Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fiction / Monster Rancher Fan Fiction ❯ Monsters Rule ❯ Coming in with a bang ( Chapter 5 )

[ P - Pre-Teen ]

"We can't rest now."
Katsuya, in spite of the situation, glowered at Murasaki while maintaining his pace. "Who said I was going to?"
"You are my brother, and I know perfectly well when you think of it."
"Which would be all the time?" He didn't even try to keep the sarcasm out of his voice.
"Which would be all the time."
"Sisters," he grumbled.
They had left the forest by now, but their destination seemed no closer. Katsuya briefly wondered what the point was, when it would probably be a week at least before they even reached the foot of Mount Cairos. But they had to try. That was what Murasaki always said.
His name was well known among the others. They didn't even try to keep their voices down because they didn't care if he knew; maybe they thought it would put some sense into him to hear what they said. Katsuya the slacker, constantly malingering, frivolous, only tolerated by Grey Wolf because he could exercise quite a bit of strength when he felt like it.
He could be brave, too, when he felt like it.

Using a dragon as a means of transportation isn't as enjoyable as it sounds, especially when one is in the middle of a blizzard, and the dragon has you by its claws because one's Blue Eyes wouldn't come out and someone else is riding. Seto Kaiba was grateful when he felt solid ground, and when Rex Raptor's Serpent Night Dragon finally let go. This gratitude ended when he pitched face-forward into the snow in a most undignified manner. Ahead of him, Wheeler was shouting. "Bakura, hey, Bakura! Is that you in that dress?"
By the time he got up he could barely see where they had gone. After some squinting he detected the forms of the two dragons, the yellow of Wheeler's hair, and the red of Raptor's hat. He stumbled forward, nearly falling again several more times and putting on a repeat performance once.
After he had stumbled again, making a resolution that this time he wouldn't get up, someone caught him and pulled him to his feet. "Are you all right?"
He shoved the hand away and promptly fell. "I'm just fine."

They made camp near the Ancient ruins, but not too near. Yugi and Mahaad understood the reason for this after Holly told them what had happened the last time they had been here. Hare slid the abacus beads around for a bit and announced that they had another day to go before they could return to the shrine.
"We all knew that," Tiger snapped. "It's common sense." Whereupon another argument began.
"So," said Genki, "what's with the cards?"
Yugi began to explain. "Do the monsters here fight a lot?"
"If you mean in coliseums, yeah, they do."
"Well, Duel Monsters is a lot like that, only the monsters are in cards, and you can have around twenty monsters in a deck."
"Twenty!"
"That's the usual number, yes." Yugi looked through his deck and settled on Mystical Elf. "Do you see these numbers?" Nods from everyone. "Well, this number-" he pointed to it "-is attack points, and this is defense points. You can play monsters in two positions- attack and defense…"

Kohaku gauged that he had been a mile or two past the ruins when he decided to rest a little longer this time. He lay down in a spot that wasn't as easily seen, and then his eyes closed (just for a little bit, he told himself), and then he didn't feel like opening them.

Kaiba categorically refused to either continue to share Serpent Night Dragon with Rex or ride behind Joey. Diamant claimed she could only accommodate one rider. When he tried to summon his own dragon, nothing happened.
Joey shook his head. "Kaiba, you're going at it all wrong. What you gotta do is actually believe it's gonna work."
"Considering that all previous attempts have come to nothing," he retorted, "it is slightly difficult to believe it will work this time."
"Exactly. That's your problem. If all ya do is tell yourself it's not gonna work, then you can't expect it to work, can you?"
"Don't tell me what to do!"
"Let me correct that. If you don't tell yourself it's going to work, and do it now, I think that army's gonna catch up in a couple of minutes."
Kaiba turned. His jaw dropped. And the Blue Eyes White Dragon materialized before him, promptly blowing away the first few lines of attackers.

After Yugi finished explaining how to play Duel Monsters, he showed them his deck, and they all did much ooh-ing and aah-ing over it. Genki suggested they get all the others from their cards as well. "I mean, it must be really boring in there, and besides, if they're anything like Mahaad then they can help us beat the baddies!"
Hare objected. "It's simple mathematics. With twenty new members, the amount of food we need will quadruple, and we'll starve to death before we ever get close to the Phoenix! Not to mention, it'd be much easier for them to spot us if there were that many!" Genki had to reluctantly agree.
"Well," said Holly, "we'd better get to sleep."

Rex looked over his shoulder. "It's moving! This way!"
"Oh great," Joey grumbled, holding on even tighter to the Red Eyes. "Just what we didn't need."
"I think it's shooting, too."
"What the-?"
"Get DOWN!"
Joey turned to see Serpent Night fall a good ten feet, just in time to miss the crackling ray that proceeded to nearly clip the Red Eyes' left wing even as Bakura on Diamant veered to the right.
"Kaiba-" he shouted.
Kaiba whispered something. The Blue Eyes whirled to face the ray, shot out a White Lightning, then dropped as well, presumably to avoid the resulting explosion.
Joey was nearly flung off; he hung on to the neck, and he was sure he'd nearly strangled the dragon by the time he felt safe enough to slacken his grip a bit. He looked up, then back down as another White Lightning roared overhead, with another explosion sounding behind him shortly after.
"He got the shooter," Rex again.
"Excellent aim, that," Bakura called.
Kaiba still spurred the Blue Eyes on to attack again and again. Crackling electric spheres crashed into the underside of the flying castle, into the platforms…
Joey turned Red Eyes around and it let out some more fireballs, creating even more smoke and making him unable to see how much damage he'd caused. Then Rex had his own dragon add the Nightmare Sonic Blast to the mix. Finally, Bakura told Diamant to join them. Once another ray emerged from the cloud that had grown up around it, but Kaiba immediately countered that and pounded the location from which it came without mercy.
"Pull back," Bakura called. "Wait for the dust to clear, see how much you've done first!"
Joey obeyed immediately; Rex and Kaiba did so as well, albeit reluctantly. After what seemed like an eternity (though it couldn't have been more than a few minutes) the dust cleared.
Granted, their apparent goal, to transform the flying castle to a grounded pile of rubble, hadn't succeeded, but it looked considerably less imposing now. A few of the smaller buildings had apparently been demolished.
"Everyone," said Bakura, "I propose we quit while we're ahead."
"What-! Joey Wheeler doesn't quit!"
Kaiba looked askance at him. "Joey Wheeler is also a moron."
"Why you-"
"It's heading back," Bakura cut him off. "We had better go."
Rex shook his head. "And let them fix it up and come back after us? I don't think so! Serpent Night, attack!"
The dragon complied. Joey let out a whoop and followed. They proceeded to harass the castle all the way back to its resting place in the mountain before finally turning back and heading toward what was presumably south.

"Murasaki- what's that? In the sky?"
She developed her typical we-don't-have-time-for-this expression at Katsuya's words, but she looked up anyway and gasped. "It's an explosion, I think. We had better hurry."
"I thought that was what we were doing."
"Mu could need us."
"Right. Mu the all-powerful needs two Cabalos, which, in case you forgot, can't fly. If you say so."

Mu was not in the least happy. Anyone who was happy when their trademark flying castle had just been reduced to a flying pile of rubble had had something put in backward regarding their sanity.
A rescue mission had been organized, and the remains of the buildings were being carted off. They found quite a few Lost Disks tangled in the debris; these were carted off for Mu to resurrect when he felt like it.
Right now he did not feel like it.
It wasn't just a matter of reviving them without a second thought. It took approximately a hundred times more energy to revive a single Lost Disk than it would have taken to create said disk. Therefore, he had to choose wisely. He had quite enough sycophantic but generally useless flunkies without bringing back all the dead ones.
Of course, there were some survivors; otherwise there would have been no point in a rescue mission. Those survivors had been taken to the infirmary that had been put up yesterday, and as he entered, Mu noted that there was obviously far more than had been expected. It had been assumed that the one on the castle would take up the slack in the event that there was any. As it turned out, the surviving invalids had to be transferred here, instead, along with several members of the medical staff.
A squad of Evil Hares stood up against a wall, and a wall of mostly-unconscious monsters was stacked in front of them like so much firewood, keeping them from collapsing. More knocked-out Zuums lay on top of Jells in puddle form. It was so crowded Mu had to wonder exactly how what was left of the staff would deal with handing out medicines. Hold lessons in hand-eye coordination, perhaps?
There was a line of the monsters that could stand, leading up to an extremely harassed-looking Angel wearing a Captain's helmet and a red ribbon pinned under her symbol. As he looked on, she took a bottle of something or other from her assistant, then shoved it at a Salamander. "Take that for three days, take a snake at the end of that, and don't come back unless you've broken something. Now get out." He got out. She scrawled something in her ledger, then turned to the next in line, an Evil Hare.
"Medical Captain Angel."
She turned and bowed. "What do you wish of me, Master Mu?"
"You requested a transfer to the main army last week, correct?" A nod and a glance at the monsters still in line; the latter knew better than to interrupt. "The transfer is granted. You are now a specialized warrior, and I'm promoting your assistant to your former position. She can write, correct?"
She nodded, then took off the helmet and threw it at the Allure, who, to her credit, asked no questions and immediately put it on and began attending to the Evil Hare. "Thank you, Master Mu. What is my first assignment?"
"Details would be better given elsewhere. Don't you agree?"
"I agree."

"Bakura?"
"Yes, what is it, Joey?"
"What're those purple things down there?"
It had grown dark; Bakura had to squint a bit to see what Joey was referring to. "I think those are called… Cabalos, I believe."
Blink. "How'd you know?"
"I think I met one of them once, and-"
The twin howls came as a complete surprise, and Bakura nearly fell off Diamant. "This can't be good," he muttered, then called to the others, "Pull up! Quickly!"

"They're coming from Cairos, to the fortress," said Murasaki after she was done with her warning. "You go on and give the report. I'll stay."
"I can't!"
"You will."
The voice was faint but understandable. "Pull up!"
"But-" Katsuya began. She showed her teeth. He backed off and began running towards Cairos, towards the dragons.
As he passed beneath them, they began to rise higher. Oh no you don't!
Her attack caught the white dragon in the neck; it jerked and the human (who also matched the description) nearly fell off. If only. She immediately attacked again, then repeated, not letting up…
Until another blast flung her she didn't want to know how high; it was only by great luck (if you could call it that) that she didn't break her neck when she landed. Instead, she broke a leg.
"Kaiba, stop this immediately! Two on one is hardly fair play."
"It attacked us."
"No, it attacked me."
"You're wrong, it attacked me."
"Sorry, Diamant."
"It was nothing."
Murasaki did her best impression of being at death's door; she observed two of the dragons (one of them the one she had shot at) land, the other two circling above. She began to concentrate, waiting for just the right moment to at least be able to do something of use.
It came as the white-haired human turned to argue with his brown-haired counterpart.
The dragons all cried out at the same time as the human, who fell to his knees and then completely down. Murasaki fired another at the second one, who barely dodged. Murasaki herself had to roll to the side moments later to avoid a swinging tail, her broken leg protesting strenuously at this treatment. It protested even more when she pulled herself back on her feet just in time to fling herself back down and dodge another attack.

Katsuya knew not to look back. If he did he would have to stay and help, and if he stayed and helped then Mu would never be warned in time. Assuming, of course, there was still time…
He hadn't known he could run this fast.
Then again, he had never tried to run this fast before.