Distant Elemental

The thing opened its red jewelled eyes. Autumn snorted.
“That is so cliché. Everything evil these days has red eyes.”
“Hey!” said Blaise.
These eyes, however, were not the incinerators that were the eyes of Blaise. These were shining orbs of light, slanted like thin isosceles triangles on their sides, gleaming with malice. The light from the eyes cut through the muck on its face and showed a silver sheen around them.

Autumn...

“Did you hear that?” squeaked Autumn. The others nodded.
“Did that thing just call out your name?” asked a wide-eyed Skye.
Like a smoothly oiled machinery part, the head swivelled to look at Skye, red slits flashing.

Skye...

“Ah!” she cried out and put her hands to her head as though struck.
“It smells disgusting,” said Nayru, pinching her nose with her finger and thumb. The smell wafted over to the others; it was like a sewage plant and rubbish tip rolled into one. Nayru took a couple of steps towards the thing.
“What the hell do you want?” she called out.
Again the head swivelled, this time to look at Nayru, one red eye gleaming. If it could tilt its head to one side, that would be what it was doing, but it seemed it could only turn its head around on one axis. With its head turned thus, only one gleaming eye could be seen, and some sort of intelligence glimmered there.

Nayru...

“How does it know our names?” she cried out, shaking her head.
“Don’t freak out,” said Blaise, “it’s probably just trying to scare us.”

Blaise...

He shook himself slightly, looking like a priest trying to ward off ghosts. The thing turned its head one more.

...and Fulgora.

The latter snarled. “Going to say anything other than our names, or is that your only trick?” she called out, clearly unimpressed.

Oh, that’s not my only trick

At this, everyone’s eyes widened. It was intelligent. Clearly, it was like nothing they had ever gone up against before.
“Okay, so it knows what it’s thinking,” said Blaise, “but does it know how to fight?” The head of the thing swivelled again so one eye was staring hard at Blaise.
“Okay, firstly I want to see just exactly what this thing looks like,” said Nayru. She raised her hands in front of her. The thing did not move. Nayru’s hands were suddenly water, flowing across one another as they melded together. A sudden spray hit the monster and poured around it, washing away the muck and pondweed. What remained behind was a tapered waist connecting smoothly to the legs, the “boots” ending in blades. It seemed to be a pure metal contraption. It stood about a foot higher than Blaise, the blades from its head and shoulder making it seem slightly taller. It looked almost like a suit of armour, only tapered and covered in blades. The face was not a helmet, but a metallic oval with the eyes encompassing any other features it may have had. It stood there, simply waiting, not at all disturbed by the water washing away the muck around it. If anything, it seemed amused.

Was that your best shot?

“Oh, don’t think I was trying to hurt you, whatever you are,” Nayru said, “I simply wanted to know what you look like.”
“If you’re made out of metal,” Blaise called, “you should be very afraid. Under the right amount of heat, metal uhh... melts.”
“This thing is so cocky,” added Autumn, who stared at the metal carapace with a slightly wild expression, her forest eyes gleaming. Every one of the elementals eyes had transformed into their pairs of vivid colours.
“Well, are we ready to give this thing a good fight?”
“What are you talking about, Fulgora?” asked Blaise gently, “there isn’t going to be a fight. There’s going to be a lot of heat and a pool of melted waste. Scrap metal,” he laughed.
“Alright,” she shrugged. She stepped back, and everyone else followed her lead. Blaise stood, facing the stoic beast, waiting for it to move. They stood there for perhaps thirty seconds before Blaise called out: “aren’t you going to make a move?”

You can go first

The voice sounded like gravel scraping against a chalkboard.
“If you insist,” With a flick of his wrist, a spurt of flame shot at the metallic beast. In an unexpected move, the beast had jumped to the right, easily dodging the flame. ‘It’s fast!’ thought Blaise as his eyes quickly followed the beast to its new position. ‘alright then, time to shake things up a bit.’ Blaise twirled on the spot, sending flamethrowers throughout the whole area, knowing that the beast couldn’t dodge that by stepping aside, which it didn’t.
“Watch it, idiot!” he heard someone call from behind him, but he ignored it. The beast had suddenly leapt into the air, and it now came sailing down towards him, pulling its left arm forward, long blade extended. Blaise quickly leapt aside, and turned into his full flame form. He roared, ignited, and flew towards the beast, his feet barely touching the ground as he lunged towards it. The beast welcomed him, opening its arms as though in an embrace, but Blaise wasn’t that foolish. Metres before he reached the monster he stopped and let flames shoot out that weren’t part of his body. The monster moved aside, but not fast enough- it was hit with a torrent. Blaise smiled in triumph, watching for thing for some sign of pain or damage. But there was none.

Is that it, Blaise? Is that really all you have for me?

“Shut up!” Blaise roared.
“Blaise, calm down!” he heard one of the girls scream from behind him. He was now facing the school, the monster just in front of it, so the girls must have moved position to avoid being a part of the fight.

If that’s really all you have... I guess it’s my turn.

“Your turn?” Blaise faltered. What else could the monster do? It dodged, it jumped, it lunged... was there something else it could do that they didn’t know of yet?
“Blaise, it’s just trying to scare you!” someone called. Could have been Nayru, he wasn’t sure. He wasn’t listening to them anymore.
“Bring it on, scrap metal!” he called out.

The thing raised its left arm with the long blade. It had no mouth or nose to speak of, but the eyes gave away its emotions easily enough. The gleam, and the general shape of the eyes was enough to tell that it was enjoying itself.
The blade shot out suddenly, extrapolating towards Blaise. He kicked off from the ground quickly, and spread his legs apart as the blade shot towards them, narrowly missing his left thigh as he roared into the air.
“You missed!” he yelled at it, swerving upwards and circling around.

Oh? It looked more like you were running away

“Why you little-” Blaise came down, a scorching fireball, burning up the air around him. The thing had turned to watch him, and now lifted its arm in preparation as he zoomed down towards it.
“Blaise!” he heard someone cry, but he ignored them. He was almost upon the beast. Metres away, he saw the blade extend, and he dodged it. He landed close to the beast, creating a crater in the ground with a blasting noise, and quickly threw a never-ending stream of fire at the beast. He saw another blade whistling towards him, but he dodged that one too, and kept the fire torrent aimed at the beast. The thing was now moving- running- trying to get out of the heat, but Blaise followed it, pursuing the metal creature by merely spinning on his feet. Now the thing was running away diagonally, back towards the school as they had done a whole cycle while Blaise was in the air. It could not get away from the heat of Blaise until it did a neat jump into the air, relinquishing itself from the fire for a few moments. Blaise lifted the fire up but this was a mistake- as he lifted the fire up, the thing came down, and this gave it more time to cool off. It dodged the fire again, spun towards Blaise, and from a long way off shot a blade at him.

This time Blaise wasn’t expecting the long-range attack. He didn’t hear the girls screaming at him, nor did he see the blade arc through the air towards him until the last second. As he started to react, he jumped sideways, and felt the blade pierce his torso, just beneath his ribs on his left side. Blaise screamed, not expecting the massive amount of pain, and fell to the ground, swearing and shaking. The blade retracted, going back towards the beast and slimming once more to an arm’s length. A splatter of red now blotched the ground beneath Blaise.

Was that it? Oh no, I was starting to enjoy that fight. Dear, dear, who’s next?

“You bastard!” Nayru screamed. She ran towards Blaise with the others, still watching the metal thing, and they quickly lifted him up with the help of Andromeda.
“Autumn, can you-”
“I’ve got it, don’t worry,”

What’s this? Healing him? I can hardly allow you to do that

The girls saw the beast start to walk towards them, the very image of their nightmares. The red eyes stared at them, with nothing human about them now. They were cold, cruel, calculating things with nothing but evil intent behind them.
“Stay back!” yelled Skye. “Take one more step and you’ll wish you hadn’t!”

What are you going to do, give me a nice little breeze?

“That’s it! My turn!” Skye now faced off against the beast, exactly as it had intended.