Skylanders Quest For The Core

Ch10 Oilspill island

(Stealth elf's point of view)
As the sun began to set in the horizon, Stealth elf was strolling along the island's coast thinking to herself. *We were lucky to find the air source, but as soon as Kaos gets involved, the journey's only going to get tougher.* While deep within her thoughts she all of a sudden saw a flying ship landing on the water, dispite being almost shot to scrap, the fish-like vessel stayed perfectly afloat, the only kind of people to construct a ship like that would be the gillmen. The ship gently washed up ashore and two gillmen stepped off into the beach. "Professor Gillgrunt?" Stealth elf questioned, "is something wrong?" "Yes cadet, something is very wrong!" Gillgrunt replied.

Gillgrunt was one of the veteran Skylanders who taught a history class and gave special training for water Skylanders at the academy. He would have stayed to help rebuild the core, but he had injured his arm and foot in the explosion, and thought it was best to go back home to his family on the island of gill beach, but when he got there, trolls had enslaved his people to drill for oil, the crystal clear Waters had become polluted with murky black oil, and his people were suffering. He knew he needed help, but since his jet pack was low on water, he had asked his cousin gurgle fin to fly him back to the academy, they escaped the trolls' guns but not without the ship taking a few scratches.

Gillgrunt explained this as they carefully made their way to Hugo. "Weren't there more cadets than this who weren't injured?" Gillgrunt asked, "Yes, but they all chickened out," Stealth elf replied. Like Spyro, Stealth elf wasn't fond of what the other uninjured cadets had decided to do, Hex, Food fight, Drobot, Sunburn, even Lightning rod, they were unscratched like her and her friends, but just gave up and left for home. "Disrespectful," said Gillgrunt, "Some of them were in my class too, I thought I taught them better than that!" "Wether or not they joined, we have an emergency on our hands though, right professor?" Stealth elf remarked. "Oh, yeah!" Shouted Gurgle fin, "is it possible for the four of you to help liberate our home?"

"It's taking me a little bit longer to decipher the blue prints right now than I thought it would", said Hugo, "but I say you should help them, even if I had the information now, the trolls that work for Kaos are getting more oil for their war machines, shutting the drilling operation down would slow Kaos down tremendously."

Stealth elf, Flameslinger, Spyro and Cynder wasted no time hopping aboard the Dread Yacht for Gill beach, even though the trolls had put up a sign calling it oil spill island. "This is as far as I can go if they really have cannons," said Flynn as he landed in the murky black waters. "Good luck cadets," said Gillgrunt, "I'd recommend a stealthy approach to this one." The team agreed, the four of them had a quick chat amongst eachother to think of a strategy.

"Stealth elf is the obvious choice for a stealth mission", Spyro began, "and the best thing to do is only send two people in, so who can be stealthy enough to go with her?" "How about Flameslinger?" Suggested Stealth elf, "he had the second highest stealth grade at the academy, a 98, so I bet he could come." "Wow, what is it with elves and being sneaky?" Cynder asked jokingly. "I'm not sure," said Flameslinger, "I'm a fire type, what if one of my arrows accidentally sets the whole place on fire with the gillmen in it?" "Are you doubting your aim?" Asked Stealth elf.

Even though Flameslinger often gave off the impression of a show off, he was actually one of the humblest cadets at the academy. In normal classes his highest grade was in history, in specialized classes, he had a 100 in marksmanship, he never missed. Flameslinger was also the only fire type at the academy who never accidentally started a fire with his powers, so Stealth elf couldn't see why he was so nervous. After a while she was finally able to convince him it was okay, Spyro and Cynder flew them closer to the walls of the fort and waited outside as Stealth elf and Flameslinger quickly and quietly snuck in.

The refinery/fort was gigantic, it took up almost half of the island. As Stealth elf and Flameslinger quickly snuck from room to room, they could see trolls working the machines and a big drill right in the center of the refinery, oil spilling out of the hole it was digging as trolls with special vacuums were sent to gather the oil. Some of the oil was loaded into barrels for shipment, some oil was kept for machines, but quite digustingly, some of the oil was kept so the trolls could drink it. Both elves couldn't help but gag a bit.

"I have an idea, Flameslinger", Stealth elf whispered, "what if we distracted the trolls with a small fire in the mess hall?" "I get it", whispered Flameslinger "while they go to save their favorite drink, we go set the gillmen free and quickly get them out of here." Flameslinger took careful aim towards the mess hall, waited for no trolls to get in the way and shot a flaming arrow right at one of the many kegs full of oil. Sure enough, the fire from his arrow began to spread from keg to keg as every troll in the building began to panic and run into the mess hall trying to save the drinking oil. Even the prison guards, giving the two elven heroes the perfect opportunity to set the gillmen free.

The prison chamber was massive, almost as big as the factory, gillmen filled every cell and all of them crying out for water. Flameslinger went up to one of the cells, all of the gillmen inside began to panic, until they saw he wasn't a troll. "Don't worry, we're here to help you out," Flameslinger assured them. He pulled an arrow out of his quiver and went to pick the lock, but then he noticed the lock was electronic. "Shoot! there's got to be a switch in here," whispered Flameslinger. The two elves looked high and low, until they found a control panel by one of the cells in the far back. Stealth elf pulled the lever labeled "master switch", and all of the cells slowly began to open. As Flameslinger ran from group to group to make sure everyone was okay, a thought crossed Stealth elf's mind, *two elves can easily sneak in, but how can two elves and a whole village-full of gillmen sneak out?* She pondered this and looked around, spying a window with a view of the murky black ocean outside. *If the water wasn't polluted, they could swim to freedom*, so she continued to look around, there were a couple of weapon racks with a few of the trolls' clubs and guns on them.

As Flameslinger returned to report no injuries, Stealth elf pointed to the weapon racks, "sneaking out with this many people isn't an option, help me pass these out", Flameslinger looked a little confused at first, but when it hit him, he nodded and began giving the equally confused adult gillmen weapons. When all of the weapons were passed out Stealth elf gathered up the large group to explain the plan. "Okay, there's no way we can all get out of here unnoticed, and I don't know how long our distraction will go on, but we're just going to have to run for it," she explained, "me and Flameslinger will take out as many trolls as we can, but we gave you weapons in case you need to defend yourselves and your children." All of the gillmen agreed and a few of them even agreed to help fight off the trolls. "Okay," said Flameslinger, "I'm going to run out and find an exit, stay here until I come back." With that, he ran out of the chamber quicker than wildfire.