Ice & Cream

Punching Through

It had gotten pitch black really fast. The sun had set over the other side of the mountain which had cast a wave of cold over their surroundings, and with it, an eerie mist that was discernible under the moonlight. Fortunately, though, the little soda monsters glowed in the dark.

“Is slipping liquid the only thing they spit out?” Timothy asked. “Seems not that dangerous.”

“No,” Sprinkle answered, “and it’s not just slipping liquid, you dimwit. Where’d you think this fog comes from? It’s from snow being melted by that liquid. It’s a kind of acid.”

Jack gaped, shocked. “Acid!?” Real concern washed over his insides as he considered the guards and the passengers who were lost to him in that forest. Then again, they ought to know more about surviving the little critters than he did. They had weapons prepared for them while Jack could only smack them away with his sword. Which might as well be a stick.

High-pitch screams were going off all around them, at different distances and at random times.

“Right! Turn right!” Timothy called, making a sharp turn. Jack followed. “Not to fret, Jack, I have pretty good eyes and am light on my feet.”

“And I have a sword,” Jack said just as one of them jumped into the way. Jack heard him coming thanks to his maddened howling, so he was able to swing his sword wide, both-handed, and whacked him away.

“Don’t be afraid to use all your force, Jack!” Sprinkle encouraged. “That sword’s not killing anything! They can take it!”

Jack nodded and hit a second one aside. They heard a scream at the left, so Jack circled around Timothy to make sure he wasn’t attacked out of his reach. Timothy suddenly turned hard left, shouldering Jack.

Regaining his footing after skipping a few steps, Jack ran to catch up. He made it in time to swat away the sweetum he had heard before. It went tumbling away with a whine.

“You are pretty good with that thing,” Timothy acknowledged.

“First time using it,” Jack admitted, “though it helps not to be causing real harm. I can swing without hesitation.”

“Well, I dunno about that,” Sprinkle said, chuckling nervously, “no lasting harm, let’s say that. But yeah, don’t hesitate!”

“And be careful with your turns, Timothy, you almost knocked me down back there.”

“Yes, I noticed,” Timothy said in agreement.

They ran for a few more minutes, all the while hounded by the ever-approaching high-pitched screaming. It was like sweetums kept bursting out of the floor, beyond their line of sight, and then turning to chase them.

“Gate ahead!” Timothy yelled.

“Good,” Jack wheezed.

“Finally!”

A few seconds later, Jack could see it too. A dark rectangle stood tall, seemingly in the middle of nothing. It was lit up by fluorescent light coming from the ground which Jack guessed was a moat made of the acidic soda.

The gate was closing as they approached, most likely being raised after the conductor who had run ahead. The gate was taller than two people standing on top of each other, so for Jack, who had never witnessed a walled city, it was very tall. The wall was a person higher than the gate.

“HOLD ON! WAIT FOR US!” Timothy yelled out, shockingly loud. It almost muffled the screech ahead of them, but not quite enough that Jack didn’t notice it.

Grabbing Timothy by the back of his shirt, Jack forced him to stop, and when Timothy looked at him in surprise, Jack pulled him further back.

“Oh,” Timothy realized, seeing the glowing critters just in front of them. “I did not see -- why are they in the moat?!”

“Now we see them. What do we do?”

Timothy looked to the right, thoughtfully. He looked left, a bit desperate. He looked back, frightened. Finally, he looked ahead and cupped his hands around his lips, taking a deep breath.

“HELP!” Timothy yelled out. “WE ARE YOUNG AND FRAGILE CHILDREN! ALONE IN THE NIGHT!! HEEELP!”

Not the worst idea, Jack thought to himself, sweating.

One of the critters hopped forward and spewed the liquid. Both of them jumped to opposite sides and evaded it. From that angle, Jack saw gaps of darkness in a lake of fluorescent, and his heart jolted.

It was now or never. “I see a path, follow me!”

He dashed off, whacking a sweetum aside. Glancing fast, Jack saw Timothy rounding the puddle over the other side, heading to follow him. Jack then put his whole focus on the path.

Another puddle of liquid dropped in front of them, but they were going around the soda critter already, so they avoided it.

“Keep up, Tim!”

“Keep it up, Jack!”

After they avoided two spits, the soda sweetums decided to just hop their way and intercept them. Jack was forced to do his first succeeding swings, waving the sword from left to right to left, and batted away four of the sweetums one after another. He tried not to think about the violence of swinging directly against their leaps.

Before he knew it, they had reached the moat, and the bridge was lowering. More guards were beyond it, waiting to run and meet these children that had yelled for help. Instead, they were met with Jack and Timothy jumping onto the bridge before it had even settled.

“Whoat?!!”

Jack and Timothy ran past them, sweating through difficult breathing and racking nerves.

“Uh…ra-raaise the bridge,” the leader said, a bit startled, “raise it back again! Hurry!”

Jack could hear the sound of his g*n at work, so he looked to see if the crowd of sweetums had somehow made it onto the bridge. He watched the town guard shooting out a liquid from his pistol to the front of the bridge. There, a soda sweetum slipped and fell. Others were knocked aside by its fall, and then the bridge had lifted beyond their reach.

The guards turned around to see Timothy and Jack on the ground. Jack was sitting down, breathing in relief with his sword on the floor in front of him. His hands were so stiff and sore that he was repeatedly opening and closing them, searching for comfort.

Timothy was lying down on his back, wheezing. “That… was too close!”

“Young and fragile, huh?” one of the guards asked in amusement while the others returned to their posts.

“Not this kid,” Sprinkle said a bit proudly, nodding at Jack with his head. “This kid’s tough.”

They had made it to Soda City.

“Whooo,” Timothy voiced, sitting up tired and relieved. “What aay to take charge, Jack. That was pretty amazing.”

“Pretty frightening, more like,” Jack said.

“What is it with those monsters? I thought Soda City was safe.”

“During the day,” the guard corrected. He was uniformed like the rest but helmetless, allowing his dark gray hair to blend in with the misty background. If Burble was anything to go by, the man should be another leader. “They have been getting more and more restless at night, though, no doubt about it.”

“Restless? I think that is putting it far too mildly,” Timothy complained.

“Aye, it might be time to consider changing the schedules of the tram.”

“You think?!” Timothy asked, his voice shrill. “The least you should do, and I think it is well past the time to do it!”

They both stood up. Jack’s hands were feeling almost normal again, so he inspected his sword. He was surprised to see that it looked untouched. That cream coating was really sturdy.

“You two are very brave, you did the right thing not staying still. What happened to our friends, do you know?”

“We were attacked on the way here,” Timothy explained. “Burble told us to flee while they held them off.”

“There is still a passenger missing,” Jack pointed out. “Emma stayed behind to find him.”

“Emma?” A guard called from the wall, “what was that about Emma?”

Jack looked in the direction of the voice, finding a guard looking down at him. “Yes, mister, Emma was our escort. Last we heard of her, she had gone after a fourth passenger.”

The guard cursed and disappeared from view, presumably walking to the opposite edge of the wall.

“What’s that, by the way?” a soldier asked from the side, pointing at Sprinkle.

“Name’s Sprinkle, soldier boy,” he said with a smirk, “from Ice Cream city, and no, I’m not going crazy.”

“Yeah well, Jack is it?” Jack nodded. “Please keep a close eye on him. No one still knows how the madness sets in, or how fast it takes over.”

After saying that, the guard walked off towards the gate. They were sure to be afraid for their friends, but Jack had another curiosity.

“Sprinkle, why are they so afraid of you?”

“Why do you think?”

“Hm…” he thought. “You are from the same race of beings, and so you look like them?”

“I guess species’d be more accurate,” Sprinkle corrected, with a nod. “And I’m from the ice cream race.”

“So why are they going crazy?” Timothy asked.

“Because they’re missing their stone, duh,” Sprinkle said, “you guys have sunlight, we have the stone. You’d go crazy without the sun too, lemme tell ya.”

“So wait. You mean every city with a magical stone has a... race of Sweetums?”

“That’s right, kid,” Sprinkle confirmed. “It’s just we all stay underground and well out of your way. Well, until someone takes a pickaxe to our sun and takes it away.”

Jack considered that for a second, but there was no getting away from how upsetting it was. “You know, I thought there was no feeling angrier at Cookie City and the rest.”

“You’re tellin’ me,” Sprinkle concurred.

“Raise the gates!”

Their attention was diverted to the gates. Burble finally arrived, leading his group of battered and wounded guards. He was looking grim, but upon seeing Jack, Timothy, and the conductor, he actually lightened up a bit.

He looked thankful, if not less upset. “We need medics,” he said out loud, “and raise that bridge back up.”

The rest of the guards flooded the group, looking to the wounded. Burble and one other were fine, but the rest were limping and looking haggard. One, in particular, was being carried by Burble, actually unconscious. Burble cautiously delivered him unto the waiting hands of those wanting to help.

“What about Emma?” the guard from before asked, having come down to meet everyone, and to find her, too, probably.

Burble walked up and put a hand on his shoulder, holding it firmly while he looked him right in the eyes. “My sincere condolences, Kent. She was a brave woman.”

“No…”

“When we found her, she was already gone. Drenched and… just gone.”

The guard threw up his hands at his face, to hide his despair. Burble took a frustrated breath. “I am truly sorry. We think she broke a leg.”

Jack gulped. With that understanding, he now knew what had really happened when he exchanged those last words with her. Emma had broken a leg and couldn’t move, so she had sent Jack and Timothy ahead, fearing they wouldn’t be able to carry her. Knowing for an actual fact that they couldn’t, rather.

She had accepted her death rather than put them at risk.

“No splitting way...” Timothy had realized the same. “She has passed on? Surely not.”

Immense guilt coursed through Jack, attacking his heart. Before he knew it, tears were squeezing out of his eyes. He hiccupped, struggling to breathe.

“Calm down, kid, stay strong,” Sprinkle complained. “This’s nothing compared to what’s coming.”

Jack massaged his eyes and took a deep breath, trying to control himself. “I know. Just… That poor lady…”

Timothy scratched the back of his head, thoroughly uncomfortable. He was not nearly as upset as Jack was, though he supposed that was more normal. She was a stranger, after all.

Yet, even if it was abnormal, Jack couldn’t help being sad. He had to bring up his sleeve to wipe his face, even. It was just a weird idea that she was gone forever.

Forever. Jack has suffered the loss of his grandfather, but he had gone peacefully and without regrets, and in the company of his family. Poor Emma… I am so sorry.

“Boy,” Timothy said, fearfully. “Soda City’s stone has been gone for no more than two weeks. If this is how it is here, I can hardly imagine what it might be like in the cities that have gone without their stones for… like what? Months, now?”

“Yeah,” Sprinkle agreed, also suffering. “We go into withdrawal’s what happens. It never gets better, really.”

Sighing, Sprinkle looked at Jack instead of Timothy. “I think what we saw here’s nothin’ compared to what’s going on out there.”