15
Battle
There was a rustling in the owl-shaped bushes behind the golden bandstand. It sounded as if the owls had come to life and were starting to fly.
‘Not another hero,’ groaned the deputy.
‘What’s that noise?’ the guard called over.
‘Someone else must have got in, wanting to try their luck with the rareio. What’s the matter with these people?’ she sighed.
‘Okay.’ Kody Crunch pulled a small rod from his belt and extended it. He called to the guard, ‘You stay here and keep watch, we’ll go ban whoever it is. Shouldn’t take long.’
Kody and his deputy strode off into the bushes. The guard continued pacing backwards and forwards, brandishing his lightning rod. The rareio carried on clanging and bashing about in its cage.
‘Hey, give it a rest, can’t you?’ shouted the guard.
Suddenly the rareio started roaring at the top of its voice and shaking the cage so violently a couple of the posts came loose from the base. It was staring into the distance in intense fury, as though it could see something that made its peppermint blood boil.
The guard peered towards the bushes at the bottom of the hill. They were shaped like giant woodpeckers and eagles. He could see a face, popping in and out of the leaves. The guard began to run down towards it, but stopped. He remembered he was supposed to stay with the rareio. When he turned to run back, a terrible sight met his eyes.
The rareio had rocked about so much, the front half of the bandstand had detached from its base.
The guard approached slowly. ‘Calm down, boy!’ he soothed, as though speaking to his pet dog.
The rareio didn’t calm down.
Uncertainly, he gave it a quick blast with his lightning rod, to show it who was master. This only enraged the beast even more. Before the guard could cry for help, the bandstand cage shattered into pieces and the rareio leaped out. It was much bigger than it had seemed squashed inside the cage.
The guard was hit by a flying post and fell back on to the grass, dropping his weapon. Kody and his deputy came running out of the owl-shaped bushes.
‘What did I tell you, you idiot?’ Kody roared at the stricken guard.
He brandished his lightning rod like a sword. As the rareio closed in on the guard writhing on the ground, Kody and his deputy used their rods to draw the bars of a new cage around it. As quickly as they formed in the air, the drawings solidified into real posts.
The rareio dodged back and fore to avoid getting trapped again. Its temper now was right off the scale. Everything was happening so fast.
Ant and Pradahl watched from their hiding place in the owl bushes, where they’d been rustling the branches to draw Kody and his deputy away. Ant wondered why they didn’t just get out of the game, and then realised that if Kody and the other two tried to deactivate their headsets to escape, there’d be the usual small lag. That would leave the three of them vulnerable to the rareio jumping into them and freezing them.
Ant decided to send Pradahl into battle. If the rareio became trapped again, their chance to attack would be lost.
He pressed Pradahl’s shining scale to select three items from her inventory, the maximum number for one attack. Tarn had collected all these items on different planets. Ant chose a dazzle bubble from planet Parnazza, a humungobean from planet Xylo and a devil scale from planet Berowne. Each item would work for a minute before expiring and he timed them to activate as soon as Pradahl began her attack.
Preparing herself, Pradahl grew her wings to their maximum extent ready for battle. She rose into the sky with a leathery beating of wings and began raining fire down on the rareio.
Kody cried out in shock.
The rareio’s mask dropped to the ground with a clang, revealing a face full of evil. It swiped at Pradahl as she swooped to attack it again and again. Within seconds, the dazzle bubble began to work. Pradahl’s scales glowed so brightly it was impossible to look at her. Neither the rareio nor Kody and his team could take effective aim as she flew overhead, pelting them with fireballs.
Ant seized his chance to run out, race across and snatch up the guard’s lightning rod.
Griff emerged from the bushes at the bottom of the hill. His part of the plan had worked – he’d provoked the rareio into breaking out of the bandstand cage. Even so, it was scary to see how much the beast hated him. He raced up the hill to join Ant and Pradahl. They’d already agreed that Griff would act as a distraction, allowing Ant to defend Pradahl as much as he could while she attacked.
It took Ant a few seconds to find out how the lightning rod worked, but then he managed to give Kody and his deputy a few well-aimed zaps. Meanwhile Griff danced around, working the rareio up into even more of a fury and distracting it from Pradahl.
Kody and his deputy had been caught by surprise and didn’t have their own battle plan. They turned between the rareio and the newcomers as if baffled.
As soon as the dazzle bubble gave out, the second item kicked in. The humungobean made Pradahl grow to seven times her normal size and she towered over the rareio, her fast, flapping wings strobing the sunlight. She started spitting out fireballs the size of witches’ cauldrons and for the first time the rareio began to back away.
Kody Crunch was screaming orders at his deputy to run around and cage the beast from the other side, but the deputy couldn’t get anywhere near.
Once the humungobean’s minute was up, it was the turn of the devil scale. This
