CHAPTER XVI
CUNNING INTREPIDS PART III

SOUNDTRACK- None
        Fox Sage and Audrey had to abandon ship. Fox was filled with rage as he had to watch his Thunder Serpent sink to the ocean floor. The GALL-Battletanks had come to a halt, their hatch open, and Mensan soldiers firing ion beams at all of the floating Antilian pilots, like Fox and Audrey. They were taking no prisoners.
        “Mother, Father!!!!” Audrey screamed, spitting ocean water while struggling to float. “Janus!!!”
        “And I never got to fly!!!” Fox shouted, smacking his fist on the surface of the water. Just then he heard a strange hum off in the distance. Fox’s head whipped around, searching quickly for the noise. Even the zombie Mensan soldiers paused in their massacre.
SOUNDTRACK- Fox Sage
        “YAHOOOO!!!!” King Burroughs was at the stick of the world’s first aircraft as it soared into the battle scene! Antilian sailors cheered as the Mensan soldiers scrambled back into their GALL-Battletanks. The airship swooped down as Burroughs threw out a rope ladder for Fox and Audrey. The two climbed it as Burroughs ascended into the air. Fox was exhilarated as he watched the surface of the water fly away from him! The ship was flying high into the air!!!!
        Burroughs called for Fox to take the yoke. The cunning hybrid had no trouble accepting her. “Welcome to the Albatross- the first ever airship!!!” Burroughs said, smiling.
        It took him a few moments to learn to fly, but the skilled pilot quickly found control of the airship and began firing the plasma cannons at the tiny GALL-Battletanks. They exploded with ease! Fox couldn’t believe it!

SOUNDTRACK- Twilight Glimmer
        Sa’gaht tightened his muscles, choking Abant as the two were crouched in the water that flooded the old hanger. “Do you hear that, Mage Winston?” he tightened his headlock harder, Abant spitting blood. The hoverdrive roared off in the far distance of the old hanger. “That is the sound of inevitability,” it rumbled again. Abant guessed it was an old GALL-Battletank left behind from the clearing-out of the hanger. Sa’gaht must have been controlling it with his mind. The hovercraft took off from its stationary position, soaring swiftly over the water at them. “That is the sound of your death...”
        The enormous GALL-Battletank sped directly at the two, as Sa’gaht held Abant paralyzed in the huge craft’s path. The dark mage would be ran over too, but it wouldn’t kill Dr. Doan... “Prepare to die...” the headlights and the roar of the hoverdrive grew closer and closer. “...MAGE WINSTON!!!”
        “My name...” Abant managed to spit out from his bloody mouth as he watched the GALL-Battletank rush at them, “...is ABANT!!!”
        The hybrid quickly used a mage martial arts technique, managing to lift his arms. He wrapped his hands around Sa’gaht’s neck. Abant twisted with all of the might that he could muster, feeling the bones in the dark mage’s neck snap.
        Abant dove into the water as Sa’gaht’s hold was released. The GALL-Battletank rushed over Abant and sliced into Sa’gaht, cutting him in half. The legs collapsed into the water, as the upper body flew through the air, splashing down in the ice cold water a few yards away.
        The GALL-Battletank continued to jet across the empty hanger, past the king. It slammed into the wall adjacent to the room with the DreamSeed reactor. The hovertank burst through at its top speed, several hundred miles an hour, crashing into the reactor of fantasies... The huge machine exploded in an extravaganza of oranges, reds, and yellows.

SOUNDTRACK- Fox Sage
        “The ships- they’ve stopped!” King Burroughs noticed, pointing at them by pressing his fat finger against the windshield.
        Fox slowed the Albatross down, “Yeah, you’re right!” The GALL-Battletanks came to a halt, dead in their tracks. “What’s going on?” Just then, a beeping noise came from the inside of his jacket. He reached inside to find it was the intercom he shared with Abant!
        “Come and get us, buddy! I got the King of Antilia!” Abant said over the intercom. “You may notice that the GALL-Battletanks aren’t moving anymore. That’s because the soldiers piloting them have been disabled. They’re actually zombies. Don’t ask...I’ll explain later.”
        Everyone cheered, so overwhelmed with happiness that they were succeeding. Fox swooped down to find Abant standing on the top of the right hoverdrive to the GALL-Warship. Abant and the king were both waiving their hands to signal Fox.
        After picking them up, Fox flew away from the GALL-Warship, then turned around. “What are you doing?” Audrey asked.
        “Finishing the job,” Fox said, staring at the enormous hovercraft. He mashed down hard on the yoke’s proton missile button. Blasting out from the airship’s cannons, two purple glowing proton missiles rocketed towards the GALL-Warship. They seemed to disappear into the ship’s hull. There was silence for a moment, then-
        A blinding explosion!!!
        When the intense yellow light cleared, a ring of energy flew out from the center of the blast like a shockwave. “YEEEEHAAAWWW” Everyone, even the king, cried in their moment of triumph. Kaiser Vincent, Prime Minister Fluvious, and Chancellor Maylin were atomized. Mensa was beaten.

SOUNDTRACK- None
        Janus found his Skybolt Mage Armor and Onyx-Blade in Jonnan’s office. He had also cast a healing spell on himself, erasing the wounds from his dead father. For a long while, Janus believed the magic he had in his soul was nothing more than pure fantasy. When he saw Canen for the first time since he awakened out of the DreamSeed matrix, he believed again...
        Janus and Cevo ran to elevator shaft and the giant robot began scaling down the concrete walls. He slipped and they plummeted several hundred feet. With Janus holding onto Cevo’s round upper body, the robot’s back slammed into the floor of the lobby (in the shaft), bursting down into a secret sub-level.
        When they landed, Cevo sat up and shook his head. Janus coughed in the chalky dust that was kicked up from the crash. “Where are we?” he asked.
        “Hmmmzt. I downloaded the map of this place, and it appears we are in a secret corridor that leads to the Master Mana Collection Tank- a new addition to the complex.”
        Janus felt another change in fate trickle down his spine in its sheer coldness, “Cevo, did Fox drop you off?”
        “Only Canen and I came in a smaller hovercraft similar to Fox’s, the Mystic Cloud,” The robot replied, throwing off bricks of concrete that laid on him.
        “Go ready the ship. We may need to make a fast getaway,” Janus drew his Onyx-Blade and ignited it into the vibrant yellow glow that lit his way down the dark corridor. The huge robot climbed out of the elevator shaft from the secret basement, and proceeded out the lobby to do as the Chosen One had asked.
        The young mage came to a steel door in what seemed like a mile down the pitch black and damp corridor. He turned around, just barely able to see the pillar of light that shed through the broken floor of the elevator shaft. Janus swallowed hard, thinking about if this was actually real. From his late father’s explanations, it was as real as anything on the planet. However, to Janus, what was real meant whether or not the reality he was in was based upon his own dream...
        He shook his head, thinking whether real or not, he had to move closer to the coldness of changing fate. He had to see what destiny was hidden behind that rusted iron door before him. His red-gloved hand clenched tightly on the doorhandle. He took a deep breath and yanked it open. The rusted hinges squeaked loudly as the two-foot thick door swung ajar. Janus stepped forward into the room  without examining it first...
        The first thing the young mage saw was a vast and dark room, rounded corners and a dome-like ceiling. The room had to of been a mile wide and a fourth of a mile tall. But the second thing he noticed was that his boot stepped on nothing but thin air. Where is the floor?
        It became clear to him that the huge room’s floor was an enormous iron funnel. The young mage slid, on his back, down the iron cone very, very fast. Before he knew it, he was falling into the center pipe at the the end of the funnel. Janus dropped for miles, yes miles, down the round, rusty tube! As he made his descent, he noticed gravity repulsors and super-cooling fans aligned along the tube he fell down.
        Eventually, Janus came out of the ceiling to a much, much larger room. He fell some more for an additional yards or so. Even though he used some of his gravity magic to break his fall, Janus still slammed into a soft, almost squishy ground. He picked himself up, examining his surroundings. The yellow glow from his sword was illuminating the area around him (a good hundred yards around him). Past that circle of light, the blackness of shadow dominated in this massive cavern.
        The air was thick and stale, almost hard to breathe. Janus looked up to the find the tube he fell out of, but the ceiling must have been two hundred yards in the air. He saw nothing but a sky of dark shadows.
        The ground was gray and squishy, with pipes stuck into it. The billions of pipes Janus was surrounded by stood three feet from the ground, their iron ends open, as if ready to draw out something. The gas would come from under the soft ground, through the pipes, out the pipes, collect in the huge cavern Janus stood in, go up the tube to the funnel, and finally compress into the huge room (which was obviously a massive tank for some kind of gas) where he first opened the door at.
        Janus knelt down pressed his fingers against the gray ground. Feels like flesh, he thought. The Prodigy of Magic then examined a label stuck to the side of a pipe-

SOUNDTRACK- Twilight Glimmer
        100% drain from Vako??!?! Janus gasped, staring at the label. This soft ground must be Vako’s skin! I’m at the planet’s core! These pipes on the ground must be miles long, sticking into her veins!!! Intarma is about to draw out all of Vako’s blood!!! Surely they know that it will kill her and destroy the planet!
        Suddenly, the ground began to quake as yellow gas slowly flowed out of the pipes and up to the ceiling. The yellow mana’s boiling point must have been effected by the unusual atmosphere that surrounded Janus, for it looked like yellow steam was jetting out of the pipes.
        Above, Castor was growing desperate. He received news of Jonnan’s death and that Dr. Doan’s DreamClone had just been destroyed. So, he advanced the Mega-Extraction Project by activating the mana-magnetic drivers (the pipes stuck into her) buried at the planet’s core. The complete draining of Vako’s blood had begun.
        Janus didn’t know what to do, just when he saw a dark figure leap down from the main tube above. Suddenly the Risotto shot out from the darkness, rocketing at him with great speed. The weapon’s end slammed into Janus’s chest. He was knocked back several dozen feet. When he landed onto the ground, Janus roared with great pain as the rusted edges of the iron pipes dug into his skin. He opened his eyes to suddenly see Sa’gaht leaping at him, the huge blade of the Risotto soaring down to the young mage.
        The Prodigy of Magic used his Gravity magic to quickly get to his feet. Janus moved fast, so fast that he made shadow images of himself, just as Sa’gaht did back at Zetah. However, Sa’gaht was, too, up for the challenge of speed and agility. Together it looked like ten Sa’gaht’s and ten Janus’s duking it out in a battle over the life of the planet!
        Janus summoned bolts of lightning left and right, exploding from the black sky of the core of the planet! Sa’gaht made a ring of fire explode around them as he collapsed the Risotto to close-combat size (ten feet tall). The movements were so fast, so unbelievably fast, the human eye could not follow the duel.
        The yellow gas began to light up the huge cavern of Vako, making a bright, foggy-yellow sky as bolts of lightning burst from it to the ground. Janus moved faster than Canen, but equal to Sa’gaht.  Using their gravity magic and fire-time ability, both mages were unstoppable.
        Sa’gaht used the Risotto’s huge sycth at the end to knock Janus’s Onyx-Blade out of his hands. It spun into the yellow fog, lost forever. The Risotto’s metal end smacked Janus in the face, making him spit blood and one of his molars as he flew back. The Chosen One crashed onto the pipes jetting out of Vako’s skin again. Some dug into his back, as other sliced through his clothing and past his skin.
        Janus kicked his legs upward, thrusting his body to a standing position. He fiercely elbowed Sa’gaht in the gut. At the same time, he brought his fist up on the axis of his elbow while it buried into Sa’gaht’s metallic abdominal muscles. The Chosen One’s backhand side of his fist smacked Sa’gaht in the face with excruciating power. Janus (while facing in the same direction as Sa’gaht and standing to the left of him) grabbed ahold of his neck. The young mage flung the towering body of the dark mage over his shoulders high into the air. He disappeared into the fog of magic. Sa’gaht flew dozens of feet before crashing down into the pipes of the ground. When he was chucked through the air, he also lost the Risotto. It flew out into the golden fog to be lost for all eternity with Janus’s Onyx-Blade.
        Janus charged Sa’gaht as the dark mage picked himself up. The two engaged in fast hand to hand combat, of mage martial arts style. Janus leapt into the air and spun completely around three times. While spinning counter clockwise, his right leg was extended. With each spin, Janus’s boot smacked into Sa’gaht’s face! Sa’gaht would spin three-hundred sixty degrees around with each kick. His spin would end up right where it began, just in time to meet Janus’s boot once-again. The fourth and final spin was the fiercest kick Sa’gaht had ever felt, especially to his face!
        He flew back ten feet and landed onto the pipes. Sa’gaht got up again, but as soon as he did he found Janus’s fist rush up from under him- crashing into his nose, shoving the bone up into his brain. Just as this happened, Janus’s fist became a bolt of lightning, frying Sa’gaht’s face. As Janus gave the lightning uppercut, he leapt up into the air. This made his fist drive Sa’gaht twenty feet airborne with him. The punch was the most powerful and destructive in the history of all punches! Sa’gaht’s head instantly flew back as his body was thrust upward. He then fell back upon his decent, forcing his body to flip upside down. Sa’gaht dove back, head first, to the sharp edges of the rusty pipes.
        Janus punches had worn down the metal-plastic alloy of his opponent’s mask. A steel pipe stood dominant as Sa’gaht’s face drove right into it. The pipe traveled through the top of his skull, down into his throat. His body remained straight, his feet pointing to the ceiling as a pipe was stuck into his head. Sa’gaht bubbled out of existence, the DreamClone dead.
        The ground around Janus shook with more intensity than ever before. He knew he had to get out of there. So much yellow mana was packed into the room, as it slowly traveled up the main pipe, that Janus had trouble seeing anything in front of himself.
        Janus turned around to suddenly find Sa’gaht standing before him with the Risotto again! He looked as good as new and as vicious as ever. Dr. Doan must have generated another DreamClone! Janus wasted no time, sensing a change in fate. He knew this place was going to explode. He leapt high into the air, just as the Risotto swooped under him. Janus flew up the central shaft of the main pipe to the funnel, leaving Sa’gaht behind.
        He burst out of the building, running as fast as he could. The entire island was in a super-violent quake.

SOUNDTRACK- Twilight Glimmer
        Vako spoke to Janus, telling him what to do. She boosted his magic ability, allowing him to fly up the elevator shaft to the highest floor. He moved faster than ever before, using the rush of energy from Vako...
        Castor stood over a computer monitor in his office, watching a progress bar fill. The extraction gauge read 78%. He smiled, pouring himself a glass of wine during the powerful vibrations of the quake. He spilled the wine all over his suit, but managed to drink anyway.
        The door to his office burst open, with Janus standing in the doorway. He used his Gravity magic to fly up the elevator shaft, e rushed at Castor who dropped his wine glass. It shattered on the ground as Janus head butted Castor, smashing the bone of his nose deep into his skull. The Intarma CEO fell to the floor, already dead, but convulsing with his eyes rolled back. Janus turned to the touch-pad computer monitor that gauged the mana-extraction.