Previously: Metalord fought the Cobalt Czar as Twain sought to save Yi Fan from being smothered by a length of electrical cable. And now…
Metalord cursed as he flung another car into the path of a blue beam, then swooped down to hide among the trees lining the small river that ran just past the town. He had so far been unable to even scratch the Czar, and the town was running out of cars to throw at him.
And ducking into the trees hadn’t so much bought him any more time as ended the trees’ time, as a beam of blue light swept through, cutting the trees off mid-trunk as easily as beheading dandelions.
[blockquote type=”blockquote_quotes” align=”left”]Her face was purple-red above the cables, and Twain was reminded of Veruca Salt, the little girl from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory…[/blockquote]Metalord shot straight up out ot the way of the beam and into clear blue sky again. For a moment, he considered just continuing straight up and then turning back toward home. He had obviously underestimated the value of having, say, Boon there to boost his power and the girls to split the Czar’s attention. He was looking seriously outmatched and he’d basically tried everything. Well, not everything. In fact, now that he thought of it as he turned a tight loop in the air to dodge another blue beam, there were lots of things he hadn’t tried. He’d really only tried the most obvious things, the things that worked 95 percent of the time. But the Czar was obviously above that percentile.
So okay, time to try the crazy stuff. Metalord grinned as he dove for the ground again.
***
Twain unslung the courier bag containing the mask and dropped it with a heavy thud to the ground ten feet away from Ghost Dragon. He stepped forward and felt the air resisting. Another step, and it was like he was passing through some kind of invisible membrane. He wasn’t passing inside Ghost Dragon, necessarily, which would have managed to make this even weirder, but inside his personal space, through air that felt somehow thick and liquid, left his skin tingling as if it were coated in slime.
The air inside was colder by at least ten degrees, not counting wind chill as Twain stood inside a mini-cyclone. He squinted into the blast of dirt whipping against his face.
Yi Fan was right there at his feet, tiny head poking up above a body made thick and rounded by mutiple coils of rubber-wrapped cable thicker than his wrist. Her face was purple-red above the cables, and Twain was reminded of Veruca Salt, the little girl from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, the one who turned into a big, round blueberry. It was sad that he would never, ever be able to tell her that, not if he ever wanted to sleep with her.
Which, was that the play he was making here? She was beautiful, had been even more beautiful minus her scar and clothes. But was Twain looking for anything more than a way into the City of the Moon?
He grabbed a cable, gave it a test pull and found absolutely no movement. And then Ghost Dragon yelled, “No!†and Twain looked up into glowing blue death.
How will Twain and Yi Fan survive? Don’t miss this week’s climactic episode!
To read from the beginning, click here…
