by Angel Medina
Angel goes after Fujin right away not wanting this battle to last longer than necessary or at least longer than his liking. However Fujin immediately puts up his shield of wind to protect himself and the wind blows Angel away.
“Come on Fujin it doesn’t have to end badly, just give up please. I don’t want to hurt you!” Angel begs Fujin to just give in.
“Sorry Angel, I’m afraid I can’t do that! My master has told me you must be killed and kill you I shall!” Fujin responds as he was possessed by the evil one.
He sees Fujin’s response and decides to go after him again landing some punches along with some kicks. Fujin rises up to the ceiling of the temple and the ceiling of the temple is destroyed. Then it blows away. He begins to land kick after kick to Angel taking him down, Angel is able to grab Fujin’s foot and throw him to the floor. Fujin grabs him and throws him in the air, he begins to land blow after blow which begins to weaken him. Angel lands hard on the floor, not getting up at all. Fujin prepares for his powerful wind attack and begins to turn into a tornado.
Fujin approaches the immobile body of Angel and he gets caught in the tornado where he is spun around uncontrollably. Angel hangs on to him for as long as he can until the force of the wind pushes him away from Fujin towards the edge of the temple. Angel looks down and sees nothing but pitch black, indicating that either he survives or he’s going to fall to his death.
Fujin says evilly, “Time to finish you off, Angel! Any last words?”
“No, I have none. I don’t plan on dying here or even staying here for that matter.” Angel says with determination.
Fujin begins to spin violently creating a very powerful tornado which begins to tear the temple apart. Angel grabs onto a pole that is standing and hangs on for dear life, waiting for him to stop or at least weaken before letting go.
“Oh man! This is not good! I’m a goner if I let go!” Angel says trying to hang on.
All of a sudden Fujin begins to scream loudly and the tornado dissipates all of a sudden as well. Angel is relieved after the tornado weakens and he sees a white hole leading him out of planet Fujin, to the ultimate warp. Angel heads towards the warp saying, “I hope the others are ok, I’ll just have to see in time. Fujin you shall be avenged! I promise that!”
He enters the white hole opening the wind elemental gate and once he enters all he sees is a pure white light in front of him along with a light yellow gate on the sides. He thinks in his head, could this be what heaven looks like. Another thing is that all he can see is afterthoughts of his father and brother, although dead the memories are still fresh in his mind.
The wind elemental gate had been opened, which leaves only the gates of earth, water and fire to be opened.
***
Meanwhile back on Earth, Quentin and George continue to hold the fort at Virtual Labs Inc. from the constant hordes of aliens that arrive from the constant black holes that pop up continuously. However, the two of them begin to run out of resources as they defend themselves. After defeating another wave of aliens, they head out in an effort to get more supplies. However the wind outside is extremely strong, in fact they reach Category 5 hurricane strength making it far too dangerous to even step outside. The powerful winds were caused by the wind elemental gate being open, which causes wind speeds to reach their true potential and houses begin to blow away. Quentin and George are left to think that the gloobas are preparing their attack and the heroes are having a hard time, who they hope are still alive as well. The two try to call the four, but no luck all that is received is static. With only 2 and a half days remaining, the two hope for the best, but are prepared for the worse.
Chapter 23
Poseidon
While Angel survives the planet of Fujin, Luis finds himself in the rock planet of Poseidon. He has no idea what is going on either, unlike Angel he finds himself in the Earth temple already. Luis gathers himself trying to figure out where he is. That is until the Elder God shows up to clear up the picture for him.
“Where am I? I was just in the middle of space, now I’m in the middle of a temple.” Luis says in confusion.
“Calm down young one, I’ll explain to you what’s going on. I’ve just came back from saying the same thing to your friend Angel. I sense he has already entered the ultimate warp... ” The Elder God says to Luis before he is cut off.
“Ultimate warp, what are you talking about. Where in the hell am I and how do I get out of here? I don’t mean to be rude, I’m just confused.” Luis says after cutting off the Elder God.
“No worries Luis I understand that you’re simply confused. Anyway you are in the elemental planet of Poseidon or should I say the dimension, which controls the element of Earth. That includes rocks, dirt, grass and the very ground that the human race stands on. Just like I explained to Angel there is a guardian that is guarding the gate to escape. Once all of the gates are opened you will transported to a warp that will take you to any place you wish.” The Elder God answers Luis’s question.
“Sounds easy enough, once I break out of this joint we can go straight for the planet of goo. Thanks Elder God.” Luis says in satisfaction.
“My dear Luis, you didn’t let me finish.” Luis looks as the Elder God confused, not knowing there is much more to the story. “You see once you do manage to get the Earth gate open you’ll be transferred to the warp yes, but until all four elemental gates are opened you’ll be stuck in the warp indefinitely with no escape.” The Elder God continues to explain to Luis.
“Whoa, whoa! So in other words, what you’re saying is that if any of my friends die or fail to open up their gate I’m going to be stuck forever?” Luis asks in a demanding tone.
“Luis I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but that girl Leslie tricked everyone. She knew that black hole was there, so she led you here figuring that you’ll be stuck here. Anyway getting back to my point, yes everyone must survive. Even if one fails, everyone will be subject to be stuck in the infinite loop forever. You have no control over the actions of your friends. You can only worry about yourself at this point. I wish I had better news my dear Luis, but I must be going now. I wish you the best of luck. Goodbye for now!”
After the lecture Luis recognizes that there is no time to waste, opening the Earth gate is paramount to Earth’s survival. He goes in and sees a couple of scorpion crawlers waiting for him. He’s not surprised that the gloobas have invaded the elemental world. He lets the crawlers attack him, while he dodges their attacks. The claws from the scorpion's get stuck in the rock walls, leaving them open to attack. He pushes them to the wall with such force their heads open up with the signature green blood. Another scorpion crawler approaches him attempting to spit poison towards him, but he ducks the shot. After that he slide kicks the creature, knocking it down to the floor. He grabs a torch and uses it to burn the scorpion to a crisp. He looks ahead and sees a series of swinging blades, which have to ability to slice him in half.
“Hmm… Booby traps huh? Gotta be even more careful, one false move and I’ll be chopped meat.” Luis says nervously as he approaches the trap.
While he is walking to the trap he notices that the floor below him begins to open. He moves back away from the opening floor and sees it’s a spike trap. After avoiding that trap he jumps over the hole, only to see it close right back up.
“What! Well whatever this place is weird, why would I expect anything less than this! Now comes the tricky part. Well here goes nothing.” Luis says nervously as he approaches the swinging blades.
He times his run as the blade retracts for a few seconds and runs through when the coast is clear. He would proceed the same way with the second blade. As he approaches through the third blade the floor below begins to open, the floor reveals quicksand. He grabs a pipe above him to hang onto. He has only one more blade to go through. However he has to swing through as it is far too dangerous to fall to the floor where the quicksand is. So he begins to swing himself to gather momentum being careful to swing too far
back or risk getting cut up by the blade behind him.
He gathers the momentum he needed to jump ahead, as nervous as he is. He knew he can’t back out now. He waits go the right moment, swings and hopes for the best. The blade rips part of his shirt, but misses him overall. He continues to move through the dark cave like temple and finds more scorpion crawlers. He deals with one of them by power driving its head onto the hard marble floor. With another one he grabs a frail on the wall and uses it to behead it. The last crawler attacks him from behind and the frail ends up falling into the quicksand.
“Oh! Attacking from behind I see, why should I expect anything less from you alien bastards?” Luis is unfazed by the cowardly attack by the scorpion crawler.
He and the creature go at it, he lands a few punches, but with the shell of the scorpion hard as a rock the punches have little effect. The scorpion grabs Luis with its claws and begins to squeeze the life out of him. That is until he pokes the creature’s eyes, which buys him some time. The scorpion tail whips him down to the floor and prepares to kill him with deadly tip of its tail. Luis hears the voice and senses the presence of his grandmother. The scorpion goes for the kill, but the tail attack is deflected. In fact the tail attack doesn’t even get close to striking Luis. He himself is even shocked and thinks he is supposed to be dead
After that he kicks the creature back, gets up and throws the creature to a metal part of the floor. Only that it really isn’t part of the floor, it’s actually another trap. The scorpion crawler lands on the metal area and the metal plate springs up to the ceiling crushing the creature. He can only look in disgust watching the gore of the scorpion being splattered around.
“Ouch that had to hurt!” Luis says to himself humorously.
He goes around the trap and continues down the hallway which goes on nearly forever, until he finds the end of the hall. However to get to the other side of the hall, he has to jump over a hole. This hole proves to be rather easy to jump over. On the other side of the hole he meets some shaolin monks who are guarding the temple.
The monks prove to be hostile towards him, so he has no choice but to fight them. He is reluctant to attacking the monks because they are simply trying to protect the temple. After taking down the monks he finds a switch, which drops a rope down the hole and he also finds a gold object in the shape of a square. On the back it says, “Use this key to unlock the great room of the great guardian himself, Poseidon.”
“Well only one way to go, the door leading to the exit is locked. So gotta go down.” Luis says as he approaches the rope.
He heads down the rope until he reaches the bottom and finds the door leading to the guardian. He walks inside of the room and he sees a huge rock monster. Unfortunately the monster is not only the guardian, but it looks like it’s not in the mood to negotiate anything either.
“Ah… maybe we can talk about this or you can just show… me the… way out of here…” Luis tries to reason with the Earth Guardian, but with no success.
The Earth Guardian picks up Luis and throws him like a rag doll. He gets right back up and approaches the rock monster, then begins kicking it. His kicks have no effect besides pushing the monster back. The Earth Guardian stomps hard on the floor making an earthquake, forcing Luis to jump up in order to avoid the main impact. However the rocks above him begin to fall down and start to hit him. He knows he has no weapon capable of killing the guardian, so he has to improvise. He sees a switch and presses it, which drops a metal platform right onto the guardian's head. The platform hits the guardian's head and the guardian kneels down on the floor.
He sees a key on top of the platform, but before he could get a chance to climb up the platform the Earth Guardian knocks him back and begins to approach him. The guardian grabs Luis and throws him back.
“Son of a bitch this bastard is three times my size, seems like the platform did wonders for me! Just gotta keep dropping that platform on this dude.” Luis finds an idea on how to defeat the Earth Guardian.
He slides under the Earth Guardian while the guardian tries to grab him and heads back to the switch dropping the platform on the monster. The Earth Guardian moves forward enough that now he is out of the range of the platform. The creature stomps the floor again creating another earthquake. He dodges the falling boulders that fall from the ceiling. He tries to attack the guardian, but his attacks don’t even push the guardian back. A voice tells Luis in Spanish to pick up one of the boulders and he will be able to lift it. He picks up the boulder and follows the instructions who he figures came from his grandmother’s spirit.
He notices that he’s able to pick up the huge boulder without any struggle, in fact it feels as light as a feather. With the guidance of his grandmother’s spirit, he throws the boulder at the rock guardian. The Earth Guardian grabs the boulder and cracks it with his hands. The guardian lands a hard punch towards him knocking him down to floor. The guardian kicks him just for good measure and then prepares to jumps up in the air ready to crush him. However a loud screech is heard from an unknown source, which begins to actually weaken the rock creature and gives Luis a chance to recover. He leads the guardian back to the entrance until he is able to lead him back to the area under the platform.
The Earth Guardian puts his hands together preparing to do a double axe handle onto the floor in an attempt to crush him. He quickly slides feet first under the guardian, despite bruising his knee. He heads for the switch and lowers the platform. This time the platform knocks out the Earth Guardian, but does not kill him. He decides to go onto the platform seeing that it is rising. When the platform rises to its peak, he jumps to the small area where the key is and grabs the key. After grabbing the key the guardian gets up and stomps the floor even harder causing a massive earthquake. The ceiling begins to fall apart and the quake is so bad the temple begins to crumble.
“Crap, I better get the hell outta here before I become buried in time!” Luis says in his mind, looking to get out of the temple.
He quickly climbs up the rope in an attempt to get out of the temple unscathed. He heads for the exit door, only to find out it’s not an exit door. He sees several scorpion crawlers fighting the shaolin monks guarding the area. However, the ceiling falls down on everyone and all of them are buried under rocks. The rocks block his progress to the exit door. He heads for the side hallway where he meets a meditating monk who shoots out lightning at Luis. The bolts miss him as he runs on the wall and tries to side kick the monk. However the monk has an electrical shield that knocks him down to the floor. He gets up and tries to hit the monk again, but the monk disappears into thin air. He is shocked that the kick goes right through the monk.
“Damn this bastard is going to be one of those guys, just like the teleporting salamander troopers. Where can he be?” Luis says as he searches for the monk.
The monk appears from behind him ready to attack. He grabs a rock and throws it behind him, hitting the monk dead on its head. The monk goes down and his head is found opened up. Luis has no time to study the body as the temple continues to collapse around him. He runs as fast as possible, another set of blades are in front of him swinging back and forth. However, he could care less as his only focus is to get out of the temple, even if it means he gets cut by a blade. He is able to get through the blades out of pure instinct and without even knowing if he’s cut or not. He continues down the path until he is met with more scorpion crawlers.
“Ah! More of you guys, just more aliens to kick around!” Luis says confidently.
As Luis is fighting the creatures he notices that the white hole opens and is beginning to close. He is able to defeat the first few scorpions, but the creatures begin to outnumber him.
“Damn I can’t stay here forever. These guys are just going to keep on coming! Better get inside of the white hole quickly!” Luis realizes that the hole is beginning to close.
A couple of scorpion crawlers attempt to block Luis’s way into the white hole. He tries to push his way through, but the cr
awlers hold him back. The hole begins to close even more, nearly ready to close up. Luis gets up and runs with his arms crossed like a football player running with a football. He is able to knock out both of the crawlers down to the floor and jumps into the white hole just before it closes up for good.
He is transported to the ultimate warp where he sees Angel, who is already inside. He approaches Angel and says, “Hey Angel, where in the hell are we?”
“We’re in the ultimate warp that will lead us to anywhere out heart desires, but we’re stuck in this infinite loop until the other two are able to open the other two elemental gates which are fire and water.” Angel answers Luis.
“Hmm… So we’re gonna be stuck here forever if the others don’t succeed or if they die? Do we have to all be here?” Luis continues to question.
“Yes Luis on both questions. We’re just going to have to pray that the other two are not in too much trouble. If we are successful, we’ll head straight for the glooba home planet Goo.”
The two stare at the white light as they continue to travel at the speed of light, but with the main warp gate closed they will be going nowhere anytime soon.
***
Back on Earth Quentin and George try to remain positive as they gather more resources such as food for the next 5 days. However, the amount of food on Earth is running out very quickly and unless Angel along with his crew can stop the gloobas plan before the 10 days run out, the results will be disastrous. Only two days remain on Earth until the gloobas use their secret weapon and all of the destruction on Earth becomes permanent. George sees on television that an earthquake of a magnitude of 8.7 on the Richter scale has hit the continental United States. As a result, food supplies in the U.S. are limited and leave the United States even more vulnerable for a take over. While Quentin and George continue to hold the fort at Virtual Labs Inc. they both know that is so much they will be able to do before they either run out of resources or the gloobas over power them. They realize that their only hope is that Angel and his friends are successful in their journey. However, they have no communications with any of them, so it’s left to fate to decide what Earth will end up being.
