In a moment of creativity probably inspired by her brother, Eryx took off one of her earrings. She worked the thin piece of metal that went through her ear into the keyhole, trying to get it to unlock.
"That's never going to work," Chibi told her.
"Quiet, or I'll stick the piece of tape back on your mouth," Eryx said through clenched teeth as she fiddled with the earring and cuff.
Chibi sighed and cast around the room for something better. "'Course, you could always use the keys that are on that table over there."
After sending him a look and retrieving the keys, Eryx managed to free him. "Did you just switch elements again?" Off his confused look, she waved her hands in the air, saying, "Be reasonable!" the way he used to.
He laughed. Then he got serious and transformed into Mahoki Dracona. "Good," she said. "Let's go help Elect-"
"Ne, did you guys already save Puroko-chan?"
Now it was her turn to look confused. "Puroko-chan's here?"
"In a room near the front of the house. You should've found her before you found me."
Eryx shook her head. "We came in the back." Saving Puroko now became a priority. Electra could take care of herself, but Puroko was a powerless kid. Not to mention Tenshi's sister.
Chibi seemed to come to the same conclusion. Taking it for granted that Eryx came in the room from the direction she had entered the house from, he grabbed her hand and led her in the other direction.
They hadn't gotten far before they ran into another occupant of the house. The brown-haired young girl Chibi had seen with Puroko was in the hall that he suspected they needed to go down to find Puroko.
"Hey, you two aren't supposed to be here!" she exclaimed. "Air Gun!" What looked like a toy gun appeared in her hands and she shot Eryx with a burst of yellow power that came from it.
Chibi flung one of his sunflowers at her. It hit her hand with great accuracy, causing her to drop the gun, which immediately dissolved as it left her hand. "Little kids shouldn't play with guns," he preached to her. Then to Eryx, he yelled, "Go! Go get Puroko-chan! I'll keep her busy!"
Eryx didn't hesitate, but ran past the young girl as Chibi engaged her in battle.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Electra had been doing pretty well fighting Carrie - or Carnelian it was apparently, as she had identified herself recently - in hand to hand combat, when suddenly the villainess had put up a wall of fire between the two of them. It had the effect of a shield, and every time Electra now tried to send a "Dazzling Bolts" through, it dissolved in the fire.
Carnelian, however, seemed to have no problem sending attacks through the fire. She had hit Electra with a "Hell's Inferno," and Electra had to admit it was a pretty powerful attack.
"You like my fire wall?" Carnelian asked her rhetorically. "It's most effective at keeping unwanted guests from attacking me."
Electra was trying to decide if it was worth the risk to try and jump through the fire. She didn't have acrobatics or pole vaulting training like Chibi and Neko, but she was pretty strong. But it might not be the smartest idea. Suddenly, she had a better idea on getting that fire out.
For some reason, the wall of fire was giving off no smoke, so the smoke alarms hadn't gone off, but she noticed that the previous owners had also installed a sprinkler system. She tore off a piece of her skirt and set it aflame, tossing it immediately at the nearest sprinkler just a bit on Carnelian's side of the wall. As the flames tickled the sprinkler's sensor, it began to shower the wall and Carnelian with water. Surprisingly, this actually worked, putting out the flames of Carnelian's wall.
"This changes nothing!" Carnelian cried, upset at her sudden shower. As Electra backed up a little from the puddle of water creeping towards her, Carnelian continued, "I'm still going to kill you and when I'm done, I'll get your sister, and then I can do what I want with your brother. The little brat - he thought he was so smart, but he certainly was fooled by me, wasn't he? Maybe I'll turn him into my slave. I haven't had one of those in awhile. Just as long as he keeps his annoying mouth shut."
Now, Chibi could get on her nerves too, but Electra was not going to let anyone talk about her brother that way. Making sure she was back from the puddle of water, she cried "ST. ELMO'S FIRE!" and sent a silver ball of lightning at Carnelian.
Not only did the attack hit, but the water conducted the electricity, effectively electrocuting Carnelian at the same time. Electra backed up and decided she was going to have to go another way if she wanted to find Chibi and Eryx. Giving Carnelian up for dead, she ran back outside the way she and Eryx came so she could enter again through the front.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
"Amethyst!" Crystal had cried through their intercom system, waking her eldest sister up. "Carnelian needs your help!"
Amethyst sat up groggily and tried to figure out what was going on, before realizing that she should probably just teleport to her twin.
Fortunately for her, when she arrived, she wasn't right at her sister's location, but slightly down the hall from her. This was fortunate because Carnelian was actually getting electrocuted and had Amethyst landed there, she would've been too.
Amethyst pushed her dizziness away, worrying only about her sister. She didn't know why the one nightmare had knocked so much out of her last night, but she figured that it could only be a good reason for the team (and bad for Neko and Tenshi, of course), and right now she couldn't worry about that. With great effort, she forced a vine trap to come through the floor and grab Carnelian out of the water, dropping her at Amethyst's feet.
"Carni! Carni, stay with me!" she cried to her sister, who didn't look very good.
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