Memoirs of a RAFian

[Cloak]

A joy that I'll probably never experience.  Right now, I'll feel lucky to make it to 28.

[Underseen]

No need to be so hard on yourself...

[Blazing Angel]

Sorry Cloak, hope things will get better.

[Cloak]

Probably won't.  But never mind that, I'll post another chapter soon.  I . . . I just don't feel up to it at the moment.

[Underseen]

It's not like you are timed, no need to hurry.

[Gaz]

Take your time.

[Cloak]

Thanks, guys.

Got two new ideas:

• Book XLVII: Go Away! -- *whistles "TMZ"*
• Book XLIX: RAFian Tales -- *whistles "You A Mean One, Mr. Grinch"*

CHAPTER EIGHT:
Wrath of the Master

"You're too late, boy," Malice intoned.  "The bombs are already set to go off.  Abomination just activated them.  In less then three or four Dweller Earth hours, they'll go off."

It was then Cloak's rage got the better of him, his anger got away from him, he didn't register why Malice had given such a wide time limit, considering her plans.  It had not occurred to Cloak that Malice might be lying to him as much as she lied to the deluded fool Abomination.

His eyes began to leak golden-scarlet energy.  The ground beneath his feet began to tremble.  The air rush around into jets and gales of furious wind.  The trees cracked, creaked and moaned eerily and ominously.  All metal nearby shattered into deadly shrapnel, which took to orbit around Cloak in a loose ring.  Rain started to fall, but did not touch the ground upon where Cloak stood.  He sent out pulsating auras of gold and then scarlet, alternating them.  He snapped his bowed head up, and Malice realized that she probably goaded Cloak too far.

"Oh, dear," she muttered in a tone that could misconstrued as fearful.

Cloak roared a purely bestial roar and raised his arms with his fingers in a pinch gesture, and a cascade of jagged earth-spikes jutted up from the ground on either side of him.  Then his opened his hands, splayed his fingers, curved them, and brought both arms forward.  Then he stamped his right foot and punched his fist out, causing a bunch of the earthen spikes to emerge in a straight line at Malice.  All this in a few minutes, but Malice managed to evade this powered attack.

Cloak opened his mouth, and fired a beam of golden scarlett energy in the form of a monstrous roar -- a technique he just made up on the fly.  Malice was fortunate enough that this only frayed her cloak.

"This was my favorite cloak," she grumbled, as she nearly got squash by an earthen rock fashioned into a sixteen-ton weight.

Cloak tried his hand at a Focus Blast-type of attack, which missed her narrowly.

"Perhaps I went too far," she muttered as she sidestepped a barrage of metal shrapnel sent by Cloak.  She panted heavily, as she reflected in an aside, "so what if I did.  The guy is far to hopped up on his own power. . . ."

Cloak was not only fighting Malice, but fighting his own emotions.  This was the kind of thing he usually feared about his powers, losing control of his emotions, of himself.  Cloak did not like the kind of damage, the kind of horror, that this state causes him to wreak.  With a might surge of will, Cloak clenched his fists and gritted his teeth as he firmly regained control over his sensibilities.  He turned his back to Malice and began to walk away from her.

"You're running out of time," Malice snarled.  "The bombs will go off simoutaneously, you know.  Even you can't be in five places at once!"

Cloak smiled inwardly.  Malice had just slipped, she revealed that there were only five bombs.  Though, it occured to Cloak, it could just be another lie, a deliberate statement to manipulate him, as she's proven apt to do.  Cloak's brow furrowed momentarily as his slowed his pace considerably.

"You'll never succeed." she added smugly.

Cloak replied over his shoulder, without even breaking stride, "And you'll never learn."

With that he picked up the pace, heading back to RAF.

[Underseen]

Focus Blast... Cloak is fighting type?

[Cloak]

Nope.

[Darth Revan]

Very cool chapter.

[Cloak]

Thanks.  Just wait, Parker, you'll make an appearance in this chapter, and I'll define a little bit about the Nexus government.

CHAPTER NINE:
Nanite Nuisance

Cloak arrives back in RAF, and sees RAFians milling about.  But they weren't any RAFians that Cloak familiar with -- he only knew very few of them by face and name: Gulliver (a rather gullible and easily-decieved human boy), Skeeter (an annoying braggart of an unknown insectoid species), Itellsya (a rampant conspiracy theorist), and, of course, Rotiart, who had changed from being overtly hateful towards the Realm Walker to being subtly hateful of Cloak.

Not Cloak's first choice for help.  But beggars could not be choosers.  So, he attempted to garner their attention, but to no avail.  He was getting irritated.  The plan must be initiated now!  Now, or else, all Dwellers were doomed.  Cloak knew that Malice was drawing this out for the simple reason of watching him struggle.  Watching him be shunned by those that he counted as friends.  Cloak knew that if she really had any desire to really destroy the realm, she could just remove her cloak.

But then again, the removal of the Prime Universe -- the crux of many other universes* -- would certainly land the attention of the Realm Walker High Council, who are so kindly believing Malice to be dead.  Cloak had tried to appeal and show them proof, but they are more stubborn than Cornelius Fudge.  Doddering old fools.  All eight of them.  Deluding themselves into thinking that a villainous monster is firmly dead.  All of them covet their positions then the lives of innocents lost.

Cloak knew that had he not came to them, they would have believed that he died at Abomination's hands so long ago.  They are so willing to believe anything!  Not even the Nexus is free from the machinations of politicians.  Not even Realm Walkers are free of the taint of incompetence . . . or, as it pained Cloak to believe, corruption.  Cloak was so ashamed of this Council and its Dweller-indifferent politics, he didn't tell his RAFian comrades about it.

It is one reason he made his home among Dwellers, but now they seemed to distrust him for some reason.  Some even seemed to hate.  Some of the ones he would call friends looked confused, for whatever reason.  Demos was holding an empty waterbender waterskin, and Cloak could not imagine why.

"Demos!" Cloak called out to his friend.  "Demos!  I have some bad news!"

Demos didn't look at Cloak, but continued to eye the skin dangerously.  But he said nothing.

"Demos," Cloak repeated when he caught up to him.  "I need your --"

"Did you do it?" he said abruptly, tonelessly.  His body language didn't read friendly.

"What?"

"Did you do it?" he repeated, voice rising.

"What are you --"

Demos held up the skin, and had a very ugly look on his face.

"This was filled with water.  Water which binded me.  Holy water."  His teeth gritted on the last two words.  Cloak couldn't understand where this hostility was coming from.  Demos looked very angry, and his body was giving off subtle waves of heat, causing a slight distortion around his body, which Cloak noticed were covered in serpentine burns -- his regenerative abilities were powerless against holy item damage caused to him it would appear.  "So did you do it?  Is this skin yours?!"

"No, Demos -- I don't need a waterbending skin to --"

"Whatever!"

And he stormed away.  Cloak stood there for many minutes, shocked at what just occured.  He counted Demos among his friends, and now it would seem that Demos hated him. . . . Was all RAF like this?  Was he now an outcast?

Never mind that, Cloak thought furiously, deal with that later.  Focus on the bombs now.  You know what you must do.

And with that Cloak strode swiftly from RAF, unaware that Noelle, Parker, Blaze, Aquilai, Gaz, and Helen were following him.  Cloak plucked a small spherical item from his pocket, pressed the white button on it so that it swelled to the size of a softball.

"Well, I guess we're alone in this, Aximili." Cloak muttered to the ball in his hand.

---
*Universes like Pokemon, Halo, Ben10, etc.  depend on the Prime Universe because this universe spun them off.  While there are other universes that exist independent of this Universe -- if it was created universe by mankind in the real world, it's been spun off by this Universe.  I hope I made myself clear.  Or I probably just made it needlessly complicated.

[Cloak]

'Nother chapter.  Because I'm in a good writing mood now.

CHAPTER TEN:
Bomb Voyage

Cloak strode until he was far enough away, and then he shut his eyes and attempted to use Earthsight to detect the bombs.  He was shocked at the fact that he was able to do so.  Even more shocked that the five bombs were within fourteen miles of each other, radiating out from RAF like a bicycle wheel.  At first, he wondered why they'd be so close . . . did Abomination just get lazy?  Did he just carelessly plant them wherever?

No . . . they were too evenly-spaced.  Too planned to be just random. . . .

Of course.  They wanted RAF to receive the brunt of the bacterial nanite infection.  Cloak's eyes widened as he realized that it would spread from RAF, and the RAFians would receive all the blame!  The bombs probably were programmed and designed not to leave any shrapnel.  It is just what Malice would do. . . .

Cloak cursed aloud, but in the Realm Walker language which sounded like an angry snarl.

<Well, that's no attitude to take,> Noelle said behind him.  Cloak suddenly felt surly and obstinate.  His hand clutched the ball tighter.

"What do you want?  Gonna blame me for something I didn't do?  Like Demos?" Cloak snapped.  He was aware how petulant it sounded, but didn't care.

"No, Cloak," Gaz said, behind him.  Cloak kept his back to him.  "Demos was emotional, he was hurt.  He's not accustomed to that kind of pain. . . ."

"Well, if I don't succeed in disabling Malice's nanite bombs, he'll be in much worse pain," Cloak said, brusquely to her.

"What?!" Parker exclaimed.

Cloak told them quickly what the story was, and he ended with he could not waste anymore time.

"Come on out, Aximili." Cloak said, and the ball he had opened up and a male Quagsire stood there staring blankly and vacantly.

<What device is that?!> Noelle cried, alarmed.

"It's a PokeBall, Noelle," Parker said, then explained the specifics to her quickly before turning to Cloak.  "How's a Quagsire gonna help you with these bombs?"

"It has the Damp ability," Cloak said, as if this was all the explanation in the world.

"Oh," Parker said with a nod.

"What?  How does that help?" Gaz queried.

"There's something about that ability, right?" Aquilai asked.  "I can't remember what it does."

"It prevents self-destructs and explosions," Cloak said.  "Now, I really must be going. . . ."

"Cloak, you don't really think we're gonna abandon you at a time like this, right?" Helen asked.

"Well, I --"

"Cloak!" Blaze said reprovingly, wagging his finger at him.  "You should know better than that!"

"Fine, okay.  But if you're gonna help me disable these bombs, you'll need to be armed."

"We can fight fine." Blaze said, haughtily.

"No, you misunderstand me." Cloak said, bringing out another four PokeBalls.

<There's seven of us,> Noelle pointed out.

"You can only carry six Pokemon at a time," Cloak explained.  "And besides, there's only five bombs."

Cloak pointed out the vague directions that he picked up from Earthsight.  Then he handed "Daisy" the Golduck to Gaz and "Skippy" the Swampert* to Noelle.  Helen and Parker shared "Katara" the Poliwrath, while Aquilai and Blaze shared "Kermit" the Politoed.  Cloak kept Aximili to himself.

"Now, let's get going.  Time's of the essence!" Cloak commanded authoritatively.

---
*Damp is Swampert's Hidden Ability.

[Underseen]

Wow, Pokemon are in this chapter... I should have saw this coming!

[Noelle]

All caught up, great chapters. 

[Blazing Angel]

You have four hours, and their all within fourteen miles of RAF. Seems like a cakewalk. But things are never that easy.