A Bolt from the Blue
"I've come to help!"
Chloe struck a cheerful pose and flashed a V-sign, and for a long moment Huey and Luciella simply stood there, frozen solid, as if the words had short-circuited their brains.
"...Hello?"
Chloe wiped a cold sweat from her brow, staring at the two of them in growing confusion — and that was when Luciella spoke.
"Perfect timing."
Thud.
"W-wait, what?"
Luciella set down the coffin she'd been carrying, flexed her fingers, and muttered something about destiny bringing them together like this.
"Lucy. Now is not the time to—"
Huey reached out to stop her as she advanced on Chloe with a distinctly ominous air — then suddenly seized his right arm with a strangled cry and dropped to one knee.
"Master!"
"Brother Huey!"
Luciella and Chloe rushed to his side in alarm.
"Haa..."
Crack.
White static crackled with every breath he exhaled.
"Master. What did you do?"
Only then did Luciella seem to recall the blue talisman Huey had swallowed earlier. Her face was grim.
"...It's nothing."
Trying not to worry them, Huey forced a composed expression and pushed himself back to his feet — and that was the exact moment it happened.
KRAAAAAASH!!
"Whoaaa—!!"
"Hero!"
A thunderous impact, and Sion came tumbling through the air, rolling into a clean recovery. Huey and Luciella both turned toward her, startled by the word Hero.
"Man... that thing is no joke. I cut it and cut it and it just keeps regenerating."
Sion was mid-complaint, looking thoroughly fed up, when she finally noticed Huey's group standing nearby. Her face lit up with a bright, sunny smile.
"Yaho! Nice to meet you! I'm Sion!"
"...Huey. And the one passed out over there is Ren."
"Luciella."
After the brief round of introductions, Chloe spoke up.
"More importantly — are you all right, Hero?"
"I'm fine... my clothes, not so much."
Sion pointed over her shoulder with a sheepish look, where the mutant sandworm was thrashing about behind her.
"A body that size with regeneration like that is just cheating."
She hugged her holy sword to her chest, arms crossed, and let out a low groan as she recalled how the thing had regenerated no matter how many times she cut it.
"If I try to take it alone, it's going to take a while. Anyone got a better idea?"
"Asking me isn't going to help much..."
Sion and Chloe were chatting so casually it almost made the crisis feel trivial. Watching them, Huey finally spoke.
"...I do have one method, actually."
"Can you buy me some time?"
"How much do you need?"
"About three minutes... probably."
"Great! Leave it to me, big bro!"
Huey trailed off uncertainly at the end, but Sion nodded without a second's hesitation.
"I'll hold it off — signal me when you're ready! Chloe, watch this guy's back!"
"Hero?! Ugh... honestly, she's still such a child."
Chloe sighed as Sion shot off like a rocket, looking every bit the exasperated older sister. Then she turned, scattering deep blue holy power around herself, and clasped her hands in prayer.
"In the name of Chloe, Saintess of the Goddess Deneb — nothing shall pass beyond this point."
Huey took a steadying breath, nodded, and turned to Luciella.
"Lucy. Look after Ren."
"...I suppose I have no choice."
Luciella had already concluded she wouldn't be of much use in the fight itself. After a brief hesitation, she gathered Ren up with a frustrated look and withdrew.
And then—
"Hyaaah!"
Shraaak!
Sion closed the distance on the mutant sandworm in a blink, and a massive slash of light tore along the arc of her holy sword. Watching that trail of radiance, Huey roughly tore open the sleeve of his right arm.
The arm beneath was studded with black scales reminiscent of a snake.
He raised that scaled right arm high toward the sky, formed a mudra with his left hand, and quietly closed his eyes.
And so, while each of them focused wholly on their own role...
Uh... uh-oh... this is fine, right? This is totally fine...?
Chloe held her barrier of deep blue holy power against the flying boulders and acid spray, cold sweat beading on her forehead as she kept glancing nervously over her shoulder.
"Haa..."
Crack...
The source of her unease was Huey — scales now climbing all the way up his neck, every breath laced with lightning.
"Grrrr..."
"Eek?!"
With every passing second, Huey's breathing grew closer to that of a feral beast that had lost all reason. Chloe was growing more and more unsettled, but the vow she'd made moments earlier kept her rooted in place.
I'm gonna die I'm gonna die I'm gonna die I'm gonna die I'm gonna die... I am actually going to die, aren't I...?!
She seriously considered bolting right then and there — just in case she got attacked — when suddenly:
Thwack!
"Ow!"
A portion of the holy barrier she was maintaining shot out of its own accord and rapped her squarely on the forehead, as if it had a will of its own.
"Hiiing... that's so mean. Seriously."
Rather than panicking at the bizarre phenomenon, Chloe just pouted like a scolded child.
And then the three minutes Huey had asked for were up.
"Kh... damn, that was rough..."
"H-Huey? Brother Huey?!"
Sweat poured down Huey's face like a waterfall as he opened his eyes.
"Chloe. The signal."
"Y-yes, sir!"
Chloe exhaled in relief and dropped the barrier — then froze at the sight that greeted her.
"Hah..."
The star-strewn black sky was gone. Ominous storm clouds now choked the heavens from horizon to horizon.
Rumble!
Chloe swallowed hard at the lightning flickering between the clouds, then shouted toward Sion, who was still pinning down the mutant sandworm.
"Hero! Get clear—!"
Sion heard her.
"Hyaaaaaah—!!"
With a great battle cry she swung her holy sword, carving a massive wound into the sandworm, then looked up at the cloud-choked sky with an expression of pure awe as she leapt clear.
"...Chloe."
Huey watched Sion put distance between herself and the creature.
"Yes?"
"Have you ever heard the phrase... a bolt from the blue?"
Half out of his mind, clinging to the last shreds of his reason, Huey muttered the idle words — then brought his right arm, now completely sheathed in black scales, crashing downward.
FLASH— CRACK—!!
The world went white.
And then—
KRA-KOOOOOM—!!
The explosion of sound arrived a beat late.
Ears ringing, the three of them — everyone but Huey — could only stand there with their mouths hanging open at what had just unfolded.
K-kiiik...
The mutant sandworm that had shrugged off Ren's waves of flame and Sion's massive sword-slashes without so much as a lasting scratch — regenerating in an instant every time — was now blackened and charred by that single bolt of lightning, letting out the thin, dying sounds of a creature on its last breath.
"Hah... hah..."
Huey watched the lingering traces of the lightning slowly fade from the air. Clutching his chest with his right hand, he frantically rummaged through his robes with his left — the one still human.
"Kh... haa..."
"A-are you all right?"
"Master! Are you okay?!"
He ignored Chloe and Luciella's worried voices entirely. With trembling hands he pulled a red talisman from his robes and shoved it into his mouth.
Gulp.
Once the red talisman was fully swallowed, Huey looked down at the black scales gradually receding from his skin.
"Aigoo... thought I was a goner..."
He collapsed onto his back with a look of pure relief.
"Hiyah!"
And far off, Sion finished off the sandworm that had begun, ever so slowly, to regenerate with the last of its life. Thus ended the calamity of the southern Vista Desert — the mutant sandworm.
"Kyupiiit—?!"
"Ah, she's awake."
"So she is."
Wait — did I seriously pass out?!
"Ahaha! 'Kyupiiit'? That's adorable!"
"Chloe... you've been drinking again, haven't you?"
"Oh, come on, it's fine. Just a little."
"...Where do you even hide that stuff?"
I scrambled upright at the two unfamiliar presences — different from Huey's and Lucy's.
"Chloe? And..."
"Yaho. I'm Sion, the Hero. Nice to meet you!"
...I knew the current Hero was a girl, but—
"You're smaller than I expected."
"That's rude. And I'm taller than you, for the record!"
The Hero — with light purple eyes that somehow reminded me of the Captain — stood up and marched over. She really hated being called small, huh.
"Hmph. See? I'm way taller."
"...No, you're not."
It's close, but...
No. My original body was way taller. I didn't lose. Absolutely not.
"Anyway — how are you feeling?"
While I was still mentally measuring my old height against this little Hero kid, Huey's concerned voice cut in.
"Better, thanks. Looks like you managed to get us out somehow."
Sitting around a campfire under the desert night sky meant they'd gotten us out of there one way or another.
"'Got us out'? You make it sound so ungrateful."
"Heh. We took it down without you. Without you."
...What?
"You two need to learn how to lie properly. You expect me to believe that—"
"It's true, though?"
"I saw it myself. Without Brother Huey, we never would have beaten it."
The Hero and Chloe both spoke with perfectly serious faces, insisting the others weren't lying. I could only stare blankly, unable to process what I was hearing.
"...No, but — how?"
What on earth happened while I was out cold?