A/N: So... this was supposed to be a short drabble for practice, but said drabble ended up being the (planned) last chapter of this fic that has earned the nickname of monstrosity amongst my circle of friends, for reasons that will be revealed later! This was originally going to be the first chapter of this fic, which has 7 planned chapters, 5 of which including this one have been prewritten. As always, please do tell me if someone is being glaringly OOC or if you've noticed a grammar/syntax mistake that I didn't. With that being said, enjoy!
Timmy's reflection stared back at him, casting a constant reminder of how alone he really was.
The cold chill of the Omega was not enough to put out the spark of hope that had consumed him, and he remained so desperately optimistic because his mind couldn't even entertain the other possibility. He knew that logically the mission had a low chance of success, and they barely had the faintest idea of what they were doing. But still he had trudged on, and the rest of his ragtag gang had followed him with almost matched enthusiasm.
That is, until the convicts ambushed them.
Now he was stuck with Brandon and Helia behind a miserably thick ice barrier that prevented them from escaping, and the girls were nowhere to be found. Ironically, they were now the ones who needed rescuing.
As one might be able to tell, their rescue mission was going marvellously.
Brandon and Helia were still knocked out cold and had barely even stirred from what Timmy had seen from when he woke up. The only indication that they were still alive was the steady puffs of breath that somehow still stood out from the endless sea of blues and whites around them. What's even worse is that their weapons were nowhere to be seen, including his priced laser gun.
Not to mention the transmitter. His one and only hope in finding the girl who had stolen his heart.
He closed his eyes. He hadn't seen her in almost a month, save for stills captured in memorials for a person who wasn't even dead. They were still incomparable to the fairy that they depicted, lacking the spunk and colour of the subject matter, a pale imitation of her spirit captured in technicolour.
He missed her.
She took with her half of his world, snuffing out the light that she had introduced. It hurt, to have been woken up in the middle of the night to be told that your girlfriend had passed. Their explanation had made sense, she'd given her life force up against unforeseen negative forces for the safety of an entire realm, falling in the process powerless and drained. By all logic, it meant that she was dead. Deceased. Never to return.
But some inconceivably foolish voice inside of him insisted she was still out there somewhere. That she had held up on her own against the most hardened criminals who in no doubt would take no pity against a defenceless fairy. It's not that he doubted her – she was more than capable of taking care of herself – but rationally it's a tad bit excessive to insist on an outcome that has the odds stacked infinitely against them. Yet, he just knew that she had been out there somewhere.
He'd said it himself yesterday, spilling his heart out to the slim threads of hope that came in the form of the locator. I'm totally in love with her, he had said, tears leaking down his face as the warm glow of her memory faded to the harsh reality. Faded into the reality where she might be gone. He hadn't even gotten the chance to tell her that in person.
Love. A force that directly opposed logic, an emotion that stood strong without any basis behind it. By all reasoning, by all the principles he had grown up alongside, love should have been the last thing he follows. It followed no formulas, leaving someone vulnerable and defenceless at the hands of the person who can do irreparable damage, so what was the point of this… emotion?
Love has the most uncertain basis for its existence, but Timmy is completely certain that he loves her. Tecna.
Love, the reason he was on this flame-forsaken planet. Love, the dying sparks of hope that left him clinging to the faintest of possibilities. Love, the only reason he kept pushing on, searching for the soothing warmth.
Mushy as it might sound, it was the only driving force behind his fervent efforts. And Timmy was as sure as hell not going to let it go to waste.
He paid no mind to the shadows lurking in the corner.
A groan brought him back to the Omega. "Where in the realms are we?" Brandon slurred, groggy. Timmy could hear his teeth chattering.
"It looks like some sort of cell," one thing's for sure, it was definitely no luxurious accommodation given the freezing temperatures.
"I guess this is some weird role reversal thing happening," Brandon noted. He gestured to the back of the cave, "look, we even have our own personal guard in here!"
True to Brandon's words, a convict stood at the far end of the cave they were in, brandishing a rifle and some sort of... hunting knife? How they even managed to arm themselves were beyond Timmy. They did just drop off convicts unsupervised in a perfectly functional biome. Looking back at it now with first-hand experience, the Omega was a pretty bad idea.
Timmy sighed and leant back against the frigid ice. "Let's face it, this mission so far is a complete disaster. We're trapped in here, Helia's still knocked out cold, the girls have gone missing and we haven't seen so much as a hair of Tecna!"
"We found her transmitter, though. It's a start. Sure, we've might have had a few hiccups so far, but we're Specialists, we'll find a way out of this!"
Her transmitter. Timmy had completely forgotten about finding the device right before the convicts had ambushed their group. He furrowed his brows. It couldn't have just been a coincidence since the convicts had appeared almost the instant that they found the device. Timmy was about certain that they had put it there as a trap. But why?
"Brandon, speaking of the transmitter, do you think that it was purely coincidence that we got ambushed the moment after we found it?" it couldn't hurt to get a second opinion. He needed to sort his mind out and view things calmly.
"To tell you the truth, it did seem like a trap. I mean, this is Tecna we're talking about. Would she leave her prized gadgets out in the open, just like that? The only time she'd ever leave them would be if she was nearby, which she clearly wasn't since she didn't help, or if she was– "
Timmy's face suddenly looked even more downcast than it was previously. "Yeah, if she– if she was gone."
The silence was deafening afterwards. It weighed heavily on both of their minds, on how they were completely in the dark about the fate of the technology fairy. The only form of contact that they'd had was a short message from her, and as much as Brandon wished all was fine, he had his misgivings on the nature of the message. It was too polished, too emotionless for someone that had been left alone on a vicious planet full of hostile enemies. He had a sinking feeling in his gut that that message was not actually from Tecna.
Near Brandon, Helia finally started to stir. Unlike Brandon, Helia seemed to get a grip on his surroundings rather quickly and was up sitting not long after.
"Let me guess, we're in a big jam and we can only rely on a miracle to save us now," Helia stated flatly after taking in the predicament.
"That's about right," Brandon shrugged it off. Frankly, he'd gotten used to it after the second year.
"Why am I not surprised?"
"Because we do something like this almost every other week and have almost died every single time?"
"You have a point there," Helia sighed, his breath frost-white.
"So what do we do now?" Timmy interjected. "I don't know about you guys, but I'm not exactly happy to be sitting around in here while Tecna and the girls could be freezing to their deaths."
Brandon's face lost the teasing look. "You're right, we've gotta break out of this place."
Helia moved over to pick up a shard of ice. "It's not gonna be so easy," he warned, the ice now grating against the floor as he detailed their surroundings.
Timmy felt a pang of embarrassment, he'd been too focused on his own emotions to actually do something about his situation. Thank the Great Dragon that Helia was still sane.
"Those thugs stand between us," more painful squeaks, akin to chalk being dragged over a blackboard, "and the cave's exit."
Brandon's eyes darted around the room. "There's just the three of us, we don't have any weapons and those guys don't look like reasonable types," sighing, he shifted his weight in an attempt to keep his limbs intact from frostbite. What were they thinking jet-setting off without winter clothes?
The air seemed to get even colder, however impossible it might seem. To Timmy, it felt as if the temperature had managed to go below absolute zero.
"They're total barbarians! They've turned the Omega Dimension into their own personal kingdom!" it's not that Timmy expected them to be cheery guests who smiled as they frolicked around the ice landscape, but he expected them to show at least a little civilisation to the planet. Up to this point he'd assumed that the Omega had some sort of guardianship going on keeping the convicts in check, but he was getting increasingly proved wrong.
Helia stroked his chin thoughtfully. "It looks like they all broke out of their ice prisons and then took over this part of the dimension," he said, yet again proving that he had well earned the title of the group's unofficial peacemaker.
"Guys," worry seeped into Brandon's voice, "we've got to get out of here and find the girls."
At the very least, Timmy realised that they had gotten the better deal. They were relatively safe in this... cave, and the convicts didn't seem to want to kill them anytime soon. The fairies had fallen into a cliff – despite their wings, which led him to believe that some sort of energy was interfering with their magic – and they might have been ambushed. They might've not even–
"Oh man," Brandon continued, speaking for all of them, "I sure hope they're okay..."
That's just the thing. Timmy found it odd, how the convicts didn't seem to care in the slightest about what had happened to the girls. At the very least, he'd expect them to showcase some sort of interest in the obviously very powerful fairies that had accompanied them, and use them as some sort of bargaining chip. Not to mention the fact that Timmy was just plain confused at why the convicts have kept them alive.
"Have you guys wondered why they haven't tried killing us yet?"
"...Yeah, that does seem kinda weird now that you think of it," A thoughtful look crossed Brandon's face. "Think about it, what could they possibly gain from simply trapping us here without even bothering to learn our identities?"
They had packed light for the trip (which was pretty obvious considering none of them had worn warm clothes), and they didn't have any special weapons or an extravagant amount of food supplies for that matter on board–
"The ship!" Horror dawned on all three of them as they came to the same conclusion.
They've really done it this time.
"This time, I'm going to win!"
"Sure, Brandon, just like all the other times you said you were."
Heroics 101 didn't exactly teach one what to do when imprisoned and left forgotten in an ice coffin, so Brandon and Helia had decided to take their mind off of the less than favourable situation with a rousing game of Tic-Tac-Toe. Timmy had foregone the distraction, instead choosing to monitor the surroundings.
The Omega was just so... plain. An endless plateau of ice seemed to stretch for miles in either direction, and the lack of colour was driving Timmy insane. But somehow, beneath the layers of frost and insanity the Omega still held some sort of charm to it, the glistening of the air somehow hauntingly beautiful. It's such a pity, really, how the planet's been turned into a desolate wasteland.
With every convict that marched around the perimeter of the cave, Timmy could just barely learn about the system that seemed to have been set into place. Grudgingly he had to give some respect to them since they did manage to form some sort of working system within a chaotic mess of organisation. One thing he's learnt about criminals is that they don't take kindly to being bossed around, and yet here they were somewhat quietly carrying out tasks for what can undeniably be called their boss.
That was the very fact that ate Timmy alive. He knew just what danger a single convict could pose, given that these were the most dangerous criminals to have ever lived in the magical dimension, imagine an entire organised faction! With such a diverse repertoire amongst the population there could be no doubt that they would be deadly combined, and a single being would be hard-pressed to stand a chance of survival amongst them.
And the transmitter. Great Dragon, the transmitter.
He couldn't get rid of the sight of the blue device, quite expertly placed amongst a bunch of icicles to blend in. Now that things have gotten a chance to calm down, he could see all the things that were wrong with it. For instance, Tecna was smarter than putting it out in the open despite the camouflage. She'd have kept it with her at all costs if it were her only shot of getting out of there. Timmy was certain that she had not put it there.
Only convicts lived on this planet, aside from Tecna. He could guess that they placed it there. But then, what had happened to Tecna?
Was she... even alive?
Timmy was not the only one fearing the worst. Brandon's smile as he drew a circle on the ground was forced, and Helia's hair was falling out of the tie he had had it in. It was something in general vicinity of the Omega Dimension that left them all on edge, some invisible force that was crushing all the positivity out of their souls.
Timmy didn't know how much longer their group could last.
A flash of activity caught his eye. What's going on?
"Helia, Brandon, look," Timmy hissed under his breath. He didn't want to alert the convict in the cave– wait, where had he gone?
The sound of metal clashing resonated within the chamber. "Ouch," Brandon whistled, "hope that wasn't one of our girls."
"Unlikely, none of the girls can wield metal or have any on them. Except maybe Tecna," Helia added as an afterthought.
The unmistakable buzz of electricity crackling filled the air. Electricity.
Could it–?
Timmy's train of thought smashed into a wall as a new voice piped up.
"Hey guys, are you alright?"
Timmy had died and gone to heaven. That would explain Tecna's gossamer wings that caught the light as she walked up to the ice barrier separating them.
"Tecna!" he tentatively reached a hand, scared that it was all a vision too good to be true. But she never blurred, never wavered, her form fully solid and oh, he could cry right then and there.
"Timmy," she said breathlessly, trailing the surface of the ice. They were so close. "Just give me a sec, I'll get you out of there!"
Tecna's eyes were locked into Timmy's gaze, and Timmy could see the reflection of his own relief in her teal eyes. Green lit up the area as she charged up her spell, her eyes still not leaving Timmy's–
Which proved to be a fatal mistake.
"Watch out!" Timmy was a split second too late as he watched the chains of the convict wind around Tecna's wrist, causing her spell to fire wildly, barely missing her own hair.
She shrieked, caught by surprise. Timmy could do nothing but watch as she was dragged away, could do nothing but stare in horror as their saviour was dragged off on her knees.
"You beast!" Timmy could hear the raw anguish in Tecna's voice. They were so close to being free, and now they were shackled again to reality.
Everything blurred as Timmy slammed his fists onto the ice in a desperate attempt to break free. "Let her go!" he screamed, his voice cracking in a futile bid to help. Tears stung his eyes again as she was yanked closer to the convict's arms.
Through the haze of it all, the glint of the convict's sharp dagger was unmistakable.
The convict was going to kill her.
And Timmy was going to have to watch.
"No!" tears of fury rolled down his face and almost immediately froze. He tore at the ice, his nails stinging at the burning sensation. This was completely unfair.
He could only watch, watch in horror as Tecna's eyes flashed pure terror as the dagger moved towards her. Timmy balled his fists against the mocking barrier, his mouth frozen agape in despair at the cruel hand of cards fate had thrown at them.
No...
Sudden heat bloomed in front of him, almost camouflaging the sound of a metal boomerang hitting its target.
Bloom and Sky. He could kiss them.
Bloom had blasted open the ice barrier, leaving a hole big enough for the trapped Specialists to escape. Sky had taken the liberty of knocking the convict out, and he now lay sprawled on the ground in front of them.
Timmy wasted no time in clearing the melting hole in the barrier and running over to Tecna, who was now swaying on her feet. She sensed his approach and looked at him with a weak smile.
"I'm glad you're okay–"
She didn't get a chance to finish her sentence as Timmy silenced her with a kiss. A whole host of emotions was swirling inside of Timmy as she returned the kiss with matched glee, her lips pressing against his with vigour.
Timmy didn't know when he had started crying, but he did know that he hadn't cried that much since childhood; tears streamed down his face as he held onto Tecna like there was no tomorrow. Tecna burrowed her head into his shoulders, and he could tell that he wasn't alone in crying.
It seemed like the perfect happy ending.
