Chapter 26: The Middle of the End
Like Aragorn in the movie of The Two Towers, Christine pushed open the doors of the tower and walked through dramatically, flanked by the grim figures of Flora and Jin. While the speech rounds they had gone through hadn’t been too fierce, the two parli rounds had definitely taken their toll on the pair of debators. Christine had, for the most part, been forced to stand on the sidelines and cringe with every hit scored.
But now they were about to reach their goal. Jin straightened up and walked with a determination he hadn’t shown since he had, fatefully, led them to Yining’s house so many chapters ago. Christine’s eyes were hard, as hard as that time Gordon had hidden her calculator. And Flora…
Flora was ducking and weaving, almost obeying an internal call of “Serpentine! Serpentine!” Christine and Jin noticed at the same time and quickly stepped back, each catching an arm just as she collapsed.
“What is it, Flora?” Christine asked anxiously.
“Too…close…to climax…” Flora groaned, and fainted.
Christine and Jin exchanged glances. “What do we do now?” Jin said, worried, his determination slipping away like a very slippery piece of bread. He took off his jacket, folded it, and placed it beneath Flora’s head. “Uh…oh…”
“Not uh-oh,” Christine said heavily, “please not uh-oh…” She looked around the room.
It was actually quite an impressive foyer. High arches, grand black-and-white photographs, and translations of the word “campanile” into several different languages. But more important was the cage in the corner with two frightened speakers inside. Next to the cage was a wooden door with a brass placard on it.
Most importantly, though, several Hahr Kerr were coming up behind them through the main entrance. Christine came to a decision. “MOVE!”
Together, she and Jin hauled the unconscious Flora over to the cage, moving faster than Lanky Kong on crystal coconuts. Tim and Tina, for it was they, jumped up and grabbed the bars of the cage. Their mouths opened, but no sound came out.
“They’ve taken away their power of Speech,” Christine realized, aghast. “Jin, how long will it take you to open that lock?”
“Not good,” Jin replied dismally, “It’s got quantum encryption, so I’m going to have to demux the ALU before I cut the red wire.”
Christine did a double-take. “Does that mean anything‽”
“Um, sorta,” Jin said offhandedly. The monsters chose that moment to spring.
Christine threw up her hands in an instinctive block, then remembered. Fortunately, this first wave was all Impromptu, which the two of them could handle. But…
“We can’t hold them off forever!” Christine shouted to Jin. “How are you supposed to open that door when you’re busy competing‽”
“I don’t know!” Jin yelled back, “If only Persia was here to take my place!” He paused. “We really need help, from…somebody-or-the-other…”
“Did somebody say ‘somebody-or-the-other’?” said a new voice, with a merry laugh and a British accent. There was a series of FOOWMPing sounds, interspersed with PA’ing sounds. And suddenly, all the nearby monsters fell over. No, doubled over…laughing?
The blur came to a stop and they saw it was a woman about their age. With a familiar face…
“Mridula?” Jin said hesitantly.
The woman grinned and nodded, then took a short bow while swiping one monster’s legs out with an extended foot. “At your service.”
“Mridula!” Christine said excitedly, “Great to see you again!”
“No time for that,” Mridula replied, maintaining the accent. “Jin, get the cage. I’ll keep these monsters off your back.”
“How are you gonna do that?” Christine asked, then covered her mouth for sounding rude. “I mean…”
“It’s my—” Mridula disappeared and the FOOWMP was heard.
“—talent,” she finished, appearing (PA’) back at the door, ready to engage the next wave. “Popping!”
“That may have been the worst pun in the entire story,” Flora said unexpectedly. Both Christine and Jin turned back to look, but she had already lapsed unconscious again.”You just get the ones I miss,” Mridula called, and then she was deep in her role again. “Avast, ye landlubbers!”
“Right, Jin, get to it.” For once Christine felt the plan might work.
“Reinforcements have arrived!” Gordon cried in his best WormsÌ© voice.
“For both sides,” Mridula called warningly. By this point she was popping so fast that it seemed like there had to be two or three of her, taking on six or seven Lee-Landers at once.
Tim and Tina opened their mouths in unison, and Jin followed their glance over to the door. Eric rushed through, followed closely by Jordy, knocking over the few Hahr Kerr minions who dared to stand in his way with sheer wrestling might. Quick as a flash, he nudged Jin out of the way with a terse nod. “How do I open this?” he said, glancing intently up at Jordy.
Bypass the “shouldBeLocked” instruction.
Jin started. “Duh! Aw, I can’t believe I didn’t think of that.” Eric stuck a paperclip into the lock’s electronics and touched it to two points on the circuit, and the lock fell off and disappeared in a puff of onion. Tim and Tina jumped out. “Eric!”
“Good to see you again, too,” Eric said, obviously relieved. “Come on. Let’s go kick some a*$.”
Tim and Tina looked at each other, a little shocked, then grinned. The three of them flew into action, taking out the enemy like a fighting trio made up of Jet Li, Neo, and Mr. Rogers.
Christine looked around in dismay. This was not how she had wanted to spend her tournament…and she had had no idea that this was what things would come to when she had set out from Little Port Coo, so long ago. Even if all the violence was probably still PG.
Kellie had split again, dealing with her opponents as Kel and Lee. The two of them were effectively double-teaming each new contender that arrived, all without looking at each other—
Edward and Elaine were working together to take down the harder debators, with Elaine on attack—now giving a speech, now blasting the opponent with Points of Info (“‽”)—while Edward was acting as defense. “Shut up and refute!” he called, and Elaine pulled back, avoiding a dangerous blow to their argument—
Richard was standing behind Andrew, keeping him on his feet as he sent various objects flying towards his opponents. “Even this stapler has power!” he shouted, and a bolt of lightning shot from the stapler outwards—
Kushal didn’t seem to do anything unusual, but every debate he won. It was almost as if he already knew what the opponent’s arguments were, and got to try again and again until he found a way to break them—
Da Seul burst through the door with Fritz. “Thanks for the ride, Da Seul!” he called. Da Seul headed over to where Christine and Jin were kneeling next to the unconscious Flora—
Ivy, maintaining a disdainful attitude all the while, actually competed against several other speakers, turning her talent to good use as she stole all of her main points from past speakers—
Jin risked a glance over to the corner where Persia stood just time to catch a loud shriek. Her princess-ego collapsed to the ground, and then it was the monster-ego who took over. Nearby enemies backed away in fear—
Fritz had found two of the tougher-looking speakers and was keeping them occupied with an all-encompassing speech about string theory and linear algebra. 「You’ve gone far past five minutes!」 the Hahr Kerr agent shouted in its growly voice. Fritz just gave a smile. “No prep time equals seven minutes speech!” he said confidently, and continued on—
Gordon had thrown an arm casually over the shoulders of three Lee-Landers (one was very skinny) and started chatting with them. Others began to gather round in a circle as he kept talking. “Hey, guys! Remember that time we all went down to Cluck U after the tournament? Wasn’t that the greatest? And we all watched that movie, uh, The Shoemaker?” A number of the Hahr Kerr speakers were nodding and smiling—
“What do we do now?” Christine shouted to Jin and Da Seul over the noise.
“I don’t know, but I think we’re gonna make it!” Jin called back. He was smiling.
Then, from the impressive high-domed ceiling of the tower foyer, a great dragon dropped down. Christine opened her mouth. “Oh sna—”