Chapter 25

[The following chapter contains strong language. Reader caution is advised.]

Tuesday 5th January 1999

On Christmas morning in the Radley residence, looking like Big Bird in Dakota’s large fluffy yellow dressing-gown, I stood in front of a large family photo of Dakota, Saoirse and Elliott on the upstairs landing. It was my first time ever seeing my new girlfriend’s father, smiling proudly with one arm around his wife and the other hand on his young daughter’s shoulder. Somehow, he looked just like I imagined him, with short brown hair and light stubble. I could even see the resemblance with his sister Cassie from the similar family photo at Neil’s house… but, of course, there were certain traits that matched Dakota. He was unmistakably her father.

“I’ll do you proud,” I’d found myself muttering to the image of a man I would never meet.

A second later, Dakota embraced me from behind. I jumped, embarrassed from the certainty that she’d overheard.

“Your clothes are in the tumble dryer,” she informed me. “You sure you’re fine not cleaning your underwear?”

“I mean, it’s too late now anyway…” I pointed out.

“You didn’t wanna go commando on Christmas? Or were you just flustered at the thought of me handling your undies less than 24 hours since we became a couple?”

That teasing face, leaning over my shoulder.

“Y-Yes to all?”

She kissed my cheek, then rested her chin on my shoulder, staring at the photo with me.

“You’re sweet…” she whispered lovingly.

My clothes were ready just in time: it seemed like, the moment I got dressed, a thousand aunties, uncles and cousins of Dakota’s on her mother’s side poured into the house. No thoughts of extended family had hit me on my Christmas Eve journey, and I initially felt like a deer in the headlights as I was introduced to one person after another. Still, it took me no time at all to feel comfortable around them. If anything, it was memorising all the names that was difficult. Four biological aunts and uncles, each with their own partners, and a total of twelve cousins (a dozen cousins!). And then Dakota’s maternal grandparents, too. The little house was suddenly bursting with twenty-five people.

We opened our presents together… though all of my presents were a sea away, so less “we” and more “they” … Dakota loved the poster and was overjoyed with the necklace (I think she’s worn it pretty much every day since, actually). Christmas dinner was delicious, and I spent most of the evening bouncing between conversation with the adults and keeping the kids entertained. Dakota being the oldest of their generation, the cousins all seemed to look up to her (I mean, putting aside the baby and the two toddlers). Which meant she joyfully orchestrated them as they chased me around, piled on top of me, hit me with cushions and generally playfully ganged up on me.

When it all wound down and everyone had left again, I was exhausted. I wound up falling asleep in front of the TV like Dad might.

On Boxing Day, Saoirse drove us to the airport and saw us off; Dakota with a suitcase and me pretty much empty-handed. The arrangements had already been made for picking Dakota up at Gatwick Airport, so Bao, Kendal and Zahid were there to greet us when we landed. Dakota took my hand as we walked through the airport, and Bao and Kendal were ecstatic the moment they saw us. Zahid congratulated us. Kendal then hit my arm hard and hissed “toldja!”

For half of the journey home, Bao discussed the new Sonic game he’d received for Christmas. Mostly enthusing and positive, save for the rant about a new character with tedious gameplay.

Dakota and I were dropped off at my house. My parents spent about ten seconds scolding me before fawning over Dakota instead. Eventually, I got the chance to open my Christmas presents. To my surprise, Dakota had bought me one of the remaining Beast Wars figures I needed (K-9, to any fellow collectors out there – she chose it for being “a cute German Shepherd”). She stayed with us for dinner, and a few days later, she saw in the New Year with us. My parents let her sleep over in my room, but dug out a sleeping bag for one of us to use. You know damn well neither of us used it.

We woke up to texts from Bao asking if we were meant to party like it’s 1999.

Other than that, it’s mostly been the norm of all of us hanging out, except with the added hand-holding and flirting and kissing and kissing and kissing and oh god I love her kisses so much-

Sorry, err…

Before we knew it, the new term had begun.

“I’m stupefied.”

Melody’s piercing gaze was locked onto me, underlined by a smirk that lay somewhere between impressed and amused.

“Thanks,” I replied, looking away from those eyes of hers.

“Oh, excuse me… congratulations.”

And she sounded sincere. Which I really wasn’t used to.

“I’m just surprised that you managed to ask her out. I thought that was beyond you.”

“I hardly believe it myself but here we are…”

My eyes drifted over in the direction of Will and Kayleigh. While she was looking her usual bored self, he was seemingly despondent, lost in thought. I initially assumed it was over the scuffle at the party – over Kayleigh having ignored him in favour of Zahid – but then common sense caught up, and I remembered it had been three weeks since then. Plenty of time for something else to upset him.

“I’ve barely had the chance to talk with Dakota,” Melody pointed out, catching my attention again. “I should really pick her brain sometime. Try and get a handle on her.”

“Are you really struggling to accept it that much?” I asked her.

“I accept it,” she shrugged. “But I want to know why.”

I bit back on saying “because she loves me”; not because it was too simple a reply, but because I myself was none the wiser as to why she did.

“You know that saying ‘curiosity killed the cat’, right?” I opted to say instead.

“I know it’s completely irrelevant,” she replied dryly.

“O-Okay, but, like-”

A loud mechanical hum filled the air, and the whole world began vibrating. While the rest of the form group began panicking, Melody smiled wickedly.

“This day keeps getting weirder,” I barely heard her purr past the droning hum.

In the space of a few seconds, the vibrating became dizzyingly powerful, forcing me to shut my eyes… and then, moments later, it stopped, as did the humming. Eerie silence washed over me, distinctly unnatural.

My eyes shot open and a whole new world burst into life around me.

A colosseum, bristling with cheers and hollers, myself in the dusty arena surrounded by an audience seemingly comprised of the entire student body and all the staff.

“Did we just time-travel?” asked Bao’s voice behind me. I turned and – to no real surprise – found him, Dakota, Kendal and Zahid all stood around the arena.

“If we did, then so did they,” Dakota observed, motioning to the audience.

“And they don’t seem to have noticed,” I added, before joining my girlfriend and giving her an affectionate “Hey.”

“Hiii,” she smiled back. “Business time now, though.”

“I know. Serious business mode in 3, 2-”

I kissed her quickly, to get it out of my system.

“So, weird colosseum…”

“Hey, Bao, Harriet’s up there!” Kendal called out, pointing to one particular section of the crowd. Harriet was, indeed, stood there amongst everyone else, and with her nervous arm-waving, it seemed as though she wasn’t as oblivious to the new situation as everyone else. Assumedly, her knowing about Lokonessence kept her safe, the same way she could perceive the monsters that most normal people couldn’t.

Bao began waving back at her in much the same manner; I started inspecting the crowd, to see if I could find Lucy. She too knew all about us and had seen monsters before, so it made sense that she would still be herself rather than an impromptu extra.

“I’m already over this.”

Zahid sounded more agitated than usual, his attitude poking through his words like bristles through fabric.

“What’s up, Zahid?” Kendal asked brightly, kindly.

“Putting me in the middle of a fucking arena,” he growled. “It’s like a big joke.”

“… I… I don’t get how…” Bao remarked, almost disappointed.

“We’ve been back at school ten minutes and everyone’s talking about how I ‘stole Kayleigh from Will’,” Zahid elaborated. “They’re not going out and she came onto me. And it was weeks ago.”

While still scanning for my sister, I realigned my previous thoughts on Will. Was he, too, still shaken up over it after all?

“People just… obsess over dumb shit. And now what?”

I turned in time to see him spreading his arms out at the crowd.

“Wanna see some more?! Send her down here!”

As if on-cue, the large doorway at one end of the arena slowly creaked open. The five of us all stood stock-still, focused on the darkness down the tunnel, waiting on-edge to see what our opponent would be.

A resounding thud of a footstep rumbled forth, followed by another, and another. We summoned our weapons, otherwise not moving a muscle.

From the tunnel emerged a hulking robot, some 10 feet tall, with legs as thick as tree trunks and arms almost the same. Body segmented, golden, like armour. Pronounced underbite with its huge lower jaw. Huge red mohawk like a Roman helmet. The crowd roared as it stepped into the arena.

“Wow, Kayleigh’s sure changed over Christmas…” Bao exclaimed with tongue in cheek.

“Suit up, gang,” Dakota commanded, prompting us to all generate our costumes at once. Once again, the crowd went wild at the sight. In response, the gladiator bot popped miniature missile launchers out of its shoulders, and fired without missing a beat.

We all leapt out of the way on instinct, with the missiles striking the ground where we’d been standing with considerable force, throwing chunks of earth and clouds of dust into the air. The moment Kendal landed down, she began firing arrows of pure pink at the robot. They struck, digging into its plating… to no effect. Utterly undeterred, it continued its journey into the arena.

“Guess we’ve gotta get up-close and personal!” Bao shouted out, darting over with his blades at the ready. The gladiator bot watched his approach without concern, until the moment my friend was about to strike: it swung out with a mighty metal fist, making impact with Bao’s chest and sending him flying back. His weapons left his hands in mid-air, clattering to the floor while he continued a wide arc to crash into the ground several feet away.

The crowd roared yet again. The entire scenario had rapidly begun to feel so twisted.

Bao coughed up bright yellow blood where he lay.

“Zahid, get Bao!” Dakota called out over the crowd’s noise. “Alex, Kendal, we need to test its resilience! Keep out of its reach!”

“Got it!” I shouted back. Time to get creative, then.

I held my sword out, blade pointed towards the robot, and let it extend – not the physical blade, but the blue power within – stretching out across the arena and piercing straight through our opponent’s chest. It halted, jerkily moving its head to look at me.

Flashes of green and pink hit my peripheral vision while I kept my focus on the bot. And that’s why, even though I wasn’t sure what the girls were up to, I was keenly aware of the huge rocket that popped up from its back.

It somehow felt as though we were looking at each other in a cartoon standoff for several seconds before it launched the rocket; I withdrew the extended blue blade, and dashed out of the way before an entire portion of the arena was blown to smithereens. The force of the explosion knocked me down as I ran, and dust flooded my field of vision. I heaved myself back to my feet, but the ground was clearly disrupted and uneven now. My body stung here and there, which I assumed to mean I’d earned some cuts and grazes in the fall.

The ever-present glow of my Lokon sword was illuminating the brown dust cloud, not that it made much difference. The most I could do was use that to give me a little more of a chance of seeing the robot in time if it came for me.

And I’d never really considered how long it takes a dust cloud to settle…

“Guys?” I called out in the hopes that I could get a response. If that failed, I would have to risk venturing out and following the glow of my blade to find my way to them.

“Stay put, Alex,” Dakota coughed from somewhere uncertain.

The slowly-drifting cloud suddenly picked up speed, being blown from behind me. I gathered some blue on my hand and smeared it over my closed eyes, creating an incredibly-makeshift visor so I could turn and investigate what was happening. Dakota was stood a short distance away, spinning her spear above her head, a circle of green motion-blur seemingly acting like a fan and forcing the dust away. The ground around us was even more churned-up than I’d thought, now more of a quarry than the flat plane it had been all of two minutes ago.

As the dust dispersed, the gladiator bot was unveiled – sporting a hole in its chest, and still adorned with arrows, but marching on regardless.

“Can I try and decapitate it?” Zahid asked, helping Bao along and making his hurried way to Dakota. “‘Off with his head’ kind of thing.”

“We should trap it first, somehow,” Dakota replied, lowering her spear. “Maybe disable its weapons, if we can.”

“And maybe, like, remove its hands or something?” Bao added, still clearly in pain even if he was doing well for someone who had just been hit hard with a mechanical fist.

“I have an idea!”

Kendal was all but bouncing as she exclaimed that; she pulled back her bow string, holding it for several seconds as the arrow that generated steadily grew thicker, more potent. She took aim just ahead of the advancing robot, and then fired, letting the arrow land down and carve through the ruptured earth. The ground at the robot’s feet crumbled, and while it floundered to keep balance, it helplessly tumbled into the opening crevice beneath it. Its large hands promptly began reaching out, grasping hold of the ground to try and heave itself back out.

“Okay,” Zahid began, flexing his shoulders in preparation. “I’m doing the honours. Keep an eye on it, cover me if it tries anything.”

With that, he began running towards the robot as it continued trying to clamber out of its pit. It had barely raised its head into view when Zahid reached it, and had no time to react before his strike cleanly removed its head.

And that should’ve been the end of it, but this was a preternatural robotic gladiator, so of course its decapitated head transformed into some kind of miniature jet in mid-air.

Red laser-fire rained down on Zahid, bringing him to his knees as he yelled out in pain.

“Hey!” Kendal shouted out, firing an arrow in its direction, only missing narrowly thanks to how quickly she acted. It was enough, as the head-jet turned towards the rest of us.

“Yeah, you didn’t think that through, did you?” I noted, a moment before it started speeding towards us instead, firing like it had nothing left to lose. Once again, we scattered (it would’ve been so cool if I’d blocked the blasts with my sword like Luke Skywalker or something, but I wasn’t up to risking that). The head-jet followed after Kendal, firing down upon her as she barely avoided until one bolt hit her calf.

“Over here!” Dakota snarled over the crowd’s constant cheers; an enlarged green version of her spear tip shot forth from the weapon. The hovering weapon dropped out of the way and made a beeline for her, while she planted the bottom of the spear into the ground, forming some kind of wall of green ahead of herself that blunted the laser blasts.

In that time, I’d bounded over, and did my best to slash through the jet. I’ve never been that athletic, so I missed, but the attempt was enough for it to once again switch targets and turn its attention to me. Before it even moved, Dakota managed to whack it with her spear, launching it across the arena.

“Thanks, sweetheart,” she smiled to me.

“I thought we were in business mode?” I smiled back.

“Guys, over here!” Bao yelped – he was trying his best to attack the head-jet and fend off its bolts, leaping about with his tonfa blades back in-hand.

Dakota and I had no chance to assist him. An arc of red soared past our opponent before we could even think about it.

“OVER HERE!”

Zahid. Roaring out beyond the crowd.

“THIS WAY, YOU FUCKER!”

Arms out-stretched, axe at the ready, blood not quite the right shade of red oozing past his clothes.

As expected, the head-jet turned to him, and opened fire before it even started speeding towards him. He took the strafing, growling out in primal rage, all the while keeping his eyes locked on its approach. With perfect timing, and perfect precision, he sliced through the robotic opponent with his axe, the blade itself tearing it in two alongside the accompanying crest of red.

The hundreds of onlookers stomped and cheered and applauded. Zahid raised his fists high.

“YEAH!!! LOOK AT ME NOW!”

“He’s really getting into this…” Kendal observed as she limped over to Dakota and me.

With that, the colosseum began vibrating, and the overbearing hum returned. I happened to glance Lucy giving two thumbs up in the crowd just before my vision became blurred by all the resonance.

It was only once I shut my eyes that I realised: if we were being returned back to school, wouldn’t our weapons still be with us? I dispersed my Painter gear with a quick double-tap on the sword’s port – felt it vanishing from my body – but what about the sword itself?

A jolt forced my eyes open. The sword had disappeared from my hand and I was back in my chair in the form room.

The most I could consider was that it had somehow been returned back to Dakota’s. That I’d only summoned it in the arena and so it returned back to where it had been in the real world.

I turned to Melody as she turned to me. Her expression was one of intrigue, if I was reading her ever-confusing face correctly.

“… what just happened…?” I asked her, as much to bluff my innocence if she remembered as to make sure if she did.

“I have no idea…” she replied, confusion seeping in. “Everything vibrated and then… did I miss something?”

“I dunno…”

I exhaled, the closest I could let myself get to a sigh of exhausted relief. The bell rang for first period not long after.

…

“It was so weird… like they were all brainwashed or something…” Harriet spoke softly as we all sat around a table at break.

“Did we look cool, at least?” Bao asked her, while rubbing her back comfortingly.

“You were coughing up blood.”

“Did that look cool…?”

She hugged him tight, and he winced slightly.

“Careful, it still tingles a bit…”

“I love our super-healing,” Kendal grinned between bites of an apple. “We can’t die, we heal up lickety-split… we’re indestructible!”

“Which is good in battle, I guess, but…” Dakota trailed off, letting the implication hang in the air.

“Yeah, I’m not looking to get shot in the head any time soon,” I added. Kendal merely shrugged at that.

“Hey, Zahid.”

Kayleigh’s distinctive voice, approaching from my right. She stopped next to Zahid, who looked up at her with a faint, almost cocky smile.

“Hey there.”

She held out a folded piece of paper for him.

“Me number, if you’re interested. Screw the gossip.”

After a few moments of consideration, he took the paper from her.

“You’re too kind,” he told her with a flirtatious smirk.

“Only for guys like you,” she smirked in kind.