"Uh, uh, I'm not ready for this yet. Time to bail," I announce, stepping backwards as the army rushes towards us.
"Mmm. Yup!" Nick agrees, turning around running. I turn and run, too, right on his tail. Everyone else begins to run, right behind us. Nick grabs Max, who's laying on the ground and doesn't stop running.
We just run. Past the house, down the street, non-stop. None of us even dare to look back to see if they followed us.
I'm not the fastest runner. I never got that good of a time on the mile at school, and I never beat anybody else in the X-Team at running competitions. They would encorage me, saying stuff like, 'run like your life depends on it!' and I tried. Now I really know what it feels like to run like your literal LIFE depends on it. And I'm actually a lot faster than I thought. I'm still not as fast as everyone, but I'm still keeping up.
Suddenly, as we're running, a fireball comes flying into view and crashes into a tree. It immediately starts to burn, and more keep coming. I'm taking this as a warning that they haven't given up yet. We push it to our max, blasting down the street.
Soon, almost everything is burning. I risk a glance behind me. No one's there. Thank God.
"Guys, they're gone!" I shout out, slowing to a stop beside a burning building.
"Really?" Peter pants, gasping for air.
"Yeah, they're gone," Adam tells him. Everyone stops running. "Wait. Wait, our dragons!" I see that all of our dragons are flying behind us. They catch up and fall to the ground. All of them are scratched up, bleeding, bruised, missing scales, and ingured in many other ways.
"Ratchet!" Aaron exclaims, running up to her bloody dragon.
"Bolt, what happed?" Joey asks his dragon, petting his head.
"What went down back there?" I ask my dragon, running up and helping him into his feet.
"The shadow people got to us and . . . and we just bearly escaped," he informs me.
"Guys, they're coming," Peter notifies us, getting Tornado on his feet. I turn and see the Shadow Ruler riding a Shadow Dragon, the Generals behind him and the shadow people behind them.
"Joey's house is only a few blocks away, we can get into the tree house," Felix states, brushing off his armour.
"What about Max?" Nick asks, holding up the limp body.
"You can teleport all of us and our dragons to his house," Skylor suggests. "It'll throw them off track, too."
"Got it," Nick mutters, and everyone (including the dragons), holds onto one another, and Nick teleports.
We appear on the sidewalk next to Joey's house. We all turn to see the tree house burning up. Several shadow creatures leap out of the tree house. Scavengers.
"Not the tree house!" Joey exclaims, running forward. He runs up and generates lightning throwing stars in his gloved hands and begins to throw them at the shadow people. They disappear as the throwing stars hit them.
Once all of the shadows are gone, Kat blasts the tree house with a jet of water until all of the fire is out.
"Well. That was a lot of work gone to waste," I say, scratching my head and petting Zipper.
"What do you mean?" Zoey asks me.
"When we were in third grade, we helped Joey's dad make this," Nick tells her, walking up the the burnt wreck.
"Here they come!" Kat shouts, looking behind her. We all jump into thick bushes in Joey's boulevard. Joey, Kat, Adam and I are all cramped in a bush. I peer out onto the street. Nobody's there. What?
"Ahh! Guys!" I hear Nick shout.
"What happened?" Kat whispers, leaning over to me.
"Not sure," I respond. I lean my head out of the bush, just so I can see. The Shadow Ruler is standing next to his Shadow Dragon, along with all Nine Generals. I bolt back into the bush, hopeful no one saw me.
"What is it?" Joey asks me when I get back into the bush.
"They're out there," I whisper to them, panting.
"Did they see you?" Adam asks me, adjusting himself in the bush.
"I-I don't think so," I tell them, stuttering.
"Check outside again," Kat instructs, pointing to the spot I poked out my head last. I nod and stick my head out again. The Shadow Ruler is now holding his black staff, and Nick is floating above it. He's surrounded in some black, plasma type thing, and he can't move. This just got more interesting.
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