I chased the demon rock. Chased the demon rock near a cave.
"Wait... not a demon rock," I muttered. I knew what it was. "Boing! Power Crystal!"
It was pulsing brighter now! A blue deeper, a blue more watery than before.
"Energy Point is nearer?" wondered me. "Maybe through cave?"
I ran through cave. Now I was sure Energy Point was nearer.
I ran right into BJ.
"BJ!" me cried.
"'Roots!"
"Where's Picky?" askTracyed.
"Went look for me; we were playing hide-seek."
"Ugh," BJ said.
I ran past them. I had to find Energy Point.
Maybe Picky would be happy if I did...
"Ñrutas!" Tracy cried. "Wait up!"
"What for?" I kept running.
"Monsters appear at the Energy Point. Tough monsters. I barely survived the one I had to fight."
My heart stopped. I tripped on a rock.
"No!" Tracy screamed.
Energy Cry... Power Crystal was pulsing even brighter and shaking more maniacally now. The blue was incredibly blue.
It ran out of my grip!
"Get that crystal!" Tracy exclaimed. Was she panicked? I think so.
BJ ran towards the Crystal. But it was too late.
The Crystal landed on a bridge. The bridge was pulsing blue and shaking, too.
"That bridge is going to become a monster..." Tracy stopped. "BJ! Get away from there!"
The bridge fell apart and into the water!
"Keep away!" Tracy yelled.
A white light shot from the water!
"There it is. The white light that shows where the monster will appear. Or at least where the bridge was before it transformed into the monster."
The light faded.
Floosh! A giant bladed wood creature jumped out of the water.
"Haschie..." I said, feeling name enter head.
"Haschie?" BJ echoed. "Kind of ironic..." He laughed.
Haschie growled and lunged at me!
"PSI Freeze Omega!" Paula exclaimed.
Haschie turned. Slashed at Paula. Slashed only air.
Water went flying from the cut air! Joined with Paula's ice, and went back to her!
"Aaaaa!" Paula was hit! She went flying into a cliff.
"Paula!" BJ exclaimed.
He ran over to her. BJ helped Paula up.
"W... water won't work against him..." Paula managed, pained.
"He must be the Water Guardian!" Tracy snapped her fingers. "PSI Thunder Alpha!"
"Tr.. Tracy has the right idea... water trumps ice now; thunder trumps water." Paula moaned in pain.
"Don't talk," BJ warned.
Haschie slashed again, this time aiming at Tracy's thunder. Water flew from the new cut, just like it still was from the second cut.
Water went through the thunder and hit Tracy!
"What in the world?" BJ asked.
"Ah-aha-aaaaaaaaaa!" Tracy collapsed.
Haschie turned to Paula and BJ.
Slash! Slash! Slash!
Three beams of water flew towards them! Hit them hard! BJ and Paula crumpled.
Was only me now...
I ran towards Haschie...
Jumped!
"PSI Thunder Alpha!"
Slash!
Ou... water painful close up.
Pi... Picky!
Vision darkening... darkening...

Picky
"Where's Ñrutas?" I wondered. I'd checked Saturn Valley, thinking maybe he'd run off to hide at home. When that didn't pan out, I jumped around Grapefruit Falls. There were places for such a small creature like a Mr. Saturn to hide there. But that didn't work.
Finally, I'd looked up and down every single street in Threed. Had checked the graves because I had thought he'd stumbled into a weird construct.
A golden ring appeared in the sky, on the horizon.
"I guess that's Ness."
And indeed, it was Ness. As I'd requested, he had Lomond and the ghettoblaster with him.
"What'd you want me for?" Lomond demanded. "Chester, Lorne, Douglas and I had just gotten into properly renaming We'll laugh about it tomorrow..."
"I need to get through the Two-Three Tunnel. I went in there earlier, thinking Ñrutas might be hiding there. But I couldn't find him if he was; I was ambushed by ghosts."
Ness paled.
"Gh, ghosts?" he stammered.
"Yeah. Ghosts."
"I thought all the paranormal stuff like ghosts was over and done with four years ago," he muttered. "Lomond, turn the ghettoblaster on. And Picky, how'd you realise you'd need a ghettoblaster?"
"I read in the papers awhile ago: Runaway Five Tour Bus Traverses Two-Three Tunnel," I recounted, "so naturally I assumed loud music -- like rock -- would be a ghost deterrent."
Picky!
I stopped walking. Lomond and Ness turned around.
"Picky?" Lomond seemed incensed. "Are you okay?"
I looked north; it seemed like a rainstorm was brewing.
"Yes," I quickly responded. "Let's just go through quickly."

We made it through the Two-Three Tunnel without being trapped by the ghosts. Like the newspaper had told, the ghosts didn't seem to like the loud music Lomond's ghettoblaster played.
"Bye now," Lomond said as he and Ness teleported off again.
"Ñrutas!" I screamed. "WHERE ARE YOU?"
I rummaged in my backpack for the...
"He stole the Power Crystal! That Mr. Saturn stole the Power Crystal!" I yelled.
Thunder rumbled in the sky above me.
"Odd. It looks like the clouds are converging. But why would they do that?" I mused.
I walked towards the point where I guessed the clouds were converging. It seemed to be northeast.
It clicked in my mind: "Of course! The Energy Point I sensed was the Water Energy Point!"
As I ran, other things kept becoming obvious to me: Ñrutas had somehow tracked the Energy Point and activated it; if there was a monster, he and anyone else hadn't defeated it; the rainclouds were not a good omen.
I was nearly out of breath when I emerged from the tunnels to the Peaceful Rest Valley. And there it was.
A giant monster, just short enough to not be seen from Twoson, made of wood. And sporting some really dangerous-looking blades. It grunted, and turned towards me.
Uh oh, I thought.
"P... Picky..." Paula moaned. "Don't let him hit you with his water cuts."
Slash!
I pressed myself flat across the ground, but I still felt the water run over my back.
I jumped up. I wondered if this monster was intelligent, or if it was primitive, barely sentient. If it was even sentient...
The creature leapt into the air! It soon became a mere speck in the sky.
"How can I defeat it... when Tracy, Paula and Ñrutas know PSI... and they couldn't defeat it..." I slumped down, suddenly realising my utter weakness.
I looked up; the monster was returning. It was diving towards me, its blades pointed towards me.
"I can't use PSI Fire... PSI Freeze... PSI Thunder..." The monster became larger in my sight.
I'm going to die, I thought.
I armed my slingshot. I wasn't going to give up without a fight.
I fired! Hit!
Slash!
"What?" I was dumbfounded. Somehow, the monster had become confused, had turned around. When it tried to slash at me, it slashed at itself.
WHOOSH!
The monster went flying into the water!
I leapt, caught the Power Crystal which had been sent flying from its position, floating on the water. Then it exploded!
It shattered into eight pieces. The eight pieces separated into two groups of four, and they each sat on one side of a broken bridge. One was red; another was pulsing blue; the other six were colourless.
A bridge I hadn't noticed before. A bridge whose wood strangely resembled the wood the monster had been made of.
"Could it be...?"
"Pi... Picky!" Paula said. "You beat Haschie."
"Haschie? You mean the monster?"
She nodded, and ran over to BJ.
Bringing out a cup of noodles, she slowly fed them to him.
"Lifenoodles; never leave home without them!" she exclaimed, as if she were on a commercial.
BJ stirred, and Paula let him eat what was left in that cup. She brought out similar cups and fed them to Tracy and Ñrutas.
"Where's Haschie?" Tracy demanded.
"Picky beat him. Not with PSI, though."
"Without using PSI?" BJ asked, puzzled.
"All I did was fire my Slingshot," I muttered.
"No be modest!" Ñrutas cried.
"By the way, Ñrutas," I asked, "where were you hiding?"
"Trees in!"
"I looked in the trees."
"In leaves."
"Oh."
"Ahem!" Tracy coughed. "We have to seal Haschie's power before he can revive. If he can revive."
"And how do we do that, Tracy?" BJ asked angrily.
"How about calling on the powers of life, the energy of water, then making Guardian Haschie of Water surrender his power?"
We must have looked confused. Tracy threw up her hands and stood above the red Crystal-shard.
"Picky, stand over the blue Crystal-shard," she ordered.
I did.
"Now, repeat after me. 'Powers of life, energy of water.'"
"Powers of life, energy of water."
"'Surrender your strength, Guardian Haschie of Water!'"
"Surrender your strength, Guardian Haschie of Water!"
Below the water, there was an explosion. Was it Haschie?
"That would be Haschie's energy..." Tracy mused.
It was. Then a column of blue energy... pure water energy?... shot from the water and pierced the Crystal-shard below me. I felt the energy flow through me.
The Crystal-shard stopped pulsing, now permanently blue. The eight Crystal-shards shot into the air and merged back into the Power Crystal.
"Did I just absorb the energy of Peaceful Rest Valley?" I asked.
BJ pulled out a map.
"Isn't that...?" I trailed off.
"Yeah, it's Ness' map. He left it on the burger shop table; I didn't want it to be stolen."
Unrolling the map, he stopped suddenly.
"What's wrong, BJ?" Paula asked.
"There's an unevenness in the map," he explained, running his hand over the map.
Rip!
"Wonderful," BJ muttered. "The map ripped." He threw it down.
"Wait!" I cried. "There's another map ... or scroll ... or whatever ... in the map!"
I pulled a sheet of paper from the ripped and strangely doubled map.
"OK, it's not a map; it's a letter."
"A letter?" Ñrutas asked. "What's that?"
"It's talking on paper," BJ explained.
"Could you read it, Picky?" Tracy asked. I read it.

---

The letter

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To my youngest son, Henry:

     If you are reading this, you have travelled to Eagleland, as I requested in my will, in search of the eight energies. When my beloved Maria, your mother, and I were kidnapped by Giella and her alien race, I managed to steal the knowledge of PSI from them and escape.
But Maria remained; she wished to care for Giella's son, Giygas. He possessed three first names: Gyiyg, Giygas, and Giegue; strange as that may sound, yet could never decide which he wanted to adopt as his true first name.
     Regretfully, Giella's race disappeared when I escaped; I expect they did not wish my escape to go down in their history as their greatest failure. And with them, Maria. Oh, Maria, where are you?
     If I knew where she was, I would look for her, but I fear I would die from sadness if I learned of her fate.

     To that length, I have left messages to my four children. You each have a journey to complete; yours is to collect the energies of Berloneot, Neptune Crevice, Lake Tess, Mu, Maximus Prairie, Civalia, Sanken Mountain, and Deep Darkness.
     Only the reader, you, shall know the true locations of each spot. But beware, for Giella's race will impede your journey at every turn!

Sincerely,                                   
Your father, George Do           

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