead of it. The young lightning bender knew that she herself wouldn’t have made any sound at all if her intent was to come without a distraction. She had hidden near the stick, and when he lunged, she did as well, scoring her target area, the neck, with flawless precision.
The two Stick warriors looked at Electrode, who lay there staring back at them intensely, but he no longer had hatred swimming in his eyes. Vamprina and Volt knew the emotion that resided there now. Respect.
Volt backed up, and Vamprina did the same, allowing Electrode to rise. He was still very weak, but now he had no interest in hostility. His body began to glow faintly again, and the crackle of electrical energy across it formed into words.
“You have bested me…both of you.” Electrode hissed. “Never have I ever found opponents I respect more. I have no desire left to destroy the living.”
Volt realized Electrode was looking at him most of the time he said this, and feeling a little shy, he began to slide behind Vamprina, despite her warning looks. Electrode smiled, and his grin revealed bright yellow fangs that glowed with hot light.
“I am your ally. Whenever you need help, you will find it in me.”
“Thanks for the offer, but I work alone.” Vamprina hissed. She looked over her shoulder at Volt. “Well…except for him. We work alone.”
“I didn’t mean now.” was Electrode’s reply.
“Yeah, because we won’t need it forever. We can do just fine without the extra energy.”
Volt stepped towards Electrode, and then knelt before him. A single spark sprang from each of them, catching each other in the height of their jump, exploding in a miniature burst of white. In this way, Volt and Electrode became friends. Vamprina, slowly, came forward, her ears flat against her head in mistrust, but Volt’s smile eventually got the best of her and she decided the alliance was okay.
Having business in other places, Electrode was forced to depart, but he said he’d always be there for them when they needed it. And then he left, with Volt staring after his illuminated body as it flew, till its glow was lost among the stars.
Volt turned away, and a bright tear suddenly dripped from his eye. For a few seconds, he stared at the moist droplet’s mark on the rock beneath his feet, as if he was surprised that he was capable of such emotion. Vamprina watched him for a little, sighed, and came over, putting her wing around his shoulders.
“Don’t worry. He promised to come back, didn’t he? I know when Sticks are lying, since I’ve grown up with a race of dirty liars anyway. He was telling the truth…I know it.”
Volt looked up into her face hopefully, and then his mouth opened in shock. Believing this as a result of her tenderness, Vamprina flinched back from him, her ears pricked up and spread wide as realization settled in that her first thought was incorrect. Volt dropped to his knees, striking out at the ground with one hand to keep himself from a full collapse, while the other gripped his chest so viciously that blood ran over his fingers. Vamprina shrieked in anger and confusion, coming to his side, and then she saw that the blood was not because he was tearing himself apart, but because of a hideous green spike that stuck through his back and partway from his chest.
Vamprina turned, her eyes burning with intense red light, and she located the problem in an instant. A Venom dragon had crept up on them, using its excellent camouflage to blend its green scales with the trees. Its glowing emerald eyes suddenly spotted a different target, black, which explained why it had missed her presence. The dragon raised itself up, spraying a noxious mist into the air. Spinning to create a vortex that kept the toxin from settling on her body, Vamprina’s wing blades emerged, and in the next few seconds the decapitated corpse of the spiny freak had flopped lifelessly to the mossy ground. Coming out of her rotation, Vamprina made a tight circle and shot back towards Volt.
He was lying on his side, trembling like he had fallen under a cold spell. He had managed to remove the splinter and it lay far away from him, coated in a sheen of toxic green and blood. A small river of life* was trickling out of the side of his mouth, and his once-bright eyes were very dim, nearly dark. Vamprina crouched beside him, summoning all the healing energies she had. Since she wasn’t a Healing type, this was extremely difficult, and for many hours she simply stayed by Volt’s shivering body, trembling herself in the agony of the effort. At length, she collapsed, spent of energy. She couldn’t do any more, or she would die.
“Isn’t that what it takes?” Vamprina snarled to herself. “If I die so that this one will live, I believe my sacrifice is necessary.”
She raised her weak wings to the sky, and the Darkness in her body began to convert to Light, pulling itself violently out of her. The clash of energies would ultimately cause her death, and Volt’s life. But just as the completed spheres were about to bond with each other…
An intense burst of heat distracted Vamprina, and the Light once again transformed to Dark and returned to her. Enraged at the interruption, she spun to face the disruptor, but her ears pricked up in surprise when she saw who it was. Valkyrie…the Light version of herself with feathered wings and more compassion than any Light Stick she had ever met.
Long ago, another portal opened on Stickworld that caused a horde of deadly eyeball headed creatures to invade the planet. They hungered for energy, any energy, and sought to absorb it wherever it was found. Vamprina had been attacked by the last one of these, and just as it was about to drain her, Venox had showed up with his Darkwing friends, and they all blasted her foe’s eyeball with their laser energy. He was believed dead, but as Vamprina came to thank Venox, the eyeball creature attempted once more to kill her with the stored up power of the I. A Darkwing came to assist her, and the energies mixed to form a different type for a brief moment, cloning Vamprina’s core energy into six different forms of each Stickworld class type. Light = Valkyrie, Rogue = Veya, Trainer = Vinna, Healer = Vytalia, Phantex = Vantera, and a very mysterious and extremely destructive form, a Void energy type called Vess.
“Valkyrie?” Vamprina gasped. “How did you get here?”
“Sensed you in your time of need,” Valkyrie replied with a grin. “Looks like you need my help.”
The Light one flew over to Volt immediately and listened carefully to his heartbeat. “I think I’m not powerful enough to heal him when he’s this far gone.” she said. “However, Vytalia should be on her way. We can’t stay her for long you know, Stickworld’s in more trouble now than it was before.”
Vamprina’s eyes flashed. “What?”
“Vytalia doesn’t talk much, so I’ll summarize for you now in what little time we have. Stickworld is under siege by the Rani, so when Shadewing wanted to find a way to get to you, he had to find Raylar, since he’s the only one who can pass through dimensions he knows of, and instead, he found that Slinx had been working on creating these nightmarish beasts called Ragefiends. They were supposed to destroy the enemy. They did, but now there is something even worse. They want the cure, and they want to find a way to destroy Slinx without doing it themselves. Slinx has a way of doing things. Whenever he creates something, it will destroy everything else, but under no circumstance is it able to destroy its own master. That’s it in a nutshell. Now I’ve got to go. Sorry I couldn’t stay long.”
Without another word, Valkyrie vanished, and Vytalia appeared. True to the previous description, Vytalia didn’t make a sound, she just waved her hand over Volt’s body and the infection ceased to exist. Then she vanished as well. Vamprina’s ears were flat again, since she was annoyed that Vytalia had done it so easily. But she had succeeded, and that was all that mattered.
“Volt! Are you okay? Answer me!” Vamprina cried, shaking him a little despite herself.
Volt opened his eyes, looking around confused. Then he turned an inquiring eye towards Vamprina. Vamprina’s ears that had been sticking up in the air slicked down again. “What?” she asked. She didn’t like that look, it was like he could see right into her thoughts.
He persisted, and finally Vamprina explained what happened. It took a long time for her to describe the struggle she had with the eyeball creature, but once she was finished Volt was very satisfied. Now he wanted to rest, since he was still a bit weak. Vamprina agreed with him, and the two flew off to find an undisturbed sleeping area.
* (Click to Show)
*I often refer to blood as “life”.
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