Legends, Heroes and Brother
Episode 5: Final Day

by evil_lord

A Location That Cannot Be Named

They'd spent days at sea now on little food. Shadad's wounds had healed nicely, but he was far less than 100%. He dropped his head over the side of the boat and panted. Bustoph sat in the boat looking at the floor. According to him they had figured out how to make the boat go but they hadn't figured out how to steer it. So they had gone in a nonsense line or toward an ocean until they just ran out of gas.

Shadad's long coat was suffocating him again and it would not be long before he simply died of dehydration. That was when he heard a sound. He didn't care. His body was rising out of the boat, the water, and away.

He slipped out of contuses and into a place he'd never been before. No wait, he had been here before. This was the cave of the pack he'd lived in as a pup. Wait, were was it going? It moved away from him very quickly and soon he was in a steel cage. Flashing things and buzzing things surrounded him He looked from side to side as fast as possible. Pope were standing all around him and....and something was happening to his body. It was growing. Becoming more muscular. Something was covering his eyes and all of the sudden they burned. A thousand tiny needles where all over him and no matter where he turned the jabbed and stabbed into his flesh. His paws, bigger than they had been before, where fastened to the floor and ...and........

There was a silence.

"Hello Shadad."

Shadad bolted up. He was standing on a bizarre platform and in front of him was Cinnabar. Looking at him with those disgustingly unnatural eyes.

"Where am I?!" Shadad demanded.

"Back home, big brother," Cinnabar said cynically.

"What do you mean by that?"

"Well, since I believe you will continue to ask questions, let's field those now. This, Shadad, is the laboratory that made you and I into the monsters we are. You however where released back into the wild by an out of control scientist. Much like your three other friends. You were to be a great war machine. Much like I am now. You were to help the scientists to conquer every aspect of Neopia until they had all of the wild and tame NeoPets they needed to experiment on. They would soon after charge owners, who wished nothing but to make their pets powerful, to turn them like us. Unstoppable. Most often for use in the Battledome."

After you were released the scientists captured me." He hung his head. "It was easy because of my lack of depth perception. I........virtually ran into them."

Cinnabar's voice picked up. "But now I am what you never could have been Shadad!"

"A tool?" Shadad asked coolly?

Cinnabar snorted at him, " I am completely--"

"Unnatural? Unfulfilled? Trapped? A disgrace to everything the once proud and free Lupe spirit stood for? Please I'm dying to know."

Cinnabar fell to the ground. " It's true Shadad. It is true, I am all of those things. And despite how much I try, I...I...I can not be what I was before they brought me to this....this HORRIBLE PLACE!!!!!" Cinnabar howled with an inner sorrow and to vent his rage.

"You can't go back because you were never gone. A Lupe's howl is his connection to the Lupe spirit and his brothers. With it, a Lupe is never either lost or alone."

Cinnabar looked up at him. "You howled when you found me on the beach. Like you said. We are brothers. Brought together by these mad men and this horrid place."

"And so we shall be gone, Shadad." Cinnabar said standing up and looking Shadad in the face. "Your friends are down that hall way there. The scientists, they plan to do the Lupe spirit only knows what to your friends."

Shadad remembered. " Dissection! They want to dissect them to market the things that make them different. I haven't much time."

"We haven't," Cinnabar said. With that they both took off at a dead run down the hall way.

An eerie blue light met them at the end. What Shadad say almost made him burst out laughing. Thorbarro was trying to steal everything in the lab and the scientists were trying to grab him. But every time he sprang off and zipped somewhere else before the scientists could realize he was gone.

The two Lupes began sneaking behind desks and bookcases to get to the table where Bustoph was tied and gagged. Cinnabar quietly insisted that Thorbarro had unknowingly provided the perfect distraction. Shadad nodded and leapt up onto the table. Thorbarro noticed out of the corner of his eye but gave no one indication and continued his jet around the room. Making sure to stay clear of that direction so they wouldn't notice.

Shadad bit down on the knot and pulled with his strong jaw while Cinnabar watched Shadad's back from behind a desk. Bustoph moved a leg just enough so that the rope would snap and then used his wing to finish untying himself as Shadad freed Luginarth. The little Kougra leapt to his feet but accidentally knocked over a test tube in the process. To all of their horror the tube hit the floor and all the scientists stopped dead and stared over.

One who had been directing the traffic began walking over with his arms folded. He had short black hair and large dark glasses. For some reason Shadad remembered him. The head scientist. The rest worked for him, but he had done all that horrible stuff to Shadad and Cinnabar.

The scientist picked up a lead piped in his hands and continued toward Shadad. "So, my dear creation, you came back for your friends? Well, I'm afraid you won't be seeing them ever again."

The scientist raised the pipe into the air and...... Luginarth leapt and grasped the pipe with his teeth. The little Kougra snarled and hissed as he tried to wrestle it away from the man in mid air. The scientist whipped the pipe and Luginarth went flying into a book case full of test tubes and glass bottles. Everything shattered as the Kougra hit. He fell limp to the floor. That was when the whole case came crashing down onto him.

The scientist raised the pipe again to a stupefied Shadad. Bang! Thorbarro struck the scientist full force in the back the head. The man yelled in pain and spun around. He hit Thorbarro lit a pop fly into the wall.

"I grow tired of these games Lupe, your friends cannot save you."

Suddenly the pipe lifted out of the scientists hands. Bustoph had pierced it on his horn and flown up with it. It fell back to the ground tied in a knot.

"Says who Doctor Frakenstein?" A voice yelled from the rafters. Just then a large red Tatsu, Tate's, netted the invisible Uni and brought him back down to the floor. Where he hit it over the head with the knotted pipe.

"Haha Shadad. Your friends are all gone now. One by one they have been destroyed. Now, Cinnabar attack."

The Lupe walked out from behind the desk with Thorbarro's famous look of craftiness in his eyes. "As you wish."

The black Lupe leapt at Shadad. Shadad closed his eyes in disbelief that Cinnabar was doing this. Then, the Lupe used his back feet to fly off the edge of the table and, wham, snarling and biting he hit full force into the scientist.

The scientist fell over screaming as the Lupe snarled and bit at him. Then he kicked Cinnabar off and he went flying full force into the wall.

"NOOOOO!" Shadad yelled as he sprang right over the temporarily injured scientist to run to the aid of Cinnabar.

The Lupe had taken the force straight to the head. Shadad looked down with tears poring down his white face and collecting quickly in his silver eyes at the Lupe he had only recently come to care for yet felt like he had known and loved his whole life. Like, Cinnabar had been the wind that always followed Shadad on the mountain, or the snow that was there even in the summer, or the beat of a heart that Shadad had always felt close to him. Now that beat had been silenced.

Shadad lifted his head to the sky and howled. Howled to the Lupe spirit to bring safe passage to his new found brother to the afterlife. To ask the spirit to shelter Cinnabar from harm and to let his hunting grounds shelter him now. Then. A hole, crumbled in the ceiling. But it didn't look like the ceiling was crumbling. It looked like it was opening up. As if some giant hand had just reached in and pulled that section of roof away. Shadad continued to howl. A long sad howl. Sparkling blue snow began to fall through hole in ceiling. It fell only on Shadad. Only on and around the mournful Lupe Then, the snow turned black. Black like Cinnabar's fur. As it fell on him, Shadad's fur began to change to the color of Cinnabar's.

A voice. A deep one said, " We will be brothers forever Shadad. Brought together and joined by the howl."

Fire crept up Shadad's now black fur and welded into it. It became part of his fur and he drew power from it. The Lupe took a deep breath for his last howl. Fire came out from his mouth and nose. His last two tears turned to fire and as they slid down his chest. They stopped. Completely across from each other.

He looked back over at the scientist now. The man sat with his back against the table. He was now the one who was stupefied.

Luginarth climbed out from under the book case and stood on Shadad's left. Thorbarro shook his head like he was just waking up at flew over to stand by Shadad's right. Bustoph awakened quickly from his sleep and kicked the Tatsu hard in the chest. Sending his flying back into the other scientists who had fallen down on their knees a while ago in sheer amazement.

Shadad's chest was held high and all of the creatures started talking at once. Yet in Shadad's voice, You could hear two Lupes talking.

"You, you who have proclaimed yourself to be as powerful as nature. You have ruined and taken the lives of so many. Will now pay for your crimes. Your judge, jury, and executor are waiting for you, in the next life. May those you have harmed be the ones who deliver your justice. You shall hurt no creature ever again. No one shall. Not while we walk Neopia, and death, shall stop us not."

Then there was a blinding bright light.

From miles away you could see it. Like a nuke bomb explosion or a comet that struck the earth. The black building that had sat in a mysterious location for a long time went up in a burst of white light and flames. There was no sound. There wouldn't be. The building simply exploded.

Then from the fallen house of evil, came the least known heroes in all of Neopia. Those who are celebrated but only in secret. The fire Lupe Shadad, The Invisible Uni Bustoph, The Silver Shoyru Thorbarro, and the Shadow Kougra Luginarth. Heroes forever. Remembered or not. They lost, they bleed, they cried, the fought. That is why I tell you all. So that somewhere out there, someone will understand and they will understand. They will spread the word and then maybe, that will reach the white mountain Lupes, the invisible Unis and so on. And they will except their out cast brothers again. They were forced to be different, but they dared to be, Legends, Heroes, and Brothers.

The End

Dear reader: I hope everyone enjoyed this story. Anyone who is interested in asking questions or giving feedback, please mail m.ohara@ns.sympatico.ca. Thanks for reading.