Chapter 9

Zack had reached the main performing arts building. The doors were guarded, troubling Zack. "What's in there?" He thought to himself. Zack scoped the area around him to attempt to find a way around, but saw nothing. There was just a gigantic wall of windows for the band room. Zack thought for a few moments, "If only there was…" He continued thinking. "Lightning!" Zack charged electricity on his arms, and sent a small bolt at a rock on the road, flinging it into the side of one of the robots. As the robots were distracted, Zack ran and softly cut open a hole in the glass with a small pointed rock.

Zack entered the band practice room. The walls were full of small lockers and cubbies full of instruments. Tubas, contras, trumpets, clarinets, bass clarinets, flutes, piccolos, alto saxophones, tenor saxophones, trombones, and several other winds. The back was full of percussion instruments. Vibraphones, chimes, bells, marimbas, snare drums, bass drums, and even a triangle.

Zack went up to the directors podium. There were three different charts on the podium: Void's Journey and two other charts that were burned from the invasion. Zack starred at the charts on the podium, recognising Void's Journey.

"The song with no composer," Zack thought to himself. Zack read through the front cover of the chart. The cover had a black hole on the front, covered in the residue of dense clouds which spanned hundreds of lightyears wide. Zack flipped through the chart. There was only the piano part, in terrible condition no less.

"It couldn't hurt to play a little," Zack thought. He grabbed the chart and sat down behind the piano tucked away in the corner. The piano was electric, so Zack powered it with himself. He placed his right leg on the battery that was beside the pedals, turning the piano on for the first time in days, making sure to turn the volume up only enough for only him to be able to hear it. Zack opened the piano part to Void's Journey and began to play. The music was a little faded, but Zack had played this song hundreds of thousands of times before. He had every single note, chord, and key change memorized. Zack played the entire piece, which lasted only six minutes. Zack gently lifted his foot off the battery, causing the piano to lose power.

"Alright, enough playing," Zack thought to himself. "I have a job to do." Zack walked over to the band room doors, looking through the glass to check if he was in the clear. Two robots were patrolling the hallway, walking to the band doors.

"SHIIIIIII!" Zack locked the band doors and sprinted behind the timpanis, barricading himself around them all. The robots soon broke down the doors. The doors flew into the glass wall across.

"Did you hear music?" one said.

"I thought I did," the other said. They both began searching the room, looking into any locker, cubby, nook and cranny that they saw. One peered into the timpani, looking closely. Zack looked from above, on the ceiling. The robots, empty handed, left the room, with Zack holding on just barely to the ceiling. Right before the robots left the room, Zack descended slowly, landing quietly on the ground. He then slammed the two robot heads together. Zack took both blasters and walked towards the doors. The coast was clear, so away he went.

Zack walked slowly through the performing arts center, reaching the choir room. The choir room had a gigantic mirror with two big curtains on either side. There were risers and chairs in the back. There was yet another window behind them, which had been almost completely shattered into shards of glass. Zack holsted his new blasters to his waist, examining the room. There was nothing much of interest except for one small speaker and a small phone from the 2010's.

"Damn this is OLD!" Zack said aloud to himself. He held it in his hand. The device was small like the phones of their current generation, but it had external buttons as well as several different ports. One was a gigantic rectangle on the side. Another port laid on the top right side of the phone. Zack began to charge the phone on his own, using the electricity in his body to move energy into the phone, slowly. The phone was charged in a matter of seconds due to the small battery size. The speaker on the other hand was already fitted with a new battery. Zack turned on the phone and began to listen to what it was saying.

ZZZZZTT!

"Yo how's it goin Urbana! Next song up is Void's Journey, written by you know who! Oh wait, no one does!" The phone then played Void's Journey, this time with the proper accompaniments. There were strings, percussion, horns, and some oboes in the mix. The song felt empty and mysterious, something only captured with all the sections put together. Zack saw a small lyrical score of Void's Journey on the right of the small phone.

"Void's Journey had lyrics?" Zack asked aloud, confused. He picked up the score and looked through. It was a school assignment for the class. There were several scores, each full of different lyrics in different handwriting.

"Ohhhhhhh," Zack realized. "That makes more sense. Zack decided to find out more about this lesson, figuring someone must have some sort of record of it. Zack scrounge around the wasted choir room, looking for anything that could give him some clue as to what the lesson fully entailed. Zack eventually found a small harddrive labeled, "January 5th lesson." Zack took the harddrive and the old scores with him, leaving the choir room.

Zack continued on through the performing arts wing, eventually reaching a large auditorium. The seats were all half or fully torn through. There were mud prints and claw marks all over the floor and walls. There was cloth and fluff littering the scratched up floor.

"What the hell did this?" Zack asked himself. Zack began to charge the air around his finger tips, creating static through his arms. Zack looked towards the stage, hearing a rumbling from underneath the hardwood.

BASHOOOOM!!!

A shadowy figure flew out from the stage, creating a gaping hole. Wooden chunks went flying into the air, stabbing themselves into what was left of the seats. The figure landed right before Zack's feet. It was a mechanical beast around the size of an African Elephant. It had six legs with sharp knife-like claws at the ends. Its tail was barbed with small spikes with a metal cylinder at the end. Its face was like that of both a lion and a wolf, but with no jaw and three lenses for eyes. The mechanical beat stood in front of Zack, moving its head to get a good look. The eyes were a pleasant blue color, but once they saw Zack clearly, their eyes shifted to a bright yellow. Its jaw opened up and lunged at Zack, attempting to split him in half. Zack, without a moment's hesitation, leaped above the beast, placing his hand on its snout. With a push, Zack launched himself at its eyes. With sparks coming from his fingertips, he shot out lightning from his fingers into the eyes of the beast.

"RAAAAAAWRRRR!" The mechanical beast howled in fury. The lightning dispersed through the beast as if it were nothing. The beast then whipped its face to the side, sending Zack flying to the wall. Zack's legs slammed into the wall, cracking it. Luckily, Zack wasn't injured heavily due to his military training. Zack used the kinetic energy of his impact to push himself right back towards the mechanical beast ahead of him. Zack flipped around one hundred and eighty degrees, twisting his legs in front and blasting the beast. The resulting gust of wind pushed both Zack and the beast flying backwards, with both landing on their feet.

"How the hell do I beat this thing?" Zack asked himself. "Lightning does nothing, it's too heavy to throw, and the metal plating is too durable." The beast began running at Zack with all six of its appendages. As the beast approached Zack, it leapt in the air, slamming its claw a meter or two in front of Zack. The beast used his claws as a point of rotation to spin itself around, causing its tail to swing at Zack. Without a moment's hesitation, Zack ducked under the tail's trajectory. The tail dug into the wall, causing a deep gash in the auditorium wall spanning roughly fifteen meters wide. The beast spun backwards, facing Zack.

"Wh-WHAT?" Zack yelled in disbelief. That gash HAS to be a few feet deep! HOW?" Zack had no time to think as the beast pointed its tail at Zack.

"What is it doing?" Zack thought to himself. The beast's tail's end began to glow from inside the cylinder.

"SHIT IT'S GONNA SHOOT!" Zack yelled in terror. Zack dove to his left, as the beast fired three small shots from its tail.

"Oh," Zack sighed with relief. "That wasn't nearly as bad as I- AAAH!" The beast attempted to pounce on Zack, narrowly missing as Zack tumbled down to the third closest row of chairs to the stage.

"What do I do?" Zack asked himself. He looked around for a solution, finding several pipes on the ceiling. Without any hesitation, Zack charged his fingertips, and sent a lightning bolt into the pipes. The lightning strike burst the pipe above, triggering all the sprinklers in the auditorium. The water sprayed both Zack and the beast.

"WOO!" Zack yelled. "That feels refreshing!" Zack got up on his legs, bouncing in delight. The water seeped into the beast's electrical components, destroying the beast from the inside. Zack charged both his hands, creating a constant flood of sparks flying. Zack put his arms out on both sides, with electricity running through his body and out his hands. He then clapped his hands together and blasted the beast with one strike, creating a gust of wind that flung the beast into the wall. The beast's eyes turned from a piercing yellow into blue and then off. The beast, with a thud, fell to the floor.

"What… Was… That…" Zack said with the little energy he had. Zack tried to collect himself. His body was exhausted after the lightning blast from last night and now.

"I probably just shaved off a few years of my life," He thought to himself. Zack went up close to the remains of the beast, wondering what to do next.

"There aren't any prisoners here, so what do I do?" Zack thought to himself. "And what's with this beast?" Zack picked up one of the six legs of the beast, hoping to figure out what it was exactly. "Strange," he thought. As Zack brought the arm closer to examine, the claw began to twitch. Soon the others did too. Zack's eyes grew in horror, as the beast's eyes illuminated into a bright red color. The beast's functions began to run again, and now it was furious. Zack's impulse reaction was to fight, but he knew he couldn't win. His energy was at an all time low and he needed more rest. Zack then turned towards the stage. Knowing he couldn't win with raw strength alone, he ran, hoping to find something to help him win. Zack sprinted towards the stage. He jumped onto the stage, running on the brittle hardwood. The beast sprinted to Zack on all six appendages, chasing its fleshy prey.

Zack looked behind to see the beast also on the stage. Zack's back was against the back of the stage, thinking of what to do. Zack then looked to his right, seeing the controls to the stage lights and props at a far corner offstage. It was too far as the mechanical beast would split him in two the moment he tried to make a break for the controls. Instead, Zack left his hand out, making a finger pistol in the direction of the controls. Instead of zapping, Zack manipulated the current to activate, powering on the controls and accessing them remotely. Zack had created a frequency between him and the controls that allowed him to power the controls whilst still being several meters away.

The switches on the control panel begin to illuminate and eventually go berserk, turning on random lights and devices surrounding the stage. The smoke machines activate, lowering the visibility on the stage. The numerous trapdoors begin to open and shut, chipping the already delicate wood even further. The beast switches to thermal vision, giving it a view of the warm blooded Zack. The beast then lunges at Zack, only for it to hurl through the back wall and into a large storage facility. Zack then walks through the hole, looking up to see several holes in the roof. He then looks down and sees several large pod-like objects scattered through the storage room, smashed up with broken music stands, old microphones, rusted risers, and even some old marimbas in the back. The beast then rises from a pile of debris. Its bright red eyes fixated on Zack. The shadows cast from the swiss cheese ceiling covered the rest of the beast in a dark shadow. Zack and the beast were in a staredown, waiting, anticipating.

The beast then shut its eyes, causing it to disappear into the shadows. The dim moonlight shone on Zack, exposing him completely to the invisible beast. Zack looked up at the crescent moon, spotting a small black circle in the sky almost directly above him. Zack heard a growl coming from his right. He turned to see the beast lunging at him from the darkness. Zack readied his fist, sparking with electricity. Zack ducked under the beast, causing it to go over his head with only centimeters of clearance between the two. Zack punched the beast's belly with substantial force, causing it to fall into a bunch of old podiums. The beast landed on its feet, much to Zack's surprise and began hurling himself at Zack once again.

"Dammit!" Zack expressed aloud. "Just stay down!" Zack once again leapt into the air, but the beast anticipated it. With a single claw, the beast swung from above, throwing Zack back into the ground. Zack's back was heavily injured from the impact, cracking the floor just a little bit.

Zack was out of breath and out of energy. He was still fatigued from his highly intensive energy blast from the night before. A sharp metal rod fell from the ceiling, impaling Zack's left arm.

"Come ON!" Zack yelled. "MOVE! OW!" Zack struggled, trying to pull the rod out of the ground and his arm with the little energy he had. The beast crept up on Zack slowly, preparing to dissect him.

"DAMMIT NO!" Zack yelled. "YAAAAAAA!" Zack pulled the rod out right as the beast slammed its tail on the ground. The beast leaped into the shadows once again, obscuring itself from Zack.

"Not again," Zack said out of breath. Zack began to stand, clenching the bloody wound in his arm. Zack was barely able to stand, almost collapsing again as he tried to take a step. Zack began to feel gusts of wind as he stumbled from the rubble and into the moonlight.

"The beast must be moving fast," Zack thought. "But it's gonna get the shock of a lifetime." The beast lunged from the shadows at Zack's back. He looked up, feeling electricity building up from the sky. As clouds covered the moon, Zack began to charge up with electricity once again. The beast was now only a few centimeters behind him. Zack ducked and spun as fast as he could with his remaining energy. Zack made a finger pistol in his left hand. As it sparked, Zack poked the beast's chest while narrowly avoiding its razor-sharp claws.

"AAAAAAH!" Zack yelled. His arm sparked several times a second, as the sky began to illuminate rapidly. In a split second, lightning hurled from the spheres above, causing the entire campus to be illuminated. A gust of wind blew through the building and across the campus. Zack's body illuminated the storage room, creating a blinding display of raw power.

AAAAAAHHHHHHH!

Zack let out a yell of pain. His body was being heavily strained from the sheer amount of power from the lightning. The lightning ceased as quickly as it began. The beast's metal corpse laid beside Zack in the moonlight. It was almost unrecognizable from the terrifying beast that it was only moments ago.

"YES!" Zack yelled with a sense of pride. "FINALLY! I can rest…" Zack trailed off as he fell down, falling asleep with his body sparking. As Zack drifted to sleep, his mind heard the sound of thousands of metal feet from far away.

"That's funny," Zack said softly. "I've never heard magnets before."