Chapter XLVIII - We Were Near a Forest, Right? ~Kyanosa

Kyanosa sat on a tree branch, with his back to the trunk, one foot on the branch and the other leg dangling over the side. He was looking upwards, trying to spot the stars he could through the canopy. Actually, "trying" is probably the incorrect terminology. It was more like he was staring off into space, focusing on an area where he had seen stars before and hoping they would show again. He liked stars. It was always nice thinking that wherever and wherever a person is, whatever the circumstances, some cosmic force always felt the compulsion to leave a light on for you.

He liked the night in general, really. Soft shades of purple and blue twisting together in the sky, occasionally accented by the passing clouds that shone in the light of the white, radiant moon. All sorts of nocturnal animals singing together, however inadvertently, to create the ever-changing melody of the forest. A gentle wind that blew through the trees, caressing its components and pushing leaves slowly along their inevitable course. Or at least that's how he remembered nights on First Earth.

Kyanosa sighed quietly. He hadn't really missed home until right now. His dream had always been to go off on some sort of great adventure, and with that random portal years ago, he had gotten his chance. From the grand search for Havering, whom Kyanosa still wished he had had the chance to see, to the escape from the doomed Zolott, it was like life didn't slow down. He would be the first to admit that he didn't want to go back to Earth at all. He just had the mental capacity to realize the impossibility of that suggestion; otherwise he would have gone Metaru on everybody as well.

But since the Spectrum came by and picked him up a few days ago, things were much slower. Barring the one incident where he'd been abducted by the Protoss, an event that he was still trying to rationalize, it had been pretty much waiting on the train. He didn't mind that so much, because then he still got the opportunity to fraternize with the myriad heroes. Kaye's speech was probably the turning point. Before that, he could always at least tell himself that he was important, that his powers were somehow needed. He thought that he was on this trip for a reason. Turns out he was just the comic relief.
There is very little worse in life than finding out that all of your friends hate you. One of them is finding it out when you can't go home.

Kyanosa leaned his head back against the trunk and went over what he knew about the planet on which he was, both from Orange Yoshi's description and his own time playing Secret of Mana. He was under the impression that he could manage a life here. He sure as heck couldn't go back. Not only would it ruin his dramatic (or so he told himself) exit, but he didn't want to be a hassle to anybody, especially not people he liked. Besides, he would still get his dream of living in a video game world. Maybe his experiences could be of some use. There might be an opening somewhere as a bard. He had the stories down enough.

Right about then, Kyanosa heard some of those weird forest sounds below him, so he quickly stuck his yo-yo to the tree branch and lowered himself to the ground, watching around carefully. Just when he had come to the conclusion that it was a small forest animal, he heard it again, and much closer. Although that could be attributed to the fact that he was no longer twenty feet above it, he went invisible just in case.

Oh, right. Nobody reads these chapters. Well, in an earlier one, Kyanosa got a Mix marble which would allow him to combine powers to form new ones. He had tried out every combination on the train and, using the old Zolott yellow book (which he still kept rolled around his calf inside his metal pants) and a pen he had kept handy since he got back home, he made a chart of all the different Mix powers he had so far. He often studied it when things got dull, but he knew the Stone and Mirror combinations right off the bat. It turned him invisible.

He breathed very quietly, slowly looking around to find the general direction of the noise. After a good three seconds of this, Kaye came into view, pushing through a few bushes that happened to be there. Kyanosa froze, then traced his eyes down to her hand. It looked alright, but he didn't want to take the risk that she'd still be mad at him, so he didn't say a word. He was sorry for everything that happened, but he felt she would be more than happy to put aside her pacifist feelings for the opportunity to remove one of his less vital organs. Besides, he didn't have any money to pay for anything inside that backpack that he had happened to break. So he stayed quiet. There.

Kaye huffed and looked around for some sign of devastation, like where Kyanosa had run into a tree or accidentally set a bush on fire. She'd been searching for him for a good amount of time, considering that he was Kyanosa and not Lich or Ratch or somebody important, and she wasn't in her greatest mood. She leaned against a different tree and took another glance around the area. And then she looked straight at Kyanosa, directly into his eyes.

Kyanosa instantly went visible, pulled out his yo-yo, and began a Tarzan-style retreat though the forest. Honestly, Kaye was as surprised as anybody would have been to see him appear out of thin air. Truth be known, she was simply staring as well, and she happened to do it in his direction. Also taking into account that she didn't even know he could be invisible, it was enough to give most people a heart attack. But no, this is one of Pyro's characters. So instead, she gave chase.

Since, for a better story, they were both pretty adept at what they were doing, neither could gain any ground on the other. Kaye was beginning to trip on the rocks and roots that were sitting about, so after a bit she sprouted her wings and took to the air, staying high enough to avoid trees but low enough to keep track of Kyanosa. Kyanosa didn't know about this, so when he turned around and saw that Kaye had disappeared, he pulled himself up to one branch and stood there, catching his breath. The wind created by the speed of his movements had brought tears to his eyes, but he had both hands on his knees, so he didn't wipe them away. In fact, it took him a good few seconds after Kaye had gracefully landed on the same branch to even notice her.

Kyanosa jumped, startled, and backed into the tree trunk, barely catching himself before falling off.

"Go away."

His voice was breathy, like somebody who had just run a new personal sprint record. Tree-swinging takes more out of you that the books and movies let on.

Kaye crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow. "Excuse me?"

"Look, I'm sorry about your hand and backpack and all, okay? Now leave me alone."

Kaye stood there, trying to figure out what was up. Heck, to be honest, so was Kyanosa. So are you and I. Kaye was taken off guard by hearing Kyanosa without a snappy comeback, and seemingly devoid of his perennial joviality. Kyanosa felt the same way about himself, but had the added bonus of guessing why Kaye was after him and not breaking open champagne with the others now that he had left. You, the reader, are working on where the blink this story is going. I'm still stalling while coming up with the next line. Believe me, when I sat down to write this chapter, I didn't plan on putting in dialogue. I don't know what I'm doing. Anyway, plot.

Kyanosa wasn't getting happier. His body ached, he had a splitting headache from processing the events of the night, and he still felt guilty. He usually didn't have to deal with physical, mental, and spiritual anguish at once. So he fell back on the general standby in our stories and otherwise, a technique he had seen used by a few of the other heroes and one that almost always pulled everybody out of a standoff. He blew stuff up.

"Go away!" he conjured up a fire disc, the result of the combination of Fire and Yo-yo, and hurled it at Kaye.

Due to his terrible aim and the fact that his eyes still weren't working right, it missed her by a solid foot, but it gave him time to pull out his Sword and Parasol combination: a cane with helicopter blades at the top. He grabbed onto the hook and took off, flying high above the forest. Kaye followed, halfway because of the reason she had set out in the first place and halfway to see what nifty new things he would pull out.

Kyanosa had the helicopter cane going full-tilt when she rose to his altitude, but it didn't take much to catch up to him now that they were in her element. It sure as heck wasn't his; he was having no small trouble controlling the direction of his flight, though his speed remained largely constant. Once she got within a few dozen yards of him, he suddenly un-summoned the helicopter, chucked another fire disc at her, and brought the helicopter back out again. She quickly dropped to dodge it and kept on course. After another second he repeated his technique, winging three this time, then four. After a bunch of misses, he was throwing them at a rate of near two a second, using his momentum and brief stints with the helicopter to keep him aloft. Kaye had very little trouble avoiding his random volleys, but a few close calls were starting to make her wary.

Finally, a teary-eyed (both from his own feelings and the effects of moving quickly without adequate ocular protection) Kyanosa decided that he'd had enough. He shot nearly straight up with the helicopter, putting Kaye at a diagonal following him. Suddenly he cancelled the Mix aspect, leaving himself with just the parasol, and reused it, combining it with Mirror. The parasol opened, then inverted itself, like what happens to an umbrella when too much wind turns it inside-out. He spun around and looked down at Kaye, or at least the moving blur in the large blur that was his vision. He whispered the word "Go" and pointed the parasol, which vaguely resembled a satellite dish, at Kaye. Then, with a rather large shout of "Away!", he pushed a button on the hook.

Instantly a large yellow beam shot out of the parasol, about a yard in diameter and moving at the speed one would expect for a laser of great destructive quality. Kaye just managed to dodge it with no injury to herself or any of her possessions, but the beam itself kept going until it hit the ground, where it proceeded to do its job. First, due to hitting at an angle, it sped along the ground, leaving a ditch roughly the size of a four-lane expressway. When it finally came into contact with a tree large enough to set it off, the beam exploded into a large dome that gradually got larger until it faded away. When it was done, the area in a fifty-foot radius of the former tree was totally leveled.

As for Kyanosa himself, the force of the explosion blasted him up and backwards through the air, leaving a trail of yellow sparks and sparkly tears. He had temporarily forgotten that, to work, his weapons drew energy from himself, and the massive power-switching he had just finished executing very nearly robbed him of the energy he spent on personal life-support. Eventually his path reached an apex, and in his downward plunge he gathered the sense of mind to call forth his yo-yo. He dropped it into the forest, hoping to catch a tree branch, and it did. He reeled himself downwards in the direction of said branch, which sounds pretty stupid if you're not as experienced as he in these techniques. He swung below the branch with the string just short enough to keep him from smashing into the ground. Unfortunately, he wasn't watching his aim, and he ran into another, sturdier branch rather soon.

He dropped the last twenty or so feet to the ground and rolled, making a painful noise whenever his weight rested on his arm, broken courtesy of the aforementioned branch. When the came to a stop, it was thankfully on his back, and he lay on the ground, unmoving except for the rapid rising and falling of his chest. Nothing passed through his head but Breathe, breathe, breathe, and his mind barely registered the screaming pain in his left arm. It didn't focus on his current, very, very bad situation, nor how the people he had left behind would react to the fact that he had just fired a very large laser cannon at the only person who had gone looking for him. It kind of wondered why Kaye was standing over him with that look on her face, and then it decided to go to sleep.