Re: Items of Power - Chapter 6
Posted: Sat Feb 16, 2008 5:48 am
IMPORTANT: click here for a map of how i think Rayman's world would look. this fanfic complys with the map, so it may help the story make more sense.
oh, wait, you might want to check out my world map topic. it relates to the fanfic. anyway...
CHAPTER 7 – End of the Path
Xulk stared in disbelief and fear. Somehow, his fortress had been infiltrated, his army had been defeated and his shrine to Mr. Dark had been discovered by one man.
Rayman too stared in disbelief, but fear was out of the question. The man in the centre of the room before him was like a cross between a hoodlum and Mr. Dark. Frankly, he thought that Xulk required a hat rather than a hood. “So,” he said, “you’re the leader right?”
“NO!” Xulk said angrily, “Mr. Dark is our leader.”
“Mr. Dark hasn’t been seen for years!” Rayman replied with a chuckle.
“That may be true,” Xulk agreed, “but he will return! He will kill you himself, and then lead us to victory!”
“Yeah, well I hate to burst your bubble, but you’re the only Walker left, so if that does happen, he certainly won’t be leading you to victory.”
“Oh no”, Xulk corrected, “we will rebuild our forces! And then Mr. Dark will sit in that very throne and command us as we conquer the world! Vengeance will be ours!”
“What, that throne?” Rayman asked, pointing at the overly-decorated chair that was to be Dark’s throne. “Let’s see about that.” With that he shot a fireball at said throne, blowing it to pieces.
“Noooooooooooo!”
“And I really don’t see that happening”, he said, while destroying a portrait of himself being killed by Dark. “And those minions?” he said indicating at various statues around the shrine. “I defeated them loooooooong ago, in a fashion similar to this.”
Xulk screamed in painless agony as Rayman destroyed all the sculptures one by one with his bare hands. It wasn’t long before he’d destroyed everything else in the room, save for Xulk himself. “Curse you!” he screamed. Then he regained his composure. “Ok, maybe Dark won’t kill you after all.” Rayman wondered why he said this in such a calm manner. Wouldn’t that be a bad thing for him? Unless…
It was then that Rayman felt a something smash him in the back of the head, causing him to fall on the ground face first. Barely conscious, he turned his head and looked up at his attacker, to see one of the hammer-wielding clowns he fought once at the candy chateau. Rayman was wrong: Xulk wasn’t the last of the Walkers of the Dark Path after all. Just as it raised the hammer again for a second strike, Rayman’s vision returned to normal and his senses were regained, and he quickly tripped the clown with his left foot.
Jumping back up, Rayman realized he was surrounded by many more clowns, as well as some flying bomber-clowns above him. Fortunately for him, Xulk had also been wrong – Rayman didn’t defeat the army by himself. And proof of this fact, in the form of an angry mob burst through the door – just in time – and continued the massacre they had began back in the mountains. Unfortunately, the clowns were a lot more skilled in combat than your average Walker, and the mob struggled against their massive hammers.
But, once again, Rayman had been saved, and it was time to return the favor. Diving into the action, he began a limbless dance of destruction. In a quick flurry of strikes, he knocked the heads off several clowns (which isn’t all that hard because they’re not attached anyway) and disarmed several more. In this fashion, along with the combined force of the mob, the clowns were starting to drop like flies. However, the mob was also sustaining many injuries and even a few deaths. When Rayman stumbled across the corpse of a villager, it distracted him for a moment – which was all a nearby clown needed to knock him out with a blow to the head.
Several hours later, Rayman regained consciousness. By the look of the room, the mob had won, but with heavy losses – his ears were throbbing with the sounds of pained moans, and many mobsters had been reduced to limping across the now bloodstained floor. The healthy ones (or at least healthy enough) had either started caring for those more severely wounded or moving the bodies of the unconscious and deceased. And a few, it seemed, had tied up poor old Xulk and had begun torturing him.
“You won’t get away with this,” he announced, satisfied that he was correct, “Mr. Dark will return, and he will make each and every one of you suffer!” After that, he appeared to lose all sanity and reason and began laughing maniacally in between his pained screams.
Now fully recovered, Rayman stood up and began to leave this scene of death and pain. A lump had formed on the back of his head from where he had been hit (“wow”, he thought, “I just survived to hammer blows to the head!”) and he rubbed it gently to ease the pain. Outside the fort, he found Mos Kito again, who had apparently come to pick him up and take him back. Rayman thanked him and jumped on, and less than an hour later, he found himself back at the pier.
“Bye Rayman! Just call me if you need to get somewhere, ok!”
“Alright! Bye, thanks!”
Waving happily, Mos Kito disappeared over the horizon. It was then that Rayman came to an annoying realization: now he had nothing to do again. He then yawned, initially thinking it was in anticipation of the boredom ahead. But then looking up to see a darkening sky, he realized that night had almost come again after a busy day, and found that he was really quite tired. So tired in fact, that he couldn’t be bothered going anywhere, and just collapsed where he stood, falling to sleep instantly.
But only hours later, he woke up after hearing some familiar sounding footsteps. Realizing what had caused them, he decided not to move, and pretended he was still asleep, but listened intently. The footsteps stopped, seemingly near him, and Rayman was pretty certain they were looking right at him.
“Hey, we found someone!” a monotonous, robotic voice announced.
“Wait, isn’t this Rayman?” a second said, seemingly becoming excited.
Rayman began to feel fear creep up in him, until the first replied “nah, Rayman wears a scarf. This guy wears a hood.”
“oh yeah…” said the second, disappointed.
Then a third one entered the conversation: “should we kill him anyway?”
“No, we’ll take him back to the’ Razorcruizer’,” the first answered.
Rayman heard them begin to walk closer, and sprang into action – and into the air, kicking the head off one of the robots. Upon landing, Rayman than ducked beneath two sharpened hooks, which then collided just above his head, causing one of the hooks to detach from the robots arm.
The now hook-less robot, after recovering from the shock tried to fire at Rayman, only to realize that he had no gun arm. So instead, he tried swiping with his other (hook-less) arm only to realize it had also been detached. Completely defenseless, he decided the best idea was to get his hydraulically operated legs moving as quickly as possible, only to find he didn’t have any of those either. In fact, it appeared that in a very short time, he had been knocked into six separate pieces, just like his attacker, except that he couldn’t keep them floating together.
The surviving pirate then decided to attack Rayman while his back was turned but instead was blown apart himself by the headless robot, who had taken to shooting wildly in the hope of hitting something. Before things got too out of hand, Rayman subdued the robot, which meant blowing it to bits with a fireball. Looking around, Rayman observed the piles of wreckage around him. He then looked up to see the small, green, flying form of Murphy (his “favorite”/only instructor).
“Rayman!” the Greenbottle cried, “The Robo-Pirates have returned!”
End of Chapter
Question 6: Can you guess whose corpse Rayman stumbled across?
