The Trials Of The King Chapter 9

Surge!!!

By Nanaki

Early June 17

Zeik ran forward to explain the situation to the huge creature. "Uh, excuse me sir. But we have summoned you here to fight against-"

Serges, for indeed it was him, looked scornfully down at Zeik. "Kid, why in hell would I help you?! I don't care what's going on here! I have so many more important things to do!" Then he took a good look at himself. "And why am I alive again?! I work much better without a body now. Rofellos is going to hear about this one..."

"Please, just hear me out. This won't take long." Zeik wasn't sure how to persuade something this powerful.

"No way! Send me back now, or you'll deeply regret it!" Zeik began to move back toward Sira. Serges followed his line of sight, then suddenly sniffed the air. "Wait just a minute..." A smile came to his face. He suddenly charged toward Sira. She turned to run, but didn't get very far before he was right on top of her. "You've got HIS blood in you! I've been..." He stopped, then sniffed the air again. "Hmm... Someone else here has it twice as bad. I'll deal with you later." Serges kicked out very lightly with his foot, and Sira went flying through the air, smashed into a rather large rock, and was quickly knocked out.

.

"What the hell is that?!!" Crono charged back up toward the Pulsar Cannon. "It's heading right for us, and at that size, it's going to be here pretty damn soon! Lucca, can you nail it with one big shot?"

"I can try." Lucca flipped the handles sideways, and pressed a large red button. The tip of the cannon began to light up with a steadily increasing glow. She levelled it at Serges' rapidly charging form, then pressed the button again. A truly huge beam of energy roared out of the cannon, smashing full force into Serges' chest. He kept right on coming, as if nothing at all had happened.

"What the-?" Nadia exclaimed. "Lucca, how could he-?"

"I don't know!" Lucca gestured helplessly. Then she slapped her head. "Oh crud, I can't believe how stupid I was! Despite all that energy, it was still set to stun! I can give him a lethal blast this time! Hold on!" Lucca flipped a few levers, then began to charge it up again.

"It's already too late!" Crono cried. "Jump!" He grabbed Nadia and Lucca, and quickly jumped away from the cannon. Scarcely a second later, a huge fist smashed it into several thousand pieces. Crono whirled around to face the threat, now definitely wishing he had Rainbow.

"Now that the little annoyance has been taken out, we can get down to business." Serges dusted his hands off, then pointed at Nadia. "You have Vigo's blood."

"Who's Vigo?" Nadia quickly whispered to Lucca.

"Schala's dad, I think." Lucca whispered back.

Serges ignored them. "I've been wanting a rematch for over 13,000 years! I'm going to pay you back, with interest!"

"You'll have to go through me first!" Crono stepped forward protectively.

Serges looked at him with surprise. "Well, I didn't expect to see you here."

"What are you talking about?" Crono demanded as he drew out the Swallow. "I've never seen you before! I don't even know what the hell you are!"

"On the contrary, I've run into you more than once. Ah, yes, but you haven't hit the thousand mark yet, so you won't remember. Anyway, if you won't step aside, I'll have to kill you too."

"You got that right!" Crono shouted. He charged forward, then jumped as high as he could and nailed Serges with Confuse.

"Hm. You fight physically too. Interesting." Serges commented as he hit Crono with a backhand slap that smashed him hard into the ground. Crono quickly dusted himself off, and began to hover in midair.

"I can't be beaten so easily! I killed Lavos, and a-!" He sputtered angrily, only to be interrupted.

"Lavos was a wuss!" Serges shouted back. "We could have kicked his ass easily if he hadn't turned us against each other!"

Six lines of the lightning wavelength converged underneath Serges, and erupted into a large explosion. He leaned back and laughed, but otherwise, there was no visible effect. "Oh, you humans just don't learn, do you? You think you've truly mastered lightning?" He stretched his arm out, and it took on a blue glow. A blue explosion erupted in the middle of the field, quickly roaring outward. Crono raced back and tried to shield Nadia and Lucca with his body, but it hit all of them pretty bad. Nadia quickly cast Cure 2 on him, but it looked like he was feeling pretty bad.

"Okay, I've heard about enough out of you." Lucca glared at him. Her own hands began to glow, and the intense heat of Flare surrounded Serges. He glared back at her for a second, then cracked up.

"I can't believe it! This is exactly like last time, but none of you even have my weakness! Since Ultima didn't finish you off, have a taste of Merton!" A huge wall of fire roared forward, destroying everything in its path. All three of them were thrown violently backward as the fire scorched them, and the violent storm also hurled pieces of the Pulsar Cannon at them. Not one was concious when they landed.

.

"Crud, Sira, wake up!" Zeik shook her roughly, trying to staunch the blood flowing from an obviously broken arm. "Surge Weapon is going to kill them! You're the only one who can get rid of him!"

Suddenly, a very large shadow loomed over him. "She won't be waking up any time soon." Ozzie said gruffly. "Matuyama, make it easy on yourself an surrender now."

"You don't understand!" Zeik shouted at him. "That thing wants to kill the queen! He won't stop until he does! We can't control him! The only one who can send him back is her." He pointed at Sira's still form.

"You summoned something you can't control, huh? Why am I not surprised? Lemme guess, she's never summoned before?"

"Not really, this was the first serious attempt."

"She shouldn't have been able to wield that much power then."

"She didn't seem to be able to, until I..." Zeik gulped, "..until I killed a bunch of mystics."

"So she was able to utilize our natural magic. Interesting." A bright light flashed as the Merton spell ended, and Ozzie looked up. "The humans aren't going to be happy with me if Crono dies. All right, I suppose I'd better help you." Ozzie stretched his flabby arms out, and a healing light fell on Sira. While she was under the light, Ozzie had a sudden realization. "That's Crono's daughter!! What the hell is she doing on your side?!"

"She's..." Zeik remained silent for a moment. "I don't really know." Sira finally began to open her eyes.

"What happened?" She rubbed the back of her head.

"You got knocked out by the Surge Weapon. And, he's about to kill your dad, so I'd be unsummoning him pretty fast."

"All right." She slowly stood up, then stretched her hand out toward Serges. She started to frown as nothing happened. "He's resisting. This may take a while."

Ozzie looked down at Zeik reluctantly. "Well Matuyama, you sound like you want him to stay alive, so let's team up."

"All right." Zeik reluctantly agreed. He started to charge toward Serges, when a white light surrounded him. When he could see again, he was already there. It seemed that Serges was trying to decide whether to kill the king and queen immediately, or to wait for them to wake up so he could battle some more.

Serges looked down at them, and his voice boomed, "You two aren't anywhere close to being as skilled as they are! What can you possibly do?"

Ozzie's eyes seemed to suddenly glaze over. "Maybe we're not as good as they are, but I've got an ace up my sleeve!" Then, a Shadow Bomb rocked into Serges. His armor took most of the blast, but the smile instantly vanished from his face. "Matuyama, attack him now!" Ozzie shouted. Zeik reluctantly ran forward and jumped into the air. As he hit the apex of his jump, Ozzie's arm jerked out. "Shadow Sword!" A beam of Shadow energy raced into Zeik's sword just as it connected with Serges. With the added power, the Murasama slashed deep into him. Serges held his stomach for a minute, then collapsed to his knees.

Then, a look of real fear appeared on his face. "No, not her..." The ground around him began to glow, and he disappeared in a large flash of white.

Ozzie breathed a sigh of relief. "Well, it looks like we just needed to weaken him first. Thanks for your help. Now, get back down to what's left of your men, so we can kick your ass!"

Zeik glared at him. "We're the ones who're going to be kicking! We'll be ready for you!"

"Hmm... I almost feel sorry for you." Ozzie said to the air as he ran away. "Almost." He stretched out his arm again, and Crono, Nadia, and Lucca began to stir.

.

"Took you long enough." Zeik complained as he reached Sira's position.

"Sorry." She grinned sheepishly. "I'm new at this."

Zeik surveyed the battlefield wearily. They had only had five thousand men to begin with, and it looked like fewer than one thousand remained standing. Zeik didn't see four thousand bodies on the field either, so it looked like most of them had been captured. He came to reluctant realization. "We're not going to win."

"What?!" Sira gasped, very surprised.

"We're not going to win. There's no possible way, not with the mystics helping them. I want you to leave now."

"But, I want to stay with you."

"I'm glad to hear that, but there's too much danger. There's not too many of us left. We're going to fight to the end, and it's going to get ugly. All this business about taking prisoners and not heads is going to end. They already got Kaneta and Omi! What chance do you have?!"

"Vincent was a special case." She grimaced. "But all right, if you want me to..."

"Yes, I do." She reluctantly began to run toward the trees to the west, where she could hopefully slip through to Zenan Bridge, and the Guardian fortifications. "I'm fairly sure I'll see you again." He called after her. "And when I do, you can call me by who I really am, Matuyama Tuvai!!"

She smiled as she continued to run. "Very well, Matuyama-sama!!"

Zeik turned to face the northern rise again. This time, he could plainly see the king standing on top. His voice drifted across the field. "Matuyama-san! I ask one more time for your immediate surrender!"

"Never!!!" Zeik shouted simply back. "Everyone who still has the will, charge!"

The greatly diminished mass of Zeik's men surged forward, chants circulating throughout them all. "Sei i tai Shogun! Sei i tai Shogun!! Matuyama!!!" Soon, Zeik and his soldiers reached the front line of mystics, and the blood began to fly.

.

From the trees to the east, two sets of eyes watched Zeik's progress. "Think you have the gun figured out?" Vincent hissed, holding the stump of his arm, which was tied in a tourniquet.

"It's not very hard to use." Plunder responded, squinting through the cross hairs. "Ozzie said we can completely ignore our orders not to kill for this last skirmish."

"Do you have a clear shot?"

"Dead in my sights." Plunder pointed the barrel straight at Zeik, and his finger tensed on the trigger.

"Not in this lifetime." A voice said calmly as the bloody blade of a katana stabbed through Plunder's stomach. His eyes bugged out in surprise before he collapsed to the ground.

"Kaneta!!" Vincent whirled to face him. Indeed, Kaneta stood weakly behind him, clutching the gunshot wound where blood was still seeping from his left shoulder.

"Well, I see Zeik already payed you back for this." Kaneta observed as he noticed Vincent was missing a hand. He painfully leaned down and picked up the gun Plunder had been carrying. "But not for Omi." He levelled the barrel with Vincent's head. Vincent quickly reached down to his boot and whipped out a smaller gun of his own, before Kaneta could fire.

"I'm a hell of a lot more used to these things than you are." Vincent growled.

"That's a chance I'm willing to take." Kaneta's finger tensed on the trigger.

Both guns went off at the same time. One man dropped to the ground.

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"I don't need a plan, just a goal. The rest will follow on its own." - Gerrard

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