Star League 8 Read online

  ‘What’s the matter, robot, afraid you might get your circuits scrambled?’

  I glare at Zeke. ‘Give me your Shadow Shard and I will let you walk away unharmed!’

  He reaches up to touch the Shadow Shard in his metal helmet. ‘You think you can harm me?’ He lifts his hands and a huge lightning bolt crashes down from the sky. I leap to one side just as the bolt crashes into the ground. The spot where I was standing a second ago is nothing more than a smoking crater in the ground. I need to think of some kind of plan, and fast, or my circuits are going to be fried!

  I look around for a weapon but there’s nothing on the mountaintop except a lot of snow, and I do not think a snowball is a suitable weapon.

  Zeke sends more lightning bolts crashing down around my ears. I scan my databases and find that lightning travels at around a hundred and twenty kilometres per second, which is a lot faster than me! I won’t be able to keep this up for much longer.

  The next lightning bolt strikes the ground next to me and sends me flying. I land with a splash into a puddle. The incredibly hot lightning bolts must be melting the snow. I start to get an idea but I’m distracted by a strange kind of tickling in my circuits.

  ‘Oh great,’ I mutter. I wonder if it’s a virus? That’s the last thing I need! I quickly run a diagnostic scan.

  ‘Alert!’ says my internal virus monitor. ‘New power found! Hyper Celeritas detected!’

  New power? It confuses me at first, but then I realise that being close to the Shadow Shards must have magnified my powers. And as for Hyper Celeritas, well that means …

  ‘I’m getting bored, robot!’ yells Zeke. ‘Time to finish you off!’ He sends a lightning bolt arcing towards me, just as I activate my new power.

  ‘Super speed.’ I glance above my head where the lightning bolt is slowly making its way through the air. It’s like I’m watching the whole thing in slow motion. Zeke is practically motionless. I run over and grab him, dragging him towards a pool of melted snow. I’ve got plenty of time to get out of the way of the lightning bolt’s path before I deactivate my new power.

  As the world speeds up again, the lightning hits the edge of the puddle. But rather than disappearing into the ground, the lightning crackles along the surface of the water.

  ‘Huh?’ Zeke glances down at the puddle around his feet. Before he can get away the lightning streaks through the water and blows him off his feet.

  I race over to him and check his vital signs. Thanks to his lightning powers the blast didn’t turn him to ashes like it would have most people, but he’s not going to be waking up in a hurry. Just to be on the safe side, I take Zeke’s crystal shard and hold it to his chest.

  ‘Absorb powers!’ I shout.

  Rach tries to escape through a portal but I’m not far behind.

  ‘Hold on!’ I tell Chu. He grips my shoulder with his little paws as we race through the portal and come out the other side.

  I look around and all I can see is the lush greenery of plants. Chu jumps down from my shoulder and sniffs a large flower. ‘Where on earth are we?’ I ask.

  ‘You’re in the rainforests of Indonesia,’ says Rach, stepping out of the trees. ‘Looking for this?’ She holds up her wrist with the Shadow Shard bracelet. ‘Well, you can forget it!’ Rach clicks her fingers and I can hear scuttling through the undergrowth. Suddenly the ground is alive with thousands of spiders.

  I close my eyes and speak to the spiders using my animancer powers. They freeze in their tracks.

  ‘I can control your spiders too,’ I tell Rach. ‘They won’t hurt me.’

  ‘Then I guess this will become a battle of wills!’ Rach screws up her face and the spiders begin to advance on me again. I psychically speak to the spiders and they try to scuttle away, but Rach sends them right back. The spiders race back and forth between us, not knowing who to obey.

  I’m wondering how long we can both keep this up when Rach screeches. Neither of us noticed Chu as he crept up and bit her on the leg. The moment her concentration is broken, the spiders take the opportunity to run for it and disappear into the forest.

  ‘Looks like you’re all out of ammunition,’ I say.

  ‘Not quite. I’ve still got one last trick up my sleeve.’ Rach’s two legs start to morph into eight spindly spider legs. ‘Never send a spider to do a spider queen’s job!’

  She lunges forward and grabs me with her powerful legs, wrapping me up in the silk from her spinnerets. I try to fight back, but in a couple of seconds my lower half is bound up in strong spider silk. Before too long I’ll be completely mummified! Chu tries to bite Rach again, but she just knocks him away.

  Then an idea strikes me as I remember where I am – the Indonesian rainforest! And it just so happens that the komodo dragon, the largest lizard in the world, lives here. I bet a giant lizard would love to snack on a giant spider! Komodo dragons are rare, and I don’t sense any nearby, but I don’t have too many other options right now.

  As Rach spins the last bits of silk over my face I close my eyes and picture the enormous, scaly komodo dragon in my mind. But instead of the usual animancer connection I feel a strange tingling all over. I gasp as my arms and legs start to stretch and morph.

  ‘What’s happening to me?’ The words come out funny because my mouth is replaced by a large, snapping maw. When I notice the claws at the end of my fingers I rip at my spider web cocoon. Rach is terrified, and Chu doesn’t seem much better.

  ‘You’re … you’re …’ he stammers.

  ‘A komodo dragon,’ I finish for him.

  Chu jumps onto my scaly lizard back and points at Rach. ‘Let’s get her!’

  By now Rach is so pale it looks like she’s going to faint. I slap my heavy tail down on the ground next to her and she shrieks.

  ‘Time to give up your Shadow Shard, Rach, or you’re lizard lunch!’

  She pulls her bracelet off and throws it on the ground. Chu runs forward and grabs it.

  ‘You know what to do!’ I tell him. He points it towards her and together we yell, ‘Absorb powers!’

  I step through a portal after that annoying sorceress Ursula and into a world of swirling carnival lights. Something cackles behind me and I spin around, a potion ready in my hand. But it’s just a mechanical clown head with a creepy recorded laugh.

  ‘What’s the matter, Roger, scared of an itty bitty clown?’ I turn to find Ursula smirking at me.

  ‘Give up the Shadow Shard, Ursula, or I’ll …’

  She laughs sharply. ‘Or you’ll what?’

  I look at the potion in my hand. Yellow Lightning Potion. Perfect. I hurl it at Ursula with all my might and it smashes at her feet. The yellow liquid flies in all directions, and electricity crackles around her, but she doesn’t react.

  ‘What?’ I look closely and realise it’s a mirror. I was never really looking at the real Ursula, just a reflection. I run towards it and find myself in a hall of mirrors with Ursula’s sneering face looming out from every surface.

  ‘Now are you having fun? I know I am!’ The real Ursula steps out from where she’s been standing and aims her Shadow Wand at my head. A huge fireball bursts from the end of it, and I freeze.

  ‘Come on, Roger, don’t lose your head!’ I mutter to myself. At the last second I detach my head from my neck and it bounces onto the ground. The fireball whooshes past my neck where my head was a few seconds ago.

  ‘Whew, that missed by a hair!’ By the time I’ve put my head back on, Ursula has disappeared.

  As I try to figure out if she’s gone left or right my head starts to tingle. Maybe it hit the ground a little too hard? I close my eyes and when I open them again I gasp.

  One of the mirrors is reflecting me. Which wouldn’t be so strange, except the mirror version of me is moving on its own. I watch as mirror me takes the right-hand path after Ursula. It’s like I’m watching a TV show with me as the star!

  Soon mirror me comes face to face with Ursula. ‘I was wondering when you’d show u
p,’ she says. Then she aims another fireball at mirror me. My double ducks to the right to avoid it, but Ursula’s first attack was a trick. She sends another fireball towards the space where I’ve moved to avoid the first, and it hits mirror me squarely in the chest. I slump to the ground, looking a lot like deep-fried zombie, then the mirror image fades.

  ‘That was weird,’ I mutter. I try not to think about it as I head down the right-hand path.

  As I round the corner I spot Ursula up ahead.

  ‘I was wondering when you’d show up,’ she says in the exact same tone of voice I heard just moments ago.

  ‘Huh?’ I say, scratching my head. ‘Are you repeating yourself or something?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ she snarls. But before I can answer she hurls a fireball at me, and in that split second it all becomes clear. I know what I saw in that mirror – I saw the future!

  My instincts scream at me to jump to the right to avoid the fireball, but I know if I do that I’ll be one crispy zombie! So I duck beneath it instead and roll forward. Sure enough, Ursula sends another fireball into the space where she expected me to go, but I’m not there.

  I lunge at Ursula and grab the Shadow Wand out of her hands. ‘Didn’t your parents ever tell you not to play with flaming magical wands?’ She tries to snatch her wand back, but before she can I rip the Shadow Shard from the wand’s tip and point it towards her.

  ‘Sorry, Ursula, your future plans for world domination are looking hazy. Absorb powers!’

  I step through the Shadow Shard portal and find myself back in Doppelganger’s tower. Four more portals appear and I’m joined by Connor, Sam, Leigh and Roger. They’re all clutching Shadow Shards in their hands, so I guess their battles all went as well as mine. I want to ask them if they’ve started developing any weird powers like my invisibility, but before I can there’s a huge roar followed by an enormous crash.

  ‘Jay!’ I gasp. How could I have forgotten? Jay and Doppelganger are fighting each other, and I don’t think Jay is winning. Doppelganger has used his morphing powers to turn his fists into hammers and is driving them towards Jay’s head. Jay is fast on his feet but only barely manages to dodge Doppelganger’s blows.

  I’m about to rush forward to help when Jay strikes out with his feet and trips the lumpy grey man. Doppelganger goes down roaring and I can’t resist smirking. Seems like Jay doesn’t need our help after all!

  Doppelganger lies on the floor, breathing heavily. At first I think he’s just out of breath, but then he starts to inflate like a giant balloon. He grows larger and larger until he’s five times his normal size.

  ‘Uh, I could use a hand over here!’ yells Jay, and we spring into action.

  I lash out with a couple of shuriken. They slice past Doppelganger’s head but he barely seems to notice them, and the small cuts heal in seconds. Doppelganger turns his blood-red stare towards me and sends a giant fist flying my way. I duck under it and roll to safety. The floor where I was a second ago is now a gaping hole.

  The rest of the Star League spring into action. Connor leaps up with a snarl and swipes his razorsharp claws at Doppelganger’s face. Doppelganger shrieks in pain and throws Connor to the ground. Sam zaps Doppelganger’s enormous leg with a burst of electricity, but all it does is make the giant even angrier. He kicks out at Sam.

  Leigh is standing to one side, concentrating. I hear a pinging sound at the window, and as I turn to look, the glass shatters. Thousands of wasps fly in through the broken window, stingers at the ready.

  They swarm around Doppelganger and sting him, but what would be excruciating for a human is just a small annoyance for the giant.

  He swats them away, but while he’s dealing with the wasps Roger runs up and tosses an acid potion at the monstrous man. Doppelganger leaps out the way as the acid splatters and eats through the floorboards.

  ‘Enough of these distractions!’ Doppelganger holds up the seventh Shadow Shard in his enormous fist and sends out a powerful shockwave. It crashes into us and sends us flying backwards. I smash into a wall and pain shoots up my shoulder. Through my blurry vision I can see that only Jay escaped the shockwave by grabbing onto Doppelganger’s leg.

  ‘It’s time to end this, Jay,’ booms the giant. ‘You’re starting to get a bit clingy.’

  He lifts his foot to crush Jay.

  ‘No!’ I shout, but Jay rolls out of the way just in time. Doppelganger’s foot goes right through the floor where Roger’s acid potion weakened it. For a moment he just stands there, stuck. It would be funny if the fate of the world didn’t depend on defeating him.

  ‘Quick,’ yells Jay, ‘Attack him while he’s stuck!’ But as soon as the words are out of his mouth there’s a splintering crack and the floor gives way. Both Jay and Doppelganger plummet out of sight.

  ‘JAY!’ All I can think is that nobody could survive a fall like that. I race towards the hole, then I hear a scrabbling sound and Jay’s hand appears over the edge. He sticks his head out, looking a bit shaken but still in one piece.

  ‘You’re okay!’ I breathe a sigh of relief. We crowd around and help pull him out of the hole.

  He holds out his hand and clutched in it is the seventh Shadow Shard.

  ‘I grabbed it from him as he fell,’ he says. ‘That means we’ve got all the pieces.’

  A moan comes up from the hole and Jay turns pale. ‘Quick, we’ve got to get out of here!’

  ‘But we’ve got all the Shadow Shards,’ I say. ‘We can reunite the Shadow Stone and use it to defeat Doppelganger!’

  Jay shakes his head. ‘Not here. It takes time to bind the shards together. We need to put some distance between us and Doppelganger!’

  ‘How do you know that?’ asks Asuka. Before Jay can answer there’s a loud banging from the hole as though something is trying to climb out.

  ‘RUN!’ yells Jay, and this time we don’t argue.

  We race up a set of stairs, and just as we reach the top I hear Doppelganger crawl out of the hole.

  ‘Don’t look back,’ yells Jay. ‘Just hurry!’

  We race up a corridor towards a doorway. I can hear Doppelganger close behind us, his footsteps seeming lighter than before. The fall must’ve taken it out of him a bit, but I bet he could still destroy us. It feels like he’s going to reach us at any second, so we all put on an extra burst of speed and race through the doorway.

  I slam the door shut behind us and the others upend a table across it.

  ‘Good job,’ says Jay. ‘We should be safe in here until we can reunite the Shadow Stone. Quickly, everyone activate your shards!’

  We hold the shards we took from the Shadow Six in front of us. Jay holds two shards – Cale’s shard and the seventh shard – one in each hand.

  Mine starts to glow with a swirling green light, reminding me of the troll powers it took back from Greta. These shards are so powerful on their own, who knows what they can do when they’re reunited? Whoever possesses the Shadow Stone could easily rule the world. I can see how someone like Doppelganger could be corrupted by the power. But not us. We’re the good guys, and once we’ve used the stone’s power to destroy Doppelganger, we’ll make sure it never falls into the wrong hands again.

  Suddenly there’s a loud thumping from the other side of the door. Doppelganger has caught up to us! The table across the door shudders as he tries to break in. We don’t have much time left!

  Everyone’s Shadow Shards are glowing with different colours. The colours start to swell until they mix together to form a dark, shimmering rainbow. Then the crystals float into the air, spinning faster and faster until they join together with a blinding flash. I cover my eyes and when I look back again there’s a single crystal hovering in the air. It’s smooth and black with rainbow tinges running through it, like a patch of oil.

  ‘The Shadow Stone,’ whispers Jay. He reaches out and plucks it from the air. ‘Now we can finish this, once and for all.’

  The banging turns into a loud crack, and the door
splits open. We turn to face Doppelganger, but as I catch sight of him I feel a jolt of shock down my spine.

  I stare at the rest of the Star League and they look back at me, wide-eyed.

  ‘Jay?’ asks Connor. ‘What’s going on?’

  I walk through the wreckage of the broken door I destroyed to get in here and point my finger at Doppelganger. ‘He’s an impostor,’ I growl. Doppelganger scowls back at me with my own eyes, looking exactly like me. I can’t blame the others for falling for the disguise. It’s perfect. The only person who’d be able to tell the difference is me.

  Doppelganger clutches the Shadow Stone to him and starts to laugh. ‘You fools! You played right into my trap!’ He starts to transform back into his usual lumpy grey self. ‘Now I have the Shadow Stone I’ll be unstoppable!’

  The blood drains from the faces of the Star League as they realise they’ve just helped their arch-enemy achieve victory.

  ‘He won,’ whispers Asuka. ‘After all we went through we still couldn’t stop him.’

  When I see their defeated faces a surge of anger rages inside me. I’m sick of Doppelganger and his evil games.

  ‘No!’ I shout. ‘It’s not over yet. We’ve defeated him in the past and this time won’t be any different. We will win!’

  Doppelganger laughs. ‘How inspiring! But I’m afraid I’ve already defeated you. It’s the end for you, Star League!’ He raises the Shadow Stone high above him. ‘Oh, powerful stone! Send out your energy to destroy my enemies!’

  Tendrils of shadow slowly creep from the stone towards each of us. I feel frozen to the spot, unable to move as my fate creeps closer and closer.

  Then I feel a strange tingling in my mind. At first I just think it’s fear, but then I feel the power growing behind my eyes and I understand what’s happening.