Chapter 68

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

Monday 14th February 2000

I know the weather isn’t in any way conscious or self-aware – at least as far as I know, though it wouldn’t surprise me to learn otherwise now – but it would really be nice if it played along with our calendar a little. It was shortly after 3pm on Valentine’s Day and “overcast” was probably an understatement. The clouds hung dark and heavy above town as Dakota, Bao, Kendal, Zahid and I waited outside the school gates for Kitty to join us. It was honestly pretty rare for her to be the last of us to arrive… I could probably count the number of times she was on one hand, if I actually remembered.

“Has it been half an hour already?” Bao quizzed us, pacing about uneasily. “At least twenty minutes, right?”

“It’s been ten, relax,” Zahid told him, looking ready to grab him and hold him still at any moment.

“Like I said, she’s probably received a dozen Valentine’s cards and now all the boys are asking her out,” Dakota chuckled.

“For sure!” Kendal nodded enthusiastically, her hair bouncing about. “I mean, she’s probably melting people’s hearts with how cute she is.”

“And they’d probably melt her brain if they ever told her that,” I added with a smile.

“Hey, she’s lucky if she gets one, as far as I’m concerned…”
Bao passed right by Dakota and me.
“At least you two don’t have to worry about it.”

“Come on, Bao, you’ll find a great girl in time,” Dakota assured him sweetly.

“What’s the point if I can’t be there when she needs me?” he countered, before turning around and heading the other way again.

“Nooo,” Kendal howled, “this is the one day where you don’t worry about stuff like that!”

“I’m just saying…” he grumbled quietly, slowing, shuffling his feet.

“Love conquers all!” she insisted firmly, but then caught her mistake in saying that under the circumstances and seemed to recoil away from her certainty. “Sorry, I didn’t mean it that way…”

“Mhm…” was all that Bao responded with, eyes downcast.

“If it helps, I didn’t get anything either…” Kendal added, briefly rubbing his arm comfortingly as he drifted past her.

“Hello, secret heroes!”
Why did her voice always seem to precede her…? Lucy marched over to us with an ever-glowering Kayleigh and an unimpressed Will in-tow.

“Please don’t announce that to the whole world…” Dakota urged her, eyebrows lowered in mild irritation.

“Thanks for waiting!” my sister bubbled. “Let’s go!”

“Wait, firstly, Kitty’s not here yet,” I told her, “and also, go where…?”
Of course, as soon as I asked that, I remembered Rin’s mention of a party recently and began putting two and two together in my head.

“Dakota’s, we’re having a Valentine’s party!”

“Oh, sure, how could we forget?” Zahid spoke up. “You’ve been talking about it non-stop for the past three weeks.”

“Surprise Valentine’s party,” Lucy clarified as though it should’ve been obvious from the off.

“Surpriiiise…” Will sung in monotone, giving the least-enthusiastic jazz hands you’ve ever seen.

I think it’s fairly telling that none of us said anything for a few seconds. There wasn’t much to be said of Lucy’s antics at this stage.

“So, do we have to wait for the squirt?” Lucy asked us peppily.

“Of course,” Dakota glowered. “She’s expecting us to be here.”

“Why don’t some of us go on ahead?” Kayleigh proposed, shaking her head ever-so-slightly in apparent annoyance at the situation.

“No, look, she’s here!” Kendal pointed out, and hurried over to the younger girl as she ambled through the ever-thinning crowd in a daze.

“Oh yeah, someone definitely confessed to her…” Zahid observed as Kitty warbled something barely-audible to an excited Kendal. In turn, Kendal nudged her towards the rest of us, and watched her with an odd mix of pride and discomfort.

The moment Kitty reached us…
“Guys Kevin gave me a Valentine’s card I literally don’t understand what’s happening and hi sorry I think I’m shaking-” she spluttered out breathily, before Dakota scooped her into a warm hug.

“That’s amazing, Kitty!” she cooed. “See, we all told you everything would be fine at school and now you’ve even got a boy crushing on you!”
And just as quickly as she embraced her, she moved back, a serious look on her face.
“But you have to think long and hard before saying yes to him. Don’t feel pressured just because he likes you.”

“Y-Yeah…” Kitty nodded while her eyes practically span in overwhelmed dizziness.

“Alright, let’s get going!” Lucy called out, waving her arms frantically as though her voice wasn’t enough to capture our attention. She marched off at double-speed, and we found ourselves following after her – it wasn’t like we could do much else anyway, since she was heading the same way we were.

Kitty watched Lucy, then looked to Kayleigh and Will, then to Kendal trailing a short distance behind us.
“What’s going on…?” she asked nobody in particular.

“Some kind of Valentine’s party she’s sprung on us…” Bao replied.

“That we haven’t had any opportunity to prepare for,” Dakota added, adjusting her hair against the breeze.

“Alright, remind me to be super-prepared if we ever decide to surprise you with something,” I told her, poking her side lightly. “You can teach me how, you like surprises.”

“I like surprising other people,” she noted brightly, “but yeah, I can give you some advice.”

“Good to see at least one couple’s still going strong,” Kayleigh remarked from just ahead of us. “Funny how things change. Remember this time last year?”

“When you were hanging out with us just to try and get the Lokon weapons?” Zahid snarled. “Yeah, rings a bell.”

“And now look at us, cooperating to try and bring down a psycho even worse than Nick,” she reasoned with a smug look.

“That makes up for it then, I trust you completely,” he spat. She huffed lightly through her nose, amused.

“Let’s just… try to get along for now,” I suggested, a little meekly for fear of making things worse.

“Agreed,” Will chimed in, thankfully. “Things between us are complicated, but that doesn’t mean we have to let that shade how we behave with each other.”

“Sure,” Zahid shrugged, “but I’m not forgetting how we got played any time soon.”

“Wouldn’t want you to,” Kayleigh purred, eliciting a sigh from Will.

“So… are the others meant to be coming, too?” Kitty asked. “Rin, Nathan and Clay…?”

“They’ll be here!” Lucy confirmed from up ahead. “Hell, invite your boyfriend!”

Unsurprisingly, that got Kitty’s cheeks blushing vibrant red. Her entire body seemed to jolt and then tense at the wording, and she ground to a halt within a few steps. Dakota, Zahid and I stopped with her, and Bao slowed and returned to us a moment later. Lucy carried on obliviously; Kayleigh and Will, disinterestedly.

“Easy there, don’t take her seriously,” Dakota soothed her, rubbing her back.

“Never take her seriously, unless you’re certain she’s being sincere,” I nodded as Kitty squeaked.

“What’s happening…?”
Kendal had caught up to us, gathering with the rest of us at the meeting point between two streets, peering over at Kitty in an attempt at grasping the situation.

“Lucy happened,” Zahid informed her succinctly.

“Ah…” came her quiet response, before her eyes settled on the floor. “Huh.”

There, just ahead of her feet, was a pronounced bump in the road, like some kind of large bubble trapped beneath the tarmac.

“Interesting…” Kendal smiled lightly, raised a foot and stomped down hard on the bulge: it shot away from us, to Kendal’s right, propelled down the road less like displaced air and more like an animal, and the further away it moved, the more it expanded, contorting the road, reshaping it. The straight, wide path rose and divided into snaking trails intertwining and winding around like abstract art. Large spikes rose up like giant blades of grass growing at fast-forward speeds, reaching for the sky.

“You just had to step on it, didn’t you?” Zahid asked the already-elated Kendal.

We spread about a little, and summoned our Lokon weapons without so much as a nod of confirmation between any of us. Suited-up, we fully took in the sight of this ever-shifting tarmac leviathan before us, its entire surface rising higher with only a handful of tracks leading up to it.

“Do I wanna ask…?” Kayleigh spoke from off to the side… she, Lucy and Will were all stood watching on, clearly having returned to us at some point between when we stopped and when we blasted our costumes on.

“Nah, just kick back and enjoy the show!” Kendal declared, right before bolting towards the madness with relish. The rest of us followed after her, even though I at least didn’t have the first idea how we were meant to fight such a bizarre and gigantic monster (yes, even though we’ve fought really weird things before).

In fact – and I curse Harmony, and our entire situation, for this – I found myself wondering whose psyche this particular opponent had been derived from. Bao feeling down about not being with Harriet anymore? Kitty’s nerves and doubts over the idea of somebody having a crush on her? Kendal… well, I wasn’t sure what was up with her, but she was acting a little off too, at least until the lump appeared before her.

The road was distorted – transformed – so even if this wasn’t the one we needed to go down, perhaps it was a sign of trying to avoid going to Dakota’s and this surprise party? But then, why? Only because of being in a low mood or being thrown for a loop by a Valentine’s card?

I know, overthinking it, perhaps – pondering all of this while dashing forward and sizing up the monster – but I figured that identifying what this thing was could possibly provide us a clue for how to take it down.

Still, didn’t look like anybody else was thinking that way, least of all Kendal, who sought a path up onto the shifting mass. Using her bow, she generated a board of pink and proceeded to ride the monster up and down like a living skatepark.

“Easy, Kendal!” Dakota shouted out, while spinning her spear above her head to generate a saw-like wheel of green. She moved forward, slicing through some of the hell road to little effect.

“No way, this is the raddest thing!” I heard her shout back from beyond my field of view.

Bao launched his way up with twin jets of yellow from his blades, and I sloppily followed in his wake, all but flinging myself forwards with my sword and failing to manage a graceful landing atop the dark grey mass.

“This is like… road Akira,” Bao mentioned offhandedly as the two of us took in the bizarre, pulsating form before us. And there, deep in the midst of it all, Kendal was riding the shifts like waves, all while firing arrows this way and that.

“Tread carefully,” I advised Bao, before setting off as quickly as I could while trying to heed my own warning. The going wasn’t easy with the tarmac undulating beneath me, but I gradually made my way further into the monster’s form. More of the spikes – though smaller – sprouted around me, and I cut through them fast, constantly turning to make sure I wasn’t caught from a blind-spot. Once they were cut down, I quickly oriented myself again and continued on, only for more spikes to emerge, closer this time.
“Guys, please,” I grunted, slashing through them, narrowly avoiding getting stabbed and still managing to get cut in a couple of places. “Don’t get angry with me, I haven’t done anything… unless I have…”

“Got your back!”
Kendal came zooming past, firing arrows at the remaining few spikes around me before streaking off again.

“I know you’re into this kind of thing but please be careful!” I pleaded her loudly as she moved further and further away, riding the wild hell road.

She did respond, but I couldn’t make it out. I could just about see that big, bright grin on her face, though, as she looked my way. The sheer, unfiltered joy, driven by boundless adrenaline. Far removed from how she’d looked minutes before.

A large spike sprung right up from behind her, and it crossed paths with her, driving right through her back and emerging from her chest.

Pink blood scattered from the wound, coughed up from her mouth, and the spike grew on, raising her up, off of her board construct and into the air. In moments, she fell limp, bow falling from her hand.

I found myself racing to help her before I could even think about anything, but the monster turned the already-challenging path towards her into a steep slide and I ended up tumbling away and down instead. It was only a large red net that halted my descent.

“Any joy up there?” Zahid asked, pinning a spike to the ground with his foot.

“Kendal’s been impaled! We have to get her…!” I cried out, scrambling back to my feet, trying to figure out a way to scale the slope – the wall – that I’d just cascaded down.

“Fuck…” I heard Zahid gasp. He rushed forward, abandoning the battered spike, and began hacking away furiously at the incline.

“What’re you doing? We have to get up there!”

“I’ll- I’ll make a path! I don’t fucking know!”

“Bao! Baaaooo!” I yelled, hoping so hard that he’d emerge from above.

“I see her!” he responded from far above. “But I can’t get to her!”

“Then help us!”
I released a stream of blue right above me to signal where we were.

“How?”
He emerged over the edge a moment later, spotting me immediately.
“Do that again and maybe I can hook you up somehow!”

“Do Zahid first!” I told him, then looked down at our friend still cutting away at the tarmac. “Zahid, let Bao take you up, then cut her free!”

Overly simple, of course – if Bao couldn’t get across to her, Zahid likely wouldn’t have much chance – but in the moment, all I could think of was him managing to cut through the spike and carry her back down.

“Fuck it!” he growled, and sent out a fearsome chain of red up towards Bao. In response, Bao released a similar construct in yellow, connecting to Zahid’s.

“Three, two, one…!” Bao counted, then drew back his blades and the chain, hoisting Zahid upwards at high speeds, flinging him overhead and, hopefully, some distance across the surface of the hell road.

“Alex!” I heard Kitty shout across to me. “I think I found a way inside it!”

“Show me!”
I stabbed my sword into the slope just to the side of Zahid’s netting and proceeded to slide the rest of the way back down to the ground as the sword parting the Lokonessence-warped road slowed my descent. I had to trust that Bao and Zahid could recover Kendal; defeating the hell road was just as important. Once I reached the ground, I withdrew the weapon and let Kitty lead me along.

“I looked around the outside and there was this opening,” she explained as we ran around the perimeter, “so I started trying to break through it-”

“KENDAAAAL!!!” Dakota’s horrified scream interrupted. My heart crumpled: she must have only just seen the state Kendal was in, presumably having scaled the hell road, and even for knowing we were unkillable, it’d be a monumentally painful sight for her.

Kitty stopped running.
“Is she-?”

“The others have her, it’s fine-”

“You’re crying,” she told me. I hadn’t even realised.

“It’s going to be fine, but we have to destroy this thing so please, Kitty-”

“Sorry, it’s right here…”
She strode fast to a large, cracked hole reaching deep into the tarmac. A faint reddish glow seemed to be coming from within.

“If we can break far enough inside… maybe we can destroy its heart or whatever…?”

“Worth a shot,” I nodded.

And, of course, a forest of spikes sprung up around us right then.

“Keep digging, do whatever you can,” I instructed her. She got to work while I faced the growing spikes, leaning menacingly towards me as though accepting the challenge of taking me on.

They surged towards me, and for as many as I sliced straight through in a single motion, just as many managed to stab into me. I roared out in pain, letting that and my anger at Kendal’s impaling drive me on: I willed my sword’s blade to split, subdivide, snake around and slice through the spikes. With half a moment to spare even as more emerged, I looked over my shoulder to see Kitty’s claw enlarged, the twin knives efficiently carving through the hell road and closer to its core.

My sword returned to its normal state, and I made the blade grow huge, cutting down every last spike before they had fully grown; more emerged, faster, and I shot forth arrowheads of blue to cut the stems clean at the ground.

Zahid suddenly landed down with a thud and a pulse of red cushioning the impact. In his arms was Kendal’s body, the tip of the large spike still in her chest.

“Kendal…!” I heard Kitty yelp, understandably panicked.

“She’s already going cold, Alex,” Zahid told me as he placed her down gently. “I’m gonna break the tip apart.”

“Quickly,” I advised him, watching the ground for more sprouting spikes. I glanced over at him in time to see him hit the tip from the top with his axe, making it crumble into a thousand tiny pieces. He began brushing them off of her, and lifting her up, as I returned my attention to the ground around Kitty and me.

A moment later, I heard Kendal gasp loudly, air flooding into her lungs first once, then a dozen more times as she desperately panted.

“Thank fuck…” Zahid muttered joyously. “Just relax, I’ve got you, okay…?”

The ground began churning below us, and the hell road appeared to begin moving its entire mass along to where the four of us were.

“Kitty, how’s it going?” I asked loudly.

“I- I don’t know! There’s so much to dig through!”

Dakota and Bao landed down with us too, Dakota’s face moist with tears.

“Kendal, you’re okay!” Bao bleated in relief; Dakota let out a shaky breath in the same tone, but instead turned her focus to the pathway Kitty had begun opening up.

“Is that its heart?” she asked with a growl.

“We think so,” Kitty told her, and stepped aside like she could read her intentions.

Dakota pointed her spear right at it, and let the shaft lengthen, the tip railing deep inside even as the whole world seemed to writhe around us.

Then, all at once, it stopped.

“Don’t you dare hurt my friends,” Dakota hissed furiously.

A burst of green light shone from within the cavity, Dakota’s decisive blow right at the hell road’s heart. Like a balloon deflating, all the craziness receded back to a regular road, and Dakota, Bao, Kitty and I finally went to Kendal’s side as she lay in Zahid’s arms.

“Man… what even happened…?” she asked weakly, a little dazed.

“You got impaled… you were dead for a minute or two,” I spoke shakily, looking at her chest now pristine like nothing had ever happened.

“Don’t scare us like that again, dummy!” Bao scolded her, giving her the lightest tap on the knee known to man.

…

Lucy’s surprise Valentine’s party got off to a sopping-wet squib of a start, with us tending to a shaken Kendal while Kayleigh and Will loitered and Lucy hung around at a loose end.

“Come on,” she finally spoke up after about half an hour, “we should be having this party!”

I think the looks we gave her would’ve been enough to admonish her, but Zahid pretty much leapt to his feet, rounding on her.

“Your ex just got impaled through the chest and all you care about is your stupid fucking party?!”

“She’s fine now-”

“Does she look fine?!” he bellowed, right in her face. “Show a little decency! Get a clue! Or get the fuck out of this house!”

“Not like I can do anything anyway…” she murmured, before heading over to Kendal as she lay sprawled out on the sofa.
“You all good?”

“No… and I still have feelings for you, Lucy.”
Drained, yet so assuredly.

Lucy took a step back, frowning, almost scared.
“That’s just the near-death-experience talking, you’ll get over it,” she said flippantly.

“It’s the… brief-death-experience… that’s making me say this, because I’m an idiot,” Kendal told her softly.

A knock at the door.

“That should be the others…” Will spoke, and went off to the door.

The panic in Lucy’s eyes seemed to double at that.

“Look,” Dakota started, “nobody has to act on anything right now, but Lucy… she’s told you how she feels, at least.”

“Sure, but-”

“Lucy!”
Nathan dashed over to her, taking hold of her arm.
“We have to talk-”

“Not now or any time but least of all now,” she whimpered pathetically, shrinking away from him.

“I’m not ready for this to be over! If I’ve done something wrong, just tell me and we can work on it together! I just…”

“Wait… you two broke up…?” Bao asked, looking between the two.

“A few weeks ago,” Rin answered as she entered the living room, Clay behind her. “A-And uhm, hi!”

Lucy looked between Kendal and Nathan, utterly thrown, and then turned to me with a desperate look on her face. Because apparently, I had to be the one to sort this out…

“Nathan, things have been a bit intense here and Lucy’s not really in a position to start discussing relationship stuff…” I tried to explain delicately. “But she’s going to have a very long think about this, and she’s going to sit down with you and with Kendal and make some decisions. Aren’t you, Lucy?”

She winced.
“If I say yes, can we start this party…?”

“Promise me we’ll talk about this,” Nathan begged her.

“Same here…” Kendal added.

“God, I don’t know why I even set this opportunity up… yeah, I promise, I promise, we’ll talk about it, okay?”

Kendal smiled lightly. It almost looked like she knew Lucy well enough to figure that promise didn’t mean much.
“Okay.”

And so the party truly began… which really just amounted to us hanging out and having some food and drink. Maybe Lucy hadn’t thought it through enough, or maybe everything that had happened killed the vibe, but it was kind of underwhelming in the end. Not bad, though, for what it was. And Rin brought a load of chocolate with her…

By the evening, it wound up being just us Painters left, and Kendal asked if she could stay for the night, wanting to spend a little more time with all of us (and twisting Bao’s arm over staying too, not that he wanted to miss out anyway). Which was perfectly fine, of course – and a rather bittersweet way of test-running her proposal of us all living together – only…

Look, I know, it wasn’t the most important thing at that point, but… it was Valentine’s Day, and I’d had my nice booby wake-up call and… I wanted to end the day in a romantic way.

Difficult in a house with four other people.

You know Dakota, though… “difficult” was just a challenge to overcome.

And when all was said and done (emphasis on done), it sort of did feel comforting to know that we were all there together, under one roof, safe and sound if not completely recovered from the wild events of the day.