Dammit. I couldn’t stand it. I’d fallen for the master’s trick. Even knowing it was a trick, I still couldn’t go through with it.
“Chk!”
Yuri clicked her tongue in disgust. Yaksha was right in front of us and getting closer. If we didn’t do something Yaksha would swallow us whole.
Mugi jumped.
Mugi had stopped chasing Yaksha once it entered Jeff. Mugi knew my feelings toward Jeff.
But the situation had changed. Not a time for niceties now. If Yaksha wasn’t stopped we would be eaten.
Mugi landed on Yaksha’s chin. Now that Yaksha had a physical body, fighting the monster would be easier for Mugi.
Yuri pulled my arm. “Kei, come on!”
As Mugi tried to stop Yaksha, she tried to put some distance between us and them.
Yuri pulled me toward the saucer. We went up the bent gangway, thorough the hatch, and into the cockpit.
Yuri grabbed a hold of the control lever. Setting off explosive bolts, she separated us from the landing gear and gangway, and closed the hatch.
The saucer moved up into the air. We ascended vertically about 30 meters before circling around. On the main screen appeared Yaksha grappling with Mugi.
Mugi was giving a good fight. Even in its materialized state, Yaksha was absurdly strong. Mugi’s teeth and claws slipped on Yaksha’s slimy skin, and the giant creature looked as if it could crush Mugi to death.
“Just wait, Mugi!”
Yuri turned the saucer.
The saucer’s weapon was a large-scale laser cannon. That was it. Setting the laser cannon to full power, Yuri flew toward Yaksha.
Yuri aimed for its big, wide-open mouth.
A miss. The cannon fire wouldn’t hit Yaksha. This must be the trump card the master mentioned.
To test the theory, Yuri set the cannon’s sights on the master, who had attached himself to the Angel of Chakra. Yuri fired the cannon, and again, the blasts were nowhere near on target.
Again, we had no fist to punch with.
“Gyan!”
Mugi was hit. Our strong-as-steel Mugi took a bite in the back, and screeched in pain.
To escape an inevitably painful death, Mugi jumped. Mugi landed on the body of the saucer. In fact, right on top of the cockpit. Using the camera to check his condition, we saw from the way his back was bent that he was hurt badly.
Seeing Mugi in this shape, I felt a stirring deep in my gut. A demon of my own was ready to be released.
“Change seats,” I said, pushing Yuri out of the way.
Taking over the pilot’s seat, I grabbed a hold of the control lever.
“What are you going to do?” asked Yuri.
“We have seen that thing before,” I answered gruffly.
I brought the saucer down. I hovered the saucer between the Angel of Chakra and Yaksha.
I turned on the outside speaker.
“Brink it on, freak,” I said as the ship faced Yaksha. “I’ll give you a fight. If you want to take a bite of something, take a bite of this. This is it. Your final chance. Or are you not up to it?”
I was pushing Yaksha’s buttons, and pushing them hard.
For the moment it was just Yaksha staring down the saucer and vice versa.
“What’s the matter? You afraid of me?!”
I rained down a shower of laser cannon fire.
Yaksha moved.
And it moved fast.
It came straight at us. And what speed. In one breath it would close the distance between us.
“Hold on tight, Mugi!” I yelled into the mic.
The Yaksha came.
Its giant mouth was wide open and its teeth shined a wet reflection. Streams of drool ran out of its mouth.
Closer and closer.
Only a few meters left.
I punched the jets to maximum and slammed the throttle.
Painful G-forces.
It felt like my head was being beat with a nightstick.
The saucer went straight up into the air.
Yaksha missed us by only centimeters.
But Yaksha did continue at that speed into the Angel of Chakra.
I didn’t slow down.
The saucer continued its rise through the atmosphere.
There was an explosion.
It was below the saucer. This was what happened when Yaksha and the Angel of Chakra came into contact. I don’t know why it happened, but I did know that it would happen.
I mean, that’s what we’d seen in our clairvoyant vision.
A white blast exploded out. It looked a lot like the flash we’d seen from Mine #1.
The blast swelled out in a round mass.
In order to avoid getting hit by the blast, I maintained our fullspeed upward progression. The main screen went crazy. The blast was too strong. Too bright. From the window we could see the bright flash, but even that was so bright we had to look away.
It was so bright that tears actually started to stream down my face.
I didn’t want Yuri to see me crying, so I slyly wiped them away.
But the tears didn’t stop flowing.
High in the sky, we waited for the flash to fade away.
As quickly as it rose up, the flash disappeared.
Even though the white light had faded, we waited a few moments before examining the situation on the ground.
The mist covering the area slowly began to dissipate.
Other than that, nothing had changed. At least from this angle, it looked safe down there.
We began our descent.
The planet’s surface had turned into an amazingly large crater.
The crater was a slick tan color, and smooth like a polished stone, reflecting a bright sheen. I estimated its diameter at over ten kilometers. The edge of the crater actually overlapped with the crater at Mine #4.
Other than that, the crater was empty. No temple. No Angel of Chakra. Also, no more black egg.
“Ishana certainly was a rare element, like they said,” mumbled Yuri as she looked out at the crater.
“Yeah,” I replied with a nod. I had a bad feeling. Something wasn’t right.
“Wasn’t the Angel of Chakra the symbol of Boralura?”
“Yeah.”
“And Ishana was contained inside that Elephant Angel…”
“I see what you are getting at.”
“When the Ishana is gone, the egg disappears.”
“Yeah.”
“And if the Ishana is gone, then contact can’t happen again. I think that’s what I heard?”
“Me too.”
“Hmmm”
Yuri hummed quietly.
I did too.
And then it happened. Another blast of pressure came.
The landscape shook.
For a moment I thought our engines were acting up. Unfortunately, it was more complicated than that.
It was an earthquake.
After Mine #4 was turned to a crater there was an earthquake, too. The relatively fragile crust of Chakra couldn’t withstand such sudden blasts of energy, and the response was a seismic shift.
If the last earthquake could be called massive, then this earthquake was massively massive.
It went on for about ten minutes, and the tremors were violent. Watching from the sky, we could see mountains crumble and the earth tear open and swallow up entire hills. The smooth and shiny crater was now full of cracks and debris.
“Say, Kei,” Yuri said in a disturbingly composed tone of voice. “With this earthquake and everything, what happened to Aslaville?”
“What happened? Just…”
I couldn’t finish my sentence.
The answer was pretty clear by looking out the window.