Angel Of Clinia

21. A Stolen Map

"I'm not exactly sure where it is, so I need to pick up a map from my buddy Dean." "Let me guess, Dean is one of your weird storytelling buddies?" "Of course! He makes up romantic stories." Sparrow explains to her. She and I smack our foreheads.

"Dean is a mechanic, and he's incredibly intelligent, like a wonderful sidekick," He chuckles. "He also lives out North by the Grov." "What's the Grov?" I ask. "It's a wrestling restaurant, careful with the people you pass by at that place." "A wrestling restaurant?" "That's ridiculous." I add.

"You'd think so, but it's popular."

We roamed the empty desert for hours.

"Water!" I yelled. My dizziness got ahold of me. "Go drink some cactus juice." Annoyed Taylor grumbles. "Right!" I scrawl to the floor and attempt to gather cactus juice.

"No! Don't do that!" Sparrow smacked my hand. "Ow!" "That isn't a good idea, we are practically there and you'll get water."

We did too. My hysteria was finally over and we made it to Dean's mechanical shop.

"Hey Sparrow, who've you got with ya?" "My assistants- what did you say your names were?" "I'm Taylor, and this is Mar."

"Well nice to meet you!" Dean vivaciously waves.

We exchange niceties and then we get to the point.

"We need the map to the space station." I blurt out before Sparrow tries to explain the 'adventure' of how we met. "Small problem. That got stolen by one of my customers and I haven't had the chance to retrieve it. He's the restaurant owner of Wrestaurant over there." "The wrestling restaurant?" I squeak. He nods his head yes. I gulp- feeling the lump in my throat slowly drop like swallowing a cube of ice. "The owner no less." Taylor adds.

"Couldn't that shape out to be the perfect love story?" Dean places his hand on his cheek and sighs. "How so?" I ask, immediately with regret. "Well-" Taylor interrupts him before he can continue. "We've got a planet to save." "Wait! Let me come with you, I promise I'll be of use." "Fine." I mumble. He cheers and starts to dance around in celebration with his friend.

His shop was small and blue but yet from the inside seemed large and full. It has a rusted orange roof and a single industrial window on the left side, but it's mainly tape holding it together. The tape there was most certainly old since the strands were flying like ribbons in the wind.

The restaurant was essentially beside the mechanical shop, just a little further back behind it.

A large man with shoulders the size of my head came tumbling out the doors with bruises covering his entire face. "Don't go in there!" He whimpers as he crawls away.

We all shiver.

We enter and there's a giant wrestling ring in the middle of the room. People roaring cheers with fists in the air yelling and hoping for a certain victor. A large man similar to the one that crawled away covered our view of the other contestant. A giant map flies into the air and a boy with rain cloud grey eyes suddenly appears as he slides to the side of the large man groping the air in front of him. The man's grasp missed the boy by a sliver, and it sends him flying over the ropes and to a concrete face plant. The boy smirks and gracefully exits the ring. He raises his hand and effortlessly catches the map. He walks over with a small shimmy as a celebratory dance that he seems to have done multiple times before. "How may I help you? Don't answer that, I know exactly why you all are here, and no you may not have this map in my hand, this is the prize to the winner and a lot of people want it, you'll have to battle and succeed to achieve it, goooood luuuuck!" He walks away and winks at us.

"That's Ezra. He always searches for a new prize for when he loses, which isn't often. The map is a very worthy prize, so it'll be a challenge to get it back." Dean pounds his fist on the wooden podium where the host would normally stand before seating you. "Hey! Ezriel!" Sparrow yells. "Ezra." Dean corrects him. "Ezra!" He tries again.

"Yes?" He returns to us. "Can all of us fight at once?" He thinks for a moment and gives us a smile. "I'll tell you what, I know for a fact I could beat you all alone, so it would make a rather good game to try to defeat you all at once, wouldn't it? Small catch, you have to beat me twice, or simply putting it I get two lives and each of you get one." He clasps his hands together, nods, and walks back to the ring where he stretches. "Sounds... like a good deal." I slowly say with a higher pitch in my voice towards the end of the sentence.

"You'd think, but Ezra's incredibly hard to beat," Dean sighs, "we might as well not even try. I'm sorry guys."

"Hey, have some faith, we didn't come all this way to just wait out the end of the world." I pat him on the back.

He smiles at me and nods. "Let's do it."

I'm shocked that worked.

We all take a deep breath in and make our way to the ring. The map glared above us on a hook overhead the arena. "Winner or loser?" Ezra cracks his neck.

"Winner." I say.

"That's me." He grins.