Chapter 29

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Saturday 6th February 1999

 

 

You would think, after a week full of crazy monster fights and school, we’d spend the weekend kicking back and relaxing. Maybe watching a film or something.

 

But one of us is Kendal. So instead, we were at an ice-skating rink in the next town.

 

For the record, I’ve never been skating before.

 

Neither, funnily enough, had Kendal. But she seemed to have developed the urge to try it out, and that meant the rest of us had to like it or lump it.

 

You might be wondering how we got there, considering there are six of us when you include Harriet and only five seats in Kendal’s car. That problem happened to resolve itself, as Harriet phoned Bao that morning to inform him that she was ill. She insisted that he go ahead with the rest of us rather than spending the time with her, though he still stopped by to visit her on the way to the rink.

 

… Harriet’s place is practically a mansion. It’s huge. Kendal swore she saw a peacock strutting around the garden, and I can’t entirely dismiss the possibility.

 

It didn’t take us too long to get to the ice rink after that, and in a Kendal-led flurry, we were donning skates in no time at all.

 

“Yeah, there’s no way I can move in these,” I remarked while inspecting the part-leather, part-metal objects secured around my feet and ankles.

 

“You just have to sort of walk like this…”

Bao demonstrated an awkward tilted waddle with his skates’ blades tilted outwards rather than straight down.

 

I looked to Dakota with exaggerated woe.

“Tell him to stop, boss-lady…!”

 

After giggling at me, she stood up and began walking in much the same manner as Bao.

“How many times have you been skating?” she asked him; they, Kendal and Zahid all started heading off towards the rink, so I hefted myself upright and hurried after them as best as I could. Y’know, without snapping my ankles or something ridiculous.

 

“Loads!” Bao enthused. “I’m like a gazelle on the ice, you’ll see!”

 

“Okay, but if you’re not professional-level, you’ve set me up to be disappointed,” she teased back. “I’ve only been a few times, maybe you can show me the ropes?”

 

“At least you know what you’re doing,” Zahid grumbled. “I’m gonna make myself look like an idiot.”

 

“Well, at least you’re prepared!” Kendal interjected with palpable excitement. Naturally, she was ahead of the rest of us, and so she was first onto the ice. I suppose roller-blading experience would’ve helped her here, as she set off across the surface without much difficulty.

 

“She’s like a duck to water,” I said to no one in particular.

 

“And you and Zahid are gonna be like ducks to… lard,” Bao remarked, giving me a pat on the back as though I needed comforting or sympathy (being fair, I may have needed them). He practically sprung out onto the ice, moving with more form and grace than I’d ever seen from him. Even considering how nimble he tended to be in combat, this was kind of surprising.

“Yeah, I was obsessed with ice-skating for a month or so,” he noted just before skating off into the middle of the rink.

 

“That’s some serious dedication,” Kendal noted while skating past us, clearly less acclimatised than Bao but not doing bad at all. She grinned at the three of us.

“Are the rest of you just gonna stand there? Get on the ice!”

 

“Coming, coming,” Dakota chuckled, slightly more cautious as she entered the rink. Still, despite being a tad uneasy, she moved easily enough.

 

“So,” I spoke to Zahid, “who first?”

 

“I say you,” he replied. “You can distract everyone with your fumbling and I can just sneak off around the edge.”

 

“I’d like that better if it were the other way around…”

And still, while Zahid took a step back, I slowly put one blade-adorned foot on the ice.

“Yeah, there’s no way I can balance on this…” I insisted while holding onto the elbow-height walls either side of the rink’s entrance.

 

“Excuse me…” a girl no older than 10 muttered as she ducked under my left arm and set out onto the rink with ease.

 

“Dude, you just got shown up by a little girl,” Bao remarked as he slid back over.

 

“Yeah, thanks Bao,” I huffed. Not wanting to prolong the wait (and embarrassment) any further, I brought my other foot forward onto the ice and then pushed myself off from the entrance.

 

Which meant I went sliding forward with my centre of gravity who knows where.

 

I wobbled back and forth trying to maintain my balance, while doing everything in my power to keep my feet stable. Before I knew it, my right foot jerked forward, and I was forced to flail my arms around like a human windmill in a vain hope to not fall on my butt… or my face.

 

Gravity chose the former option.

 

My body tumbled backwards, only to never hit the ice: instead, I fell into someone’s arms.

“Gotcha,” Dakota assured me warmly.

 

“Thanks,” I smiled up at her before she eased me upright again.

 

“Here,” she began, putting her hands on my sides, “stay upright, keep your feet still and let me guide you.”

With that, she started driving me along the ice.

 

“I mean, I can just keep trying myself…” I whimpered, suddenly feeling as though the whole world was watching.

 

“Don’t be embarrassed, dear,” she purred in hushed tones, clearly relishing it. That just flustered me more.

 

Still, without having to focus on keeping my balance – or, y’know, moving – this was giving me a sense of how to position my feet.

 

“Now, slide one foot forward,” my girlfriend advised, and because it was her, I put my nerves aside and did so. Naturally that lead to me bringing my other foot forward too as soon as I needed to, and then the first again, leaving me honest-to-goodness skating.

“Perfect!” Dakota cheered, releasing me and letting me drift off without the ability to steer. I promptly collided into the wall.

 

An “oof!” escaped my lips as I bounced back and slipped onto my rear.

 

“Sorry, sorry!”

Dakota swiftly skated over to help me upright, while Bao’s laughter rang out from somewhere else.

“Are you okay? Are you hurt anywhere?”

 

“Mainly my dignity…” I groaned back.

 

“It’s easy once you get the hang of it!” Kendal chirped while skating over to us.

 

“It’s the getting the hang of it that’s the hard part, right?” Dakota laughed back as she brought me back up onto the blades of my ice skates.

 

“But that’s half the fun!” our sporty friend bubbled before zooming off at full speed.

 

I spotted Zahid edging along the wall on the opposite side of the rink. Guess he was serious about that.

 

The next short while involved Dakota steadily teaching me the basics of ice-skating, with Bao and Kendal occasionally zipping past and making witty remarks. Zahid actually appeared to gain a little more of a sense of how to move, too, as he stopped clinging to the side railing and ventured into the rink a little. I saw Bao trying to teach him a couple of times.

 

Kendal was getting more and more adventurous with her skating, attempting spins and leaps and generally testing her abilities. She seemed to be completely in her element, a big grin on her face the whole time.

 

I didn’t get to see quite what happened; only caught it out of the corner of my eye. It’s more what I heard, or what I’ve convinced myself I heard. A painful thud, an unnerving click, and Kendal yelping out in pain.

 

By the time I’d looked properly, I saw her lying on her left arm, then rolling onto her back. Dakota immediately left my side and hurried over to her, while I followed after as fast as I could. Bao reached her as Dakota did, and a stranger, a man about ten years older than us, joined them.

 

The first sentence I could make out, from the man, was “Do you feel okay to move?”

 

… which seemed odd to me, until I heard the next bit.

 

“We should get you off the ice first.”

 

That made sense.

 

“I bet it’s broken…” Kendal sobbed as I finally joined the group. “Feels like it…”

 

“Are you her friends?” the man asked Dakota, Bao and me.

 

“Yes, is there anything we can do to help her?” was Dakota’s immediate response.

 

“Get her on her feet and help her off the ice,” he told us, moving aside. “Be careful with her left arm.”

 

“Got it,” my girlfriend nodded, before crouching down to Kendal. “We can’t take our eyes off you for a second, can we?”

 

“I’ll live… it just really really hurts…”

For the tears in her eyes, Kendal was doing her best to remain composed. I’d never broken a bone, so I had no idea how much pain she was going through… and considering she’d never broken a bone either, this was presumably a whole new world of pain for her.

 

Dakota and Bao eased her up while I watched on, not yet experienced enough to start crouching or kneeling on the ice. Instead, I turned to the guy.

“Do we know if it is a break yet?”

… would we? Can it be diagnosed that easily?

“Like, if there’s any way to tell…”

 

The man shook his head.

“Looks like it might be, but I’ll have to-”

 

And he stopped. Stopped talking, stopped moving. He froze.

 

“… err… hello? Have to what?”

Even as I said that, I recognised in my peripheral vision that no one else seemed to be moving either, besides Dakota, Bao and Kendal next to me. I looked around, and sure enough, Zahid was the only other person still active (he was uneasily joining us).

 

“What’s happening…?” Kendal asked dazedly.

 

“Please not now…” Dakota murmured, eyes scanning the rink. The other skaters had now begun to literally freeze over, gaining a sheen of frost.

 

“Hey, uhm… guys… the ice is getting spikey…”

Bao pointed at the surface of the rink for emphasis, as a thousand tiny spikes grew out like time-lapse footage of a plant sprouting.

 

“Alex, come take Bao’s place,” our leader ordered. “We’ll take Kendal off of the rink. Bao, you’re the best of us on the ice. Suit up and get ready for the worst.”

 

“Got it,” I nodded, moving into position and taking support of Kendal’s back from Bao. He then skated a little distance away from us, manifesting his Lokon blades and blasting on his Painter gear.

 

“You guys are gonna help out, right?” he asked, before glancing down at his feet. “Huh, look, no skates… guess we can move okay on the ice.”

 

“Dunno how you made that leap, but I hope you’re right,” Zahid chimed in; in seconds, he had his axe in-hand and his regalia on.

 

“Of course, we’ll be right there,” Dakota told Bao firmly as she and I guided Kendal towards the rink’s entrance… only, with these growing spikes, it was quickly becoming impossible for us to move. They were rising up around us, so we weren’t going to get impaled… but we weren’t able to get very far, either.

 

“Just… gimme a minute… I can fight too…” Kendal urged us. “A bit faint but…”

 

“No, we have to get you out of here,” Dakota huffed. “Bao, Zahid, can you-?”

 

That very moment, Kendal’s bow burst into her hand with a flash of pink, and, being right behind her, I got an almost-first-person view of her own “morph”, a cascade of pink passing me by.

 

“Kendal-!”

 

“Hey! I feel better!” she exclaimed, moving her left arm about with no discomfort.

 

“You do…?” I asked her, genuinely surprised even if, really, it wasn’t that unexpected a feat for Lokonessence.

 

“Bao died and got better, it makes sense,” she shrugged; Dakota and I both let go of her as she no longer needed our support. Unsurprisingly, the spikes, now rising to chest height, wove between the three of us.

 

To compensate for the growing lack of space, I summoned my sword right in front of my chest, and blasted on my Painter gear immediately. A flash of green where Dakota was let me know that she’d suited up too.

 

“Hate to sound kitschy, but it’s time to break the ice,” she commanded.

 

“Nah, that’s good!” Bao called out from elsewhere on the rink. “Own it!”

 

I began hacking away at the ice-stalagmites around us, trying to focus on the ones in my immediate area rather than using a Lokon-powered slice. Just in case it struck any of the civilians.

 

(I say that like we’re not civilians… I suppose we’re not, at this point.)

 

As we all cut down some of the spikes, the rest began to move around, aggregating even as they continued growing, compiling and compacting in varied spots, reshaping into more complex shapes. Arms, musculature, heads topped with sharpened crowns; an array of icy bodies emerging waist-up from the surface of the rink. The remaining stems of what we’d mown down fled from us, merging into the golem-like entities to further increase their mass.

 

“I knew it couldn’t be that easy…” Zahid sighed, swinging his axe in anticipation.

 

“Eight of them,” Dakota observed, “and a lot of skaters to be careful of.”

 

“Guess we’re getting up close and personal, then,” I remarked playfully.

 

“Bring it on!” whooped Kendal, darting off in the direction of one of the ice golems. The rest of us quickly dispersed a second later.

 

Skate blades popped out from my boots as soon as I went to move across the now-smooth ice, very nearly throwing me off-balance again. Presumably, the force of creation we were wielding figured skating was the best option for us again. It took me a moment to regain control, at which point I skated over to one of our enemies at reduced speed. Still, that gave me time to build up power in my sword, and while I had to avoid being swatted away, I managed to strike cleanly through the ice golem. Half of its body, cut off diagonally, slid away and crashed onto the rink. Its face contorted in rage and its right arm thrashed out more.

 

Clearly breaking them apart wasn’t enough to destroy them.

 

The left arm took another swipe at me, and I skated aside, stumbling back with the force I’d used. Bao zoomed over, leaping up and slicing the arm with dual arcs of yellow. Two chunks of ice fell away from the stump that remained on the golem.

 

“I’ve already pounded my first one. You should get a second sword, it makes things much easier,” he told me with a grin.

 

“Sure, I’ll go find Nick and ask him to make me one,” I jested in kind.

 

The head-and-right-arm segment had righted itself, and was beginning to drag itself towards us: we slashed out in tandem, breaking it into useless chunks of ice. The remaining body wilted.

 

“Onto the next one?” I asked my friend.

 

“Try to keep up!” he beamed, skating off at considerable speed towards the next golem. I hurried after, still not comfortable going too fast, which meant that Bao landed an initial strike before I got to the scene. I caught up in time to slice our opponent’s left arm clean off, only for the limb to snake towards me.

 

“I swear these things never have any internal consistency!” I shouted out while gripping my sword’s handle tightly; the corona around the blade grew bigger, bigger than the blade, bigger than me, and then I took an almighty swing straight down into the icy limb. It fragmented into a thousand shards.

 

No sooner had I turned my attention to the rest of the monster than a glowing pink arrow struck it square in the chest. Just as the golem investigated the embedded projectile, it exploded, blowing the monster apart.

 

Chunks flew through the air, but a further barrage of arrows saw them shattered into a rain of white dust before they could crash into any frozen skaters.

 

“And that’s a wrap!” Kendal hollered out victoriously. Indeed, looking around, all eight golems were already dealt with.

 

“I dunno…” Zahid responded. “Nothing’s fading out. Let’s count to ten and-”

 

Seemingly pre-empting him, all of the pieces of the ice golems, large and small, gathered together in the most open spot on the rink. Towering up and fusing together, they took the form of a single gargantuan arm.

 

“… see?!” Zahid said in exasperation.

 

“If that thing tries to attack, it’s gonna hurt people,” Dakota pointed out. “We have to get it now.”

 

“Without shattering it,” I added, “or else it’ll just reform again.”

 

“So, what, melt it? And evaporate it so it doesn’t just refreeze on the rink? Because I actually spilt some water on an ice rink once-”

 

“Stop side-tracking, start thinking, Bao,” Zahid growled.

 

“Idea!”

Kendal jumped up and down. On her modified skate-shoes. After having only injured herself a few minutes ago.

“Everyone get over here, quick!”

 

We made our way to her as quickly as we could (Zahid and I took longer than Dakota and Bao, of course), while the huge hand loomed over us.

 

“Let’s fire a star at it!”

 

“Come again?” Dakota asked, brow furrowed.

 

“Not an actual one,” Kendal clarified, “but a tiny really hot ball that we can fire at the arm to insta-melt and evaporate it!”

She held her Lokon bow forward, aimed at the giant limb; it seemed to take this as a sign of aggression, as it began to rear back, hand tilting away.

 

“Everybody think hot thoughts,” Bao suggested, putting one of his blades against Kendal’s bow. Dakota, Zahid and I did the same with our weapons, and with the four of us flanking Kendal and accumulating the Lokonessence, Kendal pulled back the string of her bow. An iridescent sphere developed at the front of the bow, while a twirling, pulsing tail formed where an arrow would be.

 

The arm swung forward, and the Lokon star was fired.

 

The two collided in glorious fashion, and after a momentary flash of blinding light, the icy limb was completely obliterated.

 

“Woohoo! That’s what I’m talking about!” Kendal cried out, fist-pumping and dancing in celebration.

 

“We need to get back to how we were,” Dakota told us while powering down. “Kendal, you’ll need to handle suddenly not being injured somehow.”

 

“Oh! Right, yeah,” the other girl nodded as reality hit her.

 

Within moments, even as everyone else on the rink began defrosting, we all disengaged our Painter gear, teleported away our weapons, and returned as best as we could to the positions we’d been in before the big freeze.

 

“- check her over properly once we get her off the ice.”

The helpful man finally finished his sentence, without any sign that anything had been wrong.

 

“Okay,” I nodded, distracted now. Either I’d managed to get into exactly the right position, or, much like the Someone Else’s Problem effect, he simply didn’t register the change. I was banking on the latter.

 

“Hang on.”

Kendal slowly waved her arm to-and-fro.

“The pain’s… kinda going…” she spoke lowly. “Maybe I didn’t break it after all? I can stay on the ice.”

 

“Don’t move it!” the young man advised her, clearly concerned for her.

 

“B-But I-!”

 

… Kendal wasn’t happy at having to be taken off of the ice. At least she got to return after a few minutes and a confused all-clear.

 

…

 

“We’re seriously indestructible!” Kendal beamed widely as she unlocked the Paintermobile.

 

“Yeah…” I agreed vaguely.

 

The five of us piled into the car, the pleasure of our skating session mired somewhat by what had happened.

 

“Doesn’t matter what happens to us, we just get fixed up again! Awh man, now I don’t have to be anywhere near as careful…!”

She put the key in the ignition while the rest of us buckled up.

“I could drive the car off a cliff and we’d all be fine! And hey, we could even fix the car up, too!”

 

“And you like the sound of that?” Zahid asked her, glowering.

 

“It’s not like I’m going to… just that I could!” she clarified. “What, would you rather be hurt or dying?”

 

“That’s not the point,” he snapped back. “You’re talking about going out of your way to get hurt just because you can fix yourself back up.”

 

For a moment, Kendal didn’t say anything. Maybe she was focusing on driving us out of the carpark… or maybe she was mulling over just how big of an idea that really was.

“Still…” she concluded, softly.

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