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The Art of Defense Alice picked Mindy up and, with a grunt and a little effort, carried her over to the cluster of children in the middle of the common room. Between she and Amy, they had somehow managed to get the kids under control. One curious little boy, however, started wandering away from the cluster. "Hey, hey, not so far away!" Amy yelled as she grabbed him and pulled him back to the center. "There are bad guys around. Stay with the other kids. You could've been--" "Oh, I know!" Alice interrupted with a shout. "Let's sing a song! Do you all know 'The Angels Protect Us in Heaven'?" As Alice began leading the children in chorus, a horde of demons charged down the hallway. Stephanie picked them off as they came, charging her hands with Holy Energy and firing bright white blasts. Robert followed suit with his charged particle blaster. On the other side of the room, the Dark Fiend of the Inferno struggled with a squadron of demons that had swarmed through the hole in the back wall. A group of five charged at him, but he quickly took out two with a pair of fireballs. Then, a flaming kick and a burning backhand tore up two more. However, the fifth slipped by the Dark Fiend and went straight for the children. Vince swore. One little girl squealed in fear--adding an off-key note to Alice's chorus--when she saw it reaching at her with its claws. The grotesque little thing may have only been four feet tall, but to a child, it was no less monstrous. Fortunately for her, Vince grabbed the demon by the forehead just as his claw was but an inch from her face and threw it with such might that it splattered against the wall upon impact. "This place is too dangerous!" Vince shouted at Stephanie and Robert. "There are too many demons and too many entrances. We'll have to get them to the third floor." The man in the blood-red robes summoned a ball of Hellflame and sent it flying down the hall. Stephanie gasped with fright, for she had seen a skull face in that fireball, but all the same, she summoned forth a ball of Holy Energy and shot it at the fireball, annihilating it. "Not through the hallway," Stephanie yelled back. "The hallway is crowded like Hell, and the red guy's here, too." Demons flooded in through the hole in the wall, but Vince replied simply by kneeling and by firing a coherent beam of flame from his hands, vaporizing all the demons between him and the wall. "All right, this way is clear," Vince shouted to Stephanie. "You, Robert, Alice, get the kids out that side hole and go around to the front door." "It's a long trip around," Stephanie replied. "You sure it's a good idea?" "Now's not the time to argue," Vince said. "Hurry! Go before they come back!" Robert Ginns and Stephanie Chen kept firing down the hall as they backed up toward the kids, not daring to turn their backs on the demons that attacked them. "Go," Robert whispered to Alice as he neared her. "All right!" Alice said as she interrupted her own song. "Come on, kids, get into a single-file line and follow me!" Then, as the children shuffled into a line, Alice looked around, the smile drifting from her face for but an instant. "Um, Robert? Help me lead?" "Of course," Robert answered as he quickly shuffled to the front of the line. "I'm scared," said a little girl as they began to move. "Be brave," Steph tried to comfort her. "Everything will be all right." "You can hold my hand," Amy said, extending her hand to the girl. Vince, instead of moving with the line, walked toward the hallway. "Vince, what about you?" Stephanie asked in whisper as he passed her. "I'll distract the red guy," Vince answered. "I'll be fine. Just go." Vince then dashed toward the hallway, bashing demons with his burning gauntlets as he passed, while Stephanie and the others led the children to safety. Suddenly, the Inferno Fiend found himself with a shortage of demons. "What in the--" Vince exclaimed. He looked around. Only he and the red-cloaked sorcerer stood in the hallway. All the demons that had been in the hall before were gone. They had apparently either fled or been killed. "Where did all the demons go?" Vince asked, still confused. The man facing him simply smiled. "Oh, crap," Vince swore when he realized it. "They're after the children." Robert Ginns led the children of Pedos around the Community Center. It was no easy task, as demons continuously attacked. The sky was red with them, and on the ground, there were so many of them, they blocked the horizon from view. There was no doubt that they had already swarmed the entire city. With a gun in his right hand, Robert fired, blasting away the demons that blocked their path. Grabbing the hand of the child behind him, he pushed forward, pulling the child along, and pulling the rest of the group with him. "Up!" Stephanie cried. A flock of flying demons, with bat-like wings spanning six feet in the air and a pair of taloned feet, came swooping down at them. Alice and Robert quickly pointed their guns up and fired, and Stephanie started blasting the aerial demons with her Holy shots. As the bird demons tore themselves up on the projectiles, they fell, falling down to the ground as shredded, blood-red corpses. The children screamed as the piles of demonic flesh bounced off their heads and arms, and the scattered out, trying to avoid these dead yet Hellish beings. Some began to cry. "Hey, don't worry, these demons are already dead," Alice spoke to the children with a smile on her face. "They can't hurt you." "A second wave!" Robert shouted and pointed up his left hand. Another flock of demonic birds had swooped down to attack them. Again, Alice and Robert and Stephanie fired upon them. Again, their corpses fell to the ground, much to the distress of the children who were directly beneath. Somehow, just a few feet above the children, one of the supposedly dead demon birds suddenly turned upright, swooped down, and grabbed one boy in his talons. The child screamed his tears and madly flailed his arms and legs, trying to free himself, but to no avail, as the demon carried him into the air. Alice raised her gun toward the bird and took aim, but she never pulled the trigger. "I... I might hit him," she said, her voice quivering. The smile she had carried before now completely left her face for the first time that day. Her visage was now filled with uncertainty, and her eyes, fear. "I know," Robert whispered to her. "He's going to die anyway. Just... just forget about it." He then turned to the children and yelled, "Kids, please look down. Do NOT look at the sky." Amy gasped. "Look at the ground, everybody, please!" She, too, turned away from the boy who had been carried away by the bird, and so did most of the other children, but some kept looking, their bodies too petrified with fear to turn away. Up above, another flock of bird demons had coalesced around the unfortunate boy, at first muffling his screams before silencing them. When they parted, they dropped a pile of blood-smeared bones and a cracked skull. The screams now came from the children on the ground. At that point, all chaos broke loose, and the children began running frantically, some toward the wall, some away. Stephanie knew what she had to do. She waved her staff, and a white half-circle formed around the caravan of children, enclosing them with a Holy barrier. Whether it was to keep them in or the demons out, at that point, it didn't matter. "Is... is it over?" Amy asked. She raised her head and, upon seeing what remained of the boy, gasped, and tucked her head into Stephanie's side. Stephanie put her left arm around Amy. "It's all right," she whispered. Tears flowed down her eyes, too. Alice stared at the sky, her face filled with fright, her mouth wide open in horror. Robert grabbed her by the shoulder and gave her a little nudge. "Let's go," he whispered. Alice turned around and stared at him through her tears. Then, although somewhat reluctantly, she nodded. "Everybody, keep moving!" Robert yelled as he grabbed the hand of the child behind him and pulled him forward. The Dark Fiend of the Inferno stood at one end of the burning hallway, face to face with a red-robed sorcerer, no doubt a minion of the Demon Army. "Why are you here?" Vince asked. "One of our Knights died here yesterday," the sorcerer answered. "And you were sent here to investigate?" Vince asked. "No," the sorcerer responded. "I was sent here for a different reason." Without the demons blocking his view, Vince could finally see the sorcerer clearly. He moved neither his arms nor his legs, but several orbs of Hellfire formed around him, as though they responded simply to his thoughts. "I was sent here," the sorcerer explained, "to punish!" The fireballs immediately shot down hall. Vince crossed his arms in front of his chest, putting up a barrier of flame to defend himself. The first few fireballs slammed into the barrier, spitting Hellfire in all directions as they hit. However, one of them finally shattered Vince's fireshield. Another knocked Vince off balance. The next one hit him directly in the chest and sent him skidding a few yards down the hall. "Damn you," Vince muttered as he climbed to his feet. "There's no one left here but children. Did you come all the way here for that?" "There's you," the sorcerer calmly answered. "You seem to be a strong one. You're worth coming all the way here to kill." Screaming with rage, Vince charged down the hall toward the sorcerer, his gauntlets burning with flame. The red-cloaked mage responded with more fireballs, which Vince blasted with shots of flame from his hands. Vince drew near. Circles of flame appeared at the sorcerer's feet, marking a wide arc across the floor. Then, as quickly as they appeared, they shot across the hall, tracing jagged lines. Vince was only a few feet away from the sorcerer when the ground collapsed beneath him. He landed on a pair of small pipes. The sorcerer formed another ball of Hellflame above his head, and this time, Vince saw in it a skull, smirking at him. It came down. Vince jumped aside, landing and carefully balancing on another pipe. The fireball tore through the two pipes. One of them was dry, but the other one immediately began spraying water. Another fireball came down. Again, Vince jumped. This time, he landed on his back and simultaneously gave an upward kick, bending the wet pipe upward. The stream of water hit the mage, who gave a grunt as it knocked him momentarily off balance. At this point, Vince leapt up from the hole and landed in front of the disoriented sorcerer, his right hand burning, ready to strike. But he didn't attack. "What's wrong?" the sorcerer laughed. "You had the opportunity to kill me just then. Why did you let it pass?" "You're human," Vince said. The sorcerer laughed even harder. "So you couldn't kill me because you value human life. How noble! How... foolish!" The Hellfire coalesced right between Vince and the sorcerer. The Inferno Fiend barely had time to dodge the blast, shifting his body just out of the way. Then, only after it passed did he realize that he wasn't the target of that attack. "Mindy!" Vince shouted. And with that, he ran down the hall. You could never have expected that a simple human could outrace a blazing ball of energy. It's like trying to outrun a bullet. You'd have to be some kind of superhuman to do it, but somehow, Vince managed to pull it off. He dove over Mindy and used his body to shield her from the oncoming Hellfire. The explosion burned through his armor and into his hide, but still, Vince held Mindy in his arms and protected her. When the flame had cleared, Vince took a look at the girl. She had been slightly burned on her arms, but otherwise, she appeared as though she were sleeping peacefully. "You," Vince said as he stood up, still holding Mindy in his arms. "You bastard! Why would you attack her? An unconscious little girl, of all people." "She was an easy target," the sorcerer laughed. "You bastard!" Vince roared. Holding Mindy in his right arm, he gathered the flames in his left, but before he could do anything, a blast of Holy energy hit the sorcerer from behind. He gave a frustrated shout as he lost balance and fell into the hole that he had earlier created for Vince. There was a loud thump, the sound of a body hitting metal. "Vince, hurry up and get over here, before he gets back up!" Stephanie shouted from the far end of the hall as the kids slowly filed in and up the stairs. "Right!" Vince said. With Stephanie's appearance, his anger had suddenly dissipated. Vince now gave himself a running start and leapt over the hole in the hallway. Stephanie and Amy escorted the children up the stairs, and the Dark Fiend of the Inferno quickly followed behind them, Mindy in his arms. Up two flights they went, up to the third floor. Once on the way up, Vince looked back. He had expected to see demons chasing them, or perhaps the sorcerer casting a spell. Instead, he saw absolutely nothing. It worried him. After the sorcerer's whole thing on "punishment", Vince would have expected a little more vigilance from him or the Demon Army. Something was strange. Something was wrong. At the top, Amy, Alice, Robert, and Stephanie lined the children against the far wall, away from the stairwell. Vince ran toward them and carefully placed Mindy on the floor. Still worried, he turned to look at the stairwell. The sorcerer now stood there. Hellfire coalesced behind him, gathering into a massive glob. Then, at the whims of the man with the blood-red robes, the whole thing came screaming through the air, aimed at Vince, aimed at Mindy, aimed at the children, aimed at the whole room. Vince stretched his arms out and created a wide shield of flame, hoping it would be large enough to block it all. The Hellfire crashed into him. There was too much energy. The Inferno Fiend could feel it leaking through the fireshield, burning at him. Vince grunted as the flames forced him to take a step back. Suddenly, Vince felt his burden lighten. Slowly, he strained his head to take a look. Stephanie stood beside him, her staff raised in the air. Her Holy barrier now aided his fireshield, and the Hellfire was contained. Finally, the flames subsided. Stephanie gave a sigh of relief. Vince collapsed to his knees. The red-cloaked sorcerer had now disappeared. |