Round 3 Part 3

"'Ey Shard! I ca't believe we foun' you!" yelled a large behemoth as he bounded around the stairway and to stand toe to claw with Shard. "Oh. An' who's your friend?" He asked as he stared at Greave as if he didn't have a care in the world.

"His name is Greave and he isn't my…" Shard stopped short as she saw that Weaver's joy meter was practically overloading if the look on his face was anything to go by. She sighed as she went with another response. "Wait Weaver. What do you mean by 'We found you?'"

"Huh?" Weaver turned to look at her since the new white haired guy seemed only interested in being a statue and staring off behind him. "Oh yea'. Shard I gone an' foun' Vireo since we've been sep'rated. You woudn't believe how soak'd he was. An' freezin' too." The large man turned his head around to look at his other companion, "Righ' Vireo. Uh… Vireo?"

The green haired man in question was only a couple feet behind Weaver but he suddenly froze in his tracks as his crimson eyes locked with Greave's violet ones.

Shit was about to go down.

The whole room was quite except for the four's breathing. But as a drop of water fell from Vireo's fabulous fringe, sound came back to reality with a vengeance. The splash sounded amplified, footsteps started to beat against the ballroom's floor, and the sound sundae was topped with a yell that rebounded off the walls.

The battle cry came from Greave as he charged at the damp man at full force and tackled him to the ground. As they fell, Greave got the upper hand and pinned the fancy man's arms behind his back with one hand while keeping Vireo's face against the tile with the other.

As soon as Vireo got his breathe back, he started to squirm in the hold and snapped, "What the Hell is wrong with you? Get you your dirty peasant mitts off me this instant!"

"And just why should I listen to a thief?" Greave yelled back and applied more pressure on the jerk's precious face.

"Gah! Weaver! This lunatic is trying to kill me!" Vireo shrieked. "Get him off me! This instant!"

"Oh cry all you want you crook." The black cladded boy gloated. "I don't see why anyone would want to help the likes of you. They would have to be one idiotic, oblivious, gullible…" The back of his shirt was snatched up and he was pulled off of the trickster. Greave would have continued his train of thought, but the look he got from the giant buffoon kind of messed up his train of thought.

"Apol'gize to ma' friend righ' now." Yep. His train of thought was totally lost…

Now as the boys quarreled, Shard caught sight of a Dystorax in the corner of the room. When it noticed it had her attention, it pointed to the human laying on the ground and simple vanished from sight with its speed.

She trudged towards Vireo's prone form and held out a hand to help him up. As one last act of kindness. But he merely cringed away from it, claiming he didn't desire to be contaminated by her fishy germs. While he tried to stand up by himself, a swirl of light opened around their feet and engulfed them both. They disappeared so fast, the fair-haired nineteen year olds didn't even notice their disappearance until the portal closed in on its self and released a bright flash of light.

"Huh… Wha' just 'appened?" Weaver asked expecting Greave to know the answer to everything.

Greave was grasping at straws and told the giant, "I think they went off to another room to fight… But I can't be too sure…" He looked down at his feet, which were still hanging above the ground… "Do you think you can put me down now?"

"Wha'? No. Not until you apol'gized to Vireo."

He couldn't believe the nerve of this guy…. "You do know he's not even here right now? Right?..." The guy just had to look at him with that dumbfounded look didn't he?

"Doesn't mat'er. It's the thought tha' counts. So you're stayin' up 'til I hear a sor'y."

Man this guy was stubborn. At this rate he would never get down… "What are you talking about? You can easily get out of his hold." His mini self told him. "And just how would I do that" he questioned the floating figure. His mini me sighed and floated up to his pointed ear and whispered his brilliant escape plan. Greave could only smile at the simplicity of it.

When the giant started to get bored with Greave's inactivity, his attention when to looking around at all the crystals and the patterns laid out around the room instead of his captive. That was Greave's time to make his move. He raised his hands straight up and shrugged out of his shirt and landed softly on the ground. His movements were only noticed when he had to yank his chains free from his long sleeved shirt, but the oaf had a pretty slow reaction time apparently.

Then he swiped kicked his leg underneath Weaver and made the big guy loose his footing and fall flat on his back. By the time the goliath got back on his feet, Greave was a few yards away and pulling his shirt back on.

The bulkier of the two grunted as he pulled himself up off the floor and reached for his axe. "Why the heck would ya gon' an' do tha' for? Tha' was a cheap shot!" he complained as he steadied his grip on his weapon.

"I had to do what I had to do you idiot!" Greave replied. "We have to fight and nothing is going to stop me from earning the High Ruler's trust. Not even an imbecile like you."

Weaver's stance changed as faced his opponent and remarked through gritted teeth, "Well… If it's a fight ya want, it's a fight ya gonna get." And he charged.

He raised his axe above his head and brought it down with all his might towards the scrawny guy. The kid was able to duck out of the way in time as the blade struck the wall with enough force to make the chandelier shake. "That doesn't seem good…" Greave heard behind his shoulder as Weaver released his weapon from the ballroom's clutches and tried to hack away at Greave again. But instead of just dodging the sharp steel like a normal and san person, Greave grabbed at the ends of his chains and pulled them taunt in hopes that it would stop the blade's decent.

Against all odds, the metal in the chains were stronger than the sharp edge of the axe, but it didn't mean that Greave was stronger than Weaver. The taller of the two started to bring down more force on the chains and was causing Greave's stance to waver and his elbows to start to bend.

He started to panic. The chances of getting out f this situation unscathed were not in his favor and the last thing he wanted was for that blade to slice him open like some sick dissection experiment. His heartbeat felt like it was going a mile a minute and his pulse was the only thing he could hear for what felt like forever. But then he heard it… A sinister voice from the back of his mind…

"You know I can make this so much easier for you…" it said with a voice as smooth as velvet.

"Don't listen to him Greave! He's a liar! Don't believe anything he tells you. He'll only get you hurt again," his smaller self shouted over the sound of his pulsing heart.

"Aww…" the dejected voice spoke again. "Why can't you just trust me? I'm a part of you that will never leave and I could easily dispatch this God damned fool…" The shadowed figure in his mind bargained. "Plus… If you give me control, you'll earn The High Ruler's love faster… It's a win-win situation for everyone. What do you say?" The mental imagery of a wicked smile came to the forefront of Greaves mind as he pondered the deal.

"It seems too good to be true," he muttered under is breathe as his eyes closed in concentration.

"THAT'S BECAUSE IT IS!" was the fear filled yell from his tinier self. But try as he might the small guy couldn't convince him. Greave's mind was made up. He knew it was helpless as soon as he started to fade away.

"Okay. Help me out here." His body went slack as the darker personality took over. It probably wasn't the best situation for the transition to take place as the sudden slack allowed the axe to slice into his left arm, but that didn't seem to faze him.

Weaver withdrew his axe before it had the chance to cut off the arm entirely and he staggered back in shock. Whether is was the fact his blow made its mark or that the blood oozing out of the wound was purple, he never got the chance to say. By the time he could have responded with some blathering nonsense, a glowing link of chains flew through the air and wrapped around Weaver's axe and yanked it free from the man's meaty hands and flung it under the stairs amongst the instruments and caused a cacophony of noise.

As the ruckus was going on in the ballroom, in another part of the palace, the High Ruler was watching the entertainment unfold on one of her many screens with a couple of her advisors. She slammed her fist down on the arm of her chair and cursed when she saw how much blood was spilt in such a small amount of time. "If that idiot keeps it up at this rate, he'll be dead in a minute." She glared at the screen with such intensity you would think she could shoot lasers out of her eyes.

Warily, Izolde spoke up and asked her ruler, "Do you wish for me to end the battle early my liege? I can have the injured prisoner transported back to the Dystorax for treatment in no time."

"No." The Empress replied. "I can not choose now to show any form of mercy or favoritism this late in the game. He must earn his chance to serve me… Without any more of my interventions."

"Hah! Now you don't want to show favoritism? That is hilarious," a raven haired soldier chuckled darkly. "You wouldn't have to deal with all this melodrama if your ice princess over there didn't give that walking bag of crystals a choice to go through a portal. I could have grabbed him earlier, and we could have had him strapped up by now."

"Really? Is that how you truly feel?" She spoke calmly towards her subordinate. "If I didn't know better, I would have thought you were criticizing my plans… Which of course would have dire consequences for my normal subjects…"

"Well it's a good thing I'm not one of your run of the mill subjects than is it?" He smirked in her direction. She couldn't help but grin back, but a sudden sound from the ballroom's screen recaptured the watchers' attention.

By now Greave seemed to have slammed into Weaver and the end result of the hit had the muscled guy's back slumping against the wall. Slowly, his hulking figure sunk to the floor as the ganglier fighter stood over his body. He crouched down to Weaver's level and stared him straight in the eyes.

"You know…for the longest time I wanted get my hands on one of your kind…" Greave confessed in grim tone. Weaver groaned as he tried to get back up just to be kicked back down. "Now that wasn't nice. I wasn't finished yet. Do you even know any fucking manners you bastard?" he panted as he ground his heal into the Atmosian's gut. "Now where was I?"

"Oh yes… I remember now… Ever since I got away from that horrible place I've always wondered about your kind… Like how much pain can they go through? How much can they bleed without dying? How similar they are to a Constantile… Trivial things like that… But one thing I have been dying to figure out is if your blood could ever be as useful as ours…" His grin became even more maniacal and twisted than before as he sat down on the giant's chest and grabbed a fistful of his hair.

He leaned in close to the human's disgustingly rounded ear and saw that his blue eyes widened in fear. Then he whispered, "Night night, Princess." and promptly shoved Weaver's head against the wall. "Now then… Let's see you bleed blue." He muttered as he reached for a broken piece of tile and held it over the lummox's arm and slashed off his sleeve and sliced the skin on his wrist where his blue veins showed.

But RED came out. Of all the colors in existence, it was bloody red seeping out of the wound. He couldn't even try to crystallize it to see what it could form because he was wearing these atrocious, energy-diverting chains. He tried to get off the unconscious Atmosian, but as soon as he stood, he became light headed and plummeted back to the ground. He looked around the room and saw what his problem was… his blood was everywhere, and it didn't seem like his wound wanted to heal any time soon.

He sighed in defeat… "Sorry kiddo…" he said out loud, but directed his apology to the regular Greave… "Didn't think I would get hurt this bad… but it was fun to be out while it lasted…" and with that his vision swam and everything he saw inversed their color and slowly faded to black.

As his head hit the tile floor, the High Ruler turned to Izolde. "Go to the ballroom with Big Boss and send them to the medical wing this instant. If either of my pawns die because of any dilly dallying, you will surly regret it."

Izolde bowed and took her leave as fast as she could while Big Boss followed behind her in one of her portals.

"Now as for you…" She turned to her red-eyed soldier with a look that could kill a million puppies. "From what I could recall, I was about to punish you earlier for your disorderly conduct… But of course you may correct me if I'm wrong." She offered with a sly smile.

The man gulped and replied that she wasn't incorrect.

"Good. Now that wasn't so hard, was it?" she said as she leaned up against her throne and observed Izolde and BB at work. "As punishment, I order you to clean up the ballroom from top to bottom and to collect all the blood spilt during battle. And make sure not to let the blood mix together.  You know what atrocities will happen if that is to occur." She glanced at the man as he bowed to her. "Is that clear enough for you Dark Ace?"

The former Talon raised his head towards the High Ruler and answered "Crystal clear, Master."