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The Portal Games

Arena 2, Episode 2

Black Chaos

"Heh. It's like one of those giant plasma ball toys," Ailsa said.

Nobody else answered, and the stingray shrugged. Likely enough the comparison only worked for the things in her world, not theirs. Even so, it helped to think of it like that.

As the lightning bolts of red energy danced across the interior surface of the room, the team watched and studied in different ways. Ailsa followed the dancing bolts of energy like they were artillery-fire, watching the patterns that they created as they flowed across the room, while Tarin eyed them like they were the mechanical pattern of a machine, moving like pistons as they did whatever it was that they were meant to do. Sanmer was muttering to himself as he tapped his fingers against the palms of his hands, and Lykus whistled to himself, impressed by the display.

Only Jaden held back, shaking his head with every clash of energy, holding one hand to his forehead. Lykus looked over his shoulder at the orca, cocking his head to the side.

"What's the matter?"

"That feeling, that...that demon feeling...It's so...strong," Jaden said.

"What, are you saying that storm cloud in there's the demon?" the wolf asked.

"No, not...not exactly. It's more like...I don't know..." He shook his head again. "It's all around us. Everywhere. But that thing...that's like the hole that it's reaching through, the part where it can put its fingers into our world."

"...Huh. I wonder if it'd like to finger me."

"Let's not jump to seducing the demon," Tarin said, shaking his head. The deer walked to the end of the corridor, looking up and down the interior of the sphere. "Hmmm..."

"Any sign of the other team?" Ailsa asked.

"Not that I can see."

"Then we have a little time to sort this out. Anyone got a coin or a rock or something?"

Nobody did, or at least, nobody had something that they were willing to throw away. Tarin jogged back to the station that they'd just left, grabbing a piece of rubble from the destroyed defenses, and jogged back.

"What do you need it for?" he asked.

"Just an experiment. Throw it up."

The deer did as he was told, and as soon as the chunk of metal left the bounds of the corridor, it stopped falling up and started falling towards the walls of the sphere. Gravity sucked it to the outer edge of the sphere rather than back down towards them, or in towards the storm at the center of the Core.

"Directional gravity," Sanmer said, chuckling. "Well, that's going to make this easier."

"More interesting, at least," Tarin muttered. "It means we can -"

CRACK!

A bolt of red lightning struck the panel just overhead, hitting the chunk of metal that they'd tossed up to it. The light faded almost instantly, but the afterimage burned their eyes. As they blinked it away, however, they saw what had been left behind.

The piece of metal had been little more than a jagged piece of junk metal, but the lightning had turned it into something else. The jagged edges had been exaggerated, becoming something like an infernal dagger. A red light glowed around the edge of the sharp part of the metal, and the bottom of the metal shard had twisted, becoming a spiral sort of grip leading down to a smoothed-out spike.

"Dibs!" Lykus shouted.

All eyes on the team whipped around to him, their eyebrows raised. The wolf shrugged.

"What? It's a demon knife. That's awesome."

"I think that the knife should go to someone that knows how to use it," Ailsa said. "And as far as I know, that's me and Tarin."

"...I, uh, have a little bit of knife skill," Jaden admitted.

"Give it to the orca," Tarin suggested. "If it's actually demonic, it might be better for it to be in the hands of someone that can handle the demon."

"I can handle demons!" Lykus protested.

"Yes, but would that be handling, or 'handling'?"

"I...you...Ugh."

The wolf threw up his hands. Thus decided, the deer carefully reached up and over the edge, biting his lips as he felt the shift in gravity. He almost fell out of the corridor, only barely catching himself as he grabbed the knife and pulled it back.

"..."

"What's the matter?" Ailsa asked.

"It's...different. Very different."

"Let me see?" Jaden asked.

Handing it over, the deer rubbed his hands against his sides, almost like he was desperately trying to get something off his fingers. It didn't seem to work, as he was still rather discontented, but he stopped trying after a few seconds. Jaden, on the other hand, went wide-eyed as soon as he touched the blade.

As the orca muttered, holding both hands around the handle and squeezing it desperately, Ailsa leaned out again. She narrowed her eyes at the base of the support pillar for the central part of the Core, the large, opaque rod that held the storm and its container up, and took her time to study it.

At the base, just past the last row of panels, was a raised little chunk of metal. Cut into it were little slats, vents that seemed to wheeze hot air out from under the power system. She smiled -

CRACK!

Only to have her view cut off with another blast of red lightning. She shook her head, looking over her shoulder.

"Okay. I think we've got a plan here. Anyone got a bead on the pattern just yet?"

Nobody answered.

"Alright. Well, we got some time...let's see if we can figure this out."

Whoopsie Daisies

"Ooooh, I think I can feel it now," Isabella said. "There's a lot of stuff changing up aheads, everyone."

The pangolin wasn't saying anything that the rest of them didn't know at that point. The fact that they were completely saturated with a strange red glow said that they were approaching the core of the demonic energies that ran the station, and even Sarah seemed a little on-edge with the odd tingle in the air as they followed the corridor to its terminus.

They stopped at the edge, and as Sarah gently unwound the pangolin from her chest and waist, they stared at what the other team was doing.

Black Chaos had two members - Ailsa and Tarin - leaping from their corridor to the panels on the wall just under them. They'd run down, then up, and over, always following a pattern, slowly expanding with each run. Further, further, then back, retreating from the patterns of red lightning flashing down on them.

One spark of red lightning almost caught Ailsa, but she stopped, whipping around with something that she threw toward it. The lightning stopped, and the thing she threw fell back to her hands as the stingray ran back across the panels to the safe part of the corridor.

"They've been practicing," Sergino muttered.

"I'm so proud!" Isabella said with a happy squeal.

"Cooperation is nice to see, but I think we have bigger problems. They've had more time than us to figure out what to do, and - ah, shit." Sarah shook her head. "The challenge prize is in the center, isn't it?"

The T-Rex was right. The other Whoopsie Daisies looked up at the Core, and through the cloud of swirling energy, they could just make out three different items. One looked like a gun, and the other two were too hard to see, but they remembered how useful the last prize had been for them. Losing this one...

But at the same time, everyone could see just how close Black Chaos was to the vents at the base of the Core. They had been practicing for this while Isabella's team had still been making their way there.

They were at a severe disadvantage.

"Okay, okay. Where do we have to go from here?" Glyn asked, the timber wolf looking around. "Central Core. The map that dragon showed us had eight passages in. We just came in from the south-west, which means the northern passage is over there...And they came in from the south, over there..."

"What are you thinking?" Isabella asked.

"I'm thinking that we grab the corridors leading out. The three leading north, northwest, and northeast. If we can snag those, two of us at each location, then we can force them to come to us. And...well, worst case, we can split up and..."

He didn't say it. Mostly because none of them wanted to think about it.

They could blow the corridors leading out of the Core, forcing Black Chaos to take the east or west route through the outermost parts of the station to get to the exit point. It would all but guarantee that they won, so long as they were able to link up again on the other side.

They all turned to Isabella. The pangolin immediately shook her head.

"No. We're not being that means."

"Might be the only way that we can win," Jason said.

"We are not being that means." Isabella shook her head. "Nobody wants to let the demon out more than I do -"

"You do?!" the entire team shouted.

"Well, um, everything deserves to be free," she said, shaking her head. "But if we do it wrong, then we hurt everybody. And that's bad. So, we gotta be careful...and not make more stuff explode."

"...Fair, but - ah, crap. They saw us," Jason said.

The team leaned out past the corridor exit, watching as Tarin and Ailsa both made a run for the vents. The deer looked like he was screening her, licking something before throwing it up when the lightning came their way. Ailsa leaped and danced between the different panels, and Tarin followed behind, both of them making their way to the bottom of the sphere and the bottom of the rod holding up the Core.

"Shit, shit, shit," Glyn muttered.

"Well, that puts a lot of our plans on hold," Sergino muttered. "I vote that we start running."

"Seconded," Glyn said.

"Alright, okay. Okay. We can't beat them to the prize, so we go around." Isabella nodded. "Unless anyone's got an idea?"

"...I might," Jason admitted. "Let me try something. Sergino, can I borrow your axe?"

Black Chaos

It was a mad dash to the bottom of the sphere, and they ended up using more of the cards that Lykus had offered them than they wanted, but Tarin and Ailsa made it. The rest of the team cheered and began the process of legging it around the sphere to the other side. The safe zone around the equator, a cut-out hallway that avoided the panels at large, would keep them safe while the team captain and her 'muscle' made their way inside. They tossed the vent covers back - trying not to flinch at the lightning coming down and changing them - and got down on their hands and knees, crawling inside the vents.

"Glad that your antlers aren't all grown in right now," Ailsa muttered.

"You and me both," Tarin muttered.

The vents were hot, very hot, and Ailsa almost immediately broke into a sweat that dried off as soon as it left her pores. It was like desert training, but worse, faster, more severe. She felt like she was cooking as she dragged herself forward.

Thankfully, the vents themselves weren't trapped, and they reached a maintenance ladder further in. She panted as she leaned back against the interior of the chute, rubbing her head.

"This is murder," she muttered.

"Need me to climb?"

"Yeah...yeah, go ahead."

As the black-furred deer began his climb, Ailsa leaned back, doing everything she could to just breathe. The heat was distracting, almost painful, and the stingray could feel herself drying out already. The pulsing warmth of the Core was greater than she expected.

Then again, she wasn't sure just what she should have expected. There was raw lightning around them. It was gonna be hot.

As Tarin climbed, the rest of the team continued circling around. They eyed the Daisies across the way as one member of the team flapped his wings, dropping down to one of the panels with an axe in hand. He started hammering on one of the panels, but it wasn't until Sanmer went wide-eyed that they actually got worried.

"Oh, that's bad. That's bad. Jaden? Someone? Do - do something about that!"

"What? What's he doing?" Lykus asked.

"He's trying to redirect the lightning!"

All eyes flicked across the panels, looking for a way down, but there was no clear path. All their practice had been for the one spot that they'd started from, and the lightning patterns were different at the various edges of the sphere. There was no easy path down, no clear route from their position to where the green dragon had set himself up.

Tarin popped into the sphere, dragging himself out of the ladder shaft. A glass barrier stood between him and the storm at large, and the three items that had tantalized them were in reach. The gun, the translator, and the map. He smiled, reaching for the gun -

Whoopsie Daisies

The team was counting on him, and Jason hoped that he was right about this. He'd spotted the knife that Jaden was carrying from across the sphere, and knew that it couldn't have come from the orca's world. If there was one thing that he knew besides debauchery, it was the experience of going from one world to another. That had to have come from here, but they'd not seen any demonic items before. That meant that, maybe, just maybe, the lightning here had changed something.

And if it changed it once, it could do it again.

"Come on, come on..."

The green dragon hammered at the edge of the panel, knowing that the lightning was going to strike any second. He just needed a little bit of a shift, a little gap. Something -

And he got it. He knelt on the panel, tilted Sergino's axe upward, and aimed right down the shaft. He could just make out the black color of Tarin's fur through the glass spheres, and then, it came.

CRACK!

The lightning came right for him, and Jason tensed up, hoping that he was right, that the lightning wouldn't affect him as much if he gave it a new target. It screamed toward him, the sulfur smell of something far worse than lightning following. It hit him, surged through him, burned him...

And then flew back out, right up the axe. He felt it squirming beneath his fingers, rippling, tingling, warping, growing and shrinking and growing again beneath his grip, but he held firm as the lightning shot right back up the axe. It didn't go back to the storm, but straight through the gap in the clouds.

He saw something go boom in the gap, but he didn't know what. He wasn't going to push his luck; he'd already done something, and it was better than nothing. The green dragon threw himself up -

"Nnngh!"

Only to fall on all fours as soon as he hit the 'safe' corridor. He stumbled, his arms failing him, and for a clear and obvious reason.

He'd gone from bipedal to feral.

Jason looked down at his forearms, then down at the axe. It was still trembling, shaking, trying to pull itself along. Shaking his head as his neck grew longer, he leaned forward and bit the axe handle, holding it between his teeth as he trundled along.

Isabella and the others waved him on, with Sergino shaking his head in disbelief. The ice dragon took his axe back, staring at it for a moment before shaking it.

"You stop that," he growled, and the axe immediately ceased its shifting. "...That's right. You listen."

"Isabella, can you fix him?" Glyn asked.

"Um, uh...maybe? I - oh, he's so different...so..."

Jason shook his head. He gurgled, still getting used to his voice, and had to gesture with his tail towards the three different corridors. Glyn nodded.

"North-west. North is blocked, north-east the same."

"Then let's get moving."

Black Chaos

Ailsa bolted up the ladder like a squirrel on speed as soon as she heard the explosion overhead. If something had gone wrong, she had to do something about it. She forgot everything about the heat and the aches that it gave her; all that mattered was her team.

She reached the top floor and found Tarin keeled over, holding one hand to his face. His fur had gone blood-red along his hand and head, though there were no signs of actual blood beyond the color. He had the gun in hand, but their map was obliterated, and the other little block they'd seen was discolored, weaving with tentacles around its edges.

"Tarin?"

The deer groaned, turning his head. His antlers were growing as he moved, and one eye had gone blood red. It had lost pupil, iris, everything, and had gone pure red. The other fixed on her.

"Mmmph...Mission partially accomplished," he said, and his voice crackled with the sound of more than one voice coming through his throat at the same time. "Got the gun."

"What happened?"

"Redirected lightning. Glancing hit."

"...You're good."

"Damn right I am," the deer said. He groaned, reaching up to his growing antlers and pulling at the base. With three good tugs, they came free, falling to the ground. They stopped growing, but the bases continued. "Looks like...looks like it got me a bit..."

"You're not possessed, are you?"

"Mmmph. Not totally."

"That'll do for now. Come on."

They were behind, but only a little. They'd lost the map, but they still had the other goodie, and the gun. A heat beam, from what they were able to discover, and that gave them a chance.

Their reunion was...mixed, to say the least. Lykus was all kinds of fascinated with the changes that had occurred with Tarin, and seemed almost too friendly over it. Sanmer was quietly making notes, of course, while Jaden...

Jaden leaned away. Not fearfully, but out of concern. The dagger he carried, however, started shaking, the blade turning and twisting in the direction of the demon-touched deer, and as it glowed, the tentacled block that they'd picked up started shimmering, gargling out something in a completely different language. Tarin looked down at the cube, lifting it up to his ear.

"It speaks," he said, still in that same multi-tonal voice.

"What's it saying?" Ailsa asked.

"It is offering us help." The deer groaned, shaking his head. "I'm not sure if it's lying or not."

"Spirits...don't often lie," Jaden said. "If they give their word, they have to keep it, but it's whether they keep it the way that you think they will or not."

"What's it offering?" she asked.

Tarin lifted the cube to his ear again. Seconds passed.

"It says it can shut down the power to another cube, if we take it with us."

"...Huh."

The stingray tapped her chin, clearly thinking about it...

Whoopsie Daisies

Jason's greater weight was going to be a problem if they couldn't find a safe corridor to get back to the outer ring, and worse if they got to the outer ring and they had to take the fragile passages to the exit point. However, they had managed to get ahead of the other team, and that meant something.

They emerged on level three of the north-west cube in the middle ring. It was thankfully empty, at least of any threats. But there were bodies.

A lot of bodies.

Sergino's axe shifted again, the bladed end trying to reach for the dead things, and the dragon allowed it. They ignored the crunching sounds of the demonic weapon 'eating' the dead as Isabella looked around.

"Up or down, do you think?" she asked.

"Who knows?" Glyn said, shaking his head. "There's no rhyme or reason to this place."

"Come on, don't get depressed now! We're close!"

"And they won the challenge this time," the timber wolf said, shaking his head. "I don't know if we can get past that."

"We're still ahead," Sarah pointed out, the T-Rex shuffling side to side as she tried to keep warm. "If we can keep that lead, beat them to the next station, then we're basically tied. It'd be a flat run from here to the exit point, even if it's blocked."

"That is correct. They have the prize from the challenge, but if we can stay close, then we have a chance to stay with them, and overtake at the end. We have numbers, now," Kotone said.

"And a new weapon," Sergino pointed out. "By the way. Jason."

"Hmm?"

BONK!

The ice dragon brought his fist down - thankfully lightly - on the feral dragon's head. Jason blinked, his eyes bigger and a bit slower than before.

"Mmmph?"

"That's for getting yourself transformed and taking my axe along for the ride."

"Grrrrr."

Isabella shook her head. As much as she appreciated Jason's efforts, she knew that the transformation could not be easy for him. The pangolin knelt down at the feral dragon's side, pressing her hand to his flank and whispering under her breath.

As she whispered to the demonic essence in the feral, Kotone went to the tube at the far end of the room to check the upper level, while Sarah went to check the one below. They were both halfway there when the whole room hummed for a moment, then went dark.

"Power's out," Glyn muttered as they all started floating off the deck. "...Fuck."

Black Chaos

"It is done," Tarin translated.

"Good. Jaden, keep a good grip on that thing. I want it under control at all times," Ailsa said. "Sanmer? You and Lykus get the heat gun set up for the corridor north. I want us underway as fast as possible."

"You got it."

"And Jaden?"

"..."

"Jaden."

The orca looked up, leaning away from the knife as much as he could. She shook her head, stepping closer and making him hold it tighter, closer to himself.

"I need you to focus. Got it?"

"...I don't think this is a good idea."

"Then blame me later. I'll take the consequences if there are any. Right now, we need to do something to keep any more of us from getting voted off. Now, hold onto that, and don't let it pull anything when we're not looking."

"It gave its word," Tarin said, and she wasn't sure if it was him speaking or the corruption inside him. "It won't do anything to get in our way."

"For now."

The deer didn't confirm or deny. All he did was stare.

Hoping that the dragon would have some way of fixing this when they were back to the voting chamber, she hustled her team along. They had two long corridors between them and the end-point. If they could get there quickly, melt through the ice between them and the next cube, and could get lucky enough that they didn't have to fight anything, then they might just win.

She hoped they could. They needed one.

"Wonder if the demon knows where the other idol is?" the stingray muttered.

Tarin didn't answer. He shrugged, instead, walking along with her.

As they reached the corridor out, the lightning emanating from the core seemed to slow down. It wasn't enough to indicate that the entire station was shutting down, but as Ailsa looked back the way they'd come, it was clear that something was going on. The corridors leading out of the Core to the 'southern' stations were going dark, and if that was the case...

Well, they might not want to hang around for long.

"How long until the ice is melted?" she asked.

"Oh, two minutes, give or take," Sanmer said.

"Alright. Tell me when it's done. We're moving out ASAP."