Time for the final battle, you guys! Nothing really much I can say except…enjoy!
The guards, having not expected to see Benson, Skips and the others rush towards them, began firing wildly, somehow managing to completely miss them as they smashed through the line of guards in their way, sending them flying.
Once the group made it to the tree line, they immediately split up and began making their way through the park in different directions, so as to cover more ground.
Skips chose to cover the far left area of the forest. As he was busy frantically looking around the area, he managed to run into a few guards, but he barreled right through them without even breaking stride. Once Skips reached the deeper areas of the park, the guards suddenly got smarter, firing their guns at the yeti.
Even though Skips was in fact immortal, he still decided that it was best not to get hit by anything so as not to slow anyone else down once he either reached Mordecai and Rigby or met up with one of the other members of the rescue party. So, he continued running, rolling around to dodge the gunfire while simultaneously punching out guards.
Meanwhile, Benson took the next section of the forest. The guards he ended up running into didn't waste any time, pulling out guns and trying to shoot him, but Benson was having none of that. The first armed guard he ran into managed to only aim the gun at Benson when the gumball machine immediately grabbed the gun and pushed it down to the ground before socking him in the face and ripping the gun out of the falling guard's hands.
Benson took a look at the gun he had in his hands and considered using it for a second before deciding against it and tossing it into the bushes, sprinting off once again.
Pops was next up in line, covering the next area of the park, although at a much slower pace than the others. Admittedly, he could run faster, but he wanted to not miss anything when he was looking around. This unfortunately led to more encounters with guards, but it wasn't a problem for Pops. For example, one of the guards he ran into attempted to rush Pops, but the lolliman was ready, lifting him up and power slamming him to the ground, before throwing an elbow in his face to knock him out.
The constant interruptions began wearing the old man out, though. As much as Pops wanted to sit down and rest, he knew that it would only lead to trouble, so he avoided the temptation and continued on, switching his tactics to simple takedowns instead of actual lifting slams.
Thomas was in the next section over, heading in a straight line towards the back of the park while looking around for Mordecai and Rigby. By sheer chance, Gene just happened to be a few feet behind him, chasing after the goat. You see, after the rescue crew escaped the clearing and Gene sent the guards after them, he noticed that none of the guards were chasing after Thomas, probably thinking he wasn't an issue thanks to him being the new guy. Annoyed, he decided to take it upon himself to go after Thomas, and ran off.
As for Thomas himself, he was aware that Gene was after him, and believing that he probably would have no chance against him in a fistfight (Gene being made of glass and metal and all), he decided it would be best just to run away. So he continued frantically running away from Gene, dodging trees and hopping over branches while double-tasking and looking around for Mordecai and Rigby.
Meanwhile, Muscle Man and High-Five Ghost decided to stay together and cover the last section of the park. Fives was floating higher in the air than normal to get a better view of the area, while Muscle Man was busy covering the ground. Muscle Man didn't really have too many problems with guards either, especially with Fives around to help. The two of them managed to figure out an efficient way of taking out the guards. Muscle Man would punch the guard in the gut, and then Fives would immediately float down towards the guard and uppercut him, which worked most of the time, except for one intimidating-looking guard they ran into after getting really deep into the park.
"Fives, we've got another one!" yelled Muscle Man as the guard came up into their view.
"Got it!" replied Fives, who began speeding down towards the guard.
The two of them managed to pull off the move successfully, but the guard didn't actually fall down. Instead, he just faced towards Muscle Man and smiled. Muscle Man was frantically looking around, trying to find something stronger to hit him with.
As Muscle Man was busy dodging punches from the guard and throwing some of his own, Fives actually managed to find a pretty hefty rock a few feet away.
"I found something, Muscle Man!"
"Great, toss it here!"
Fives did as he was asked, and Muscle Man caught the rock, before immediately swinging and hitting the guard in the face, sending some teeth flying out of the guard's mouth.
Muscle Man paused, thinking that it didn't work, but eventually the guard did collapse to the ground knocked out. After wincing a bit at the damage he did to the guard's face, he rushed off to continue his search.
As the chaos went on throughout the park, Mordecai and Rigby were silently raking leaves a few feet from the cave they went into during the Christmas incident. Both of them were still staring into space with their eyes still quite blank and glazed over, but somehow they managed to get close to completing the job at a pretty efficient pace.
However, the peace and quiet in their area of the park was suddenly broken when Thomas suddenly popped out of the line of trees a few feet away. The goat paused as he tried to get his bearings, when his eyes suddenly landed on the brainwashed duo. Ecstatic that he finally found the two slackers, he rushed towards them, only to end up tripping over a branch that he failed to notice.
Stunned, Thomas could only watch as Gene sauntered over to Mordecai and Rigby and looked back at Thomas, smirking.
"So close, and yet so far. How does it feel to know that you were only a few feet away from taking these two from me?" said Gene.
Thomas wasn't able to reply, as he couldn't quite get his mouth working in his stunned state. Instead he chose to glare at Gene, but it came out more as a pained grimace.
Before Gene could continue gloating, a guard suddenly came flying into the area from the tree line, somehow still carrying his rifle with him. The gun went sailing out of hands when he landed, though, and slid along the ground to land a few feet away from Gene.
A few seconds after the gun came to a stop, Skips popped out from the trees, followed by Benson, Pops and the rest of the group a few seconds apart. Skips's eyes took in the scene in front of him, first noticing the presence of Mordecai and Rigby, before finding Thomas getting up from the ground, having recovered from his spell. Soon, Skips and the rest of the group joined up with Thomas.
"You okay, Thomas?" asked Benson.
"Yeah, I'm fine. Thanks."
"Well, it looks like the gang's all back together again!" said Gene, interrupting the group's conversation.
Thomas looked up at Gene to find the vending machine pointing the rifle at Mordecai and Rigby while the two of them continued to calmly rake the leaves. The goat's jaw dropped as he realized just what kind of lengths Gene would go down to keep Mordecai and Rigby with him.
"Gene, no! We can talk about this." said Skips.
"What's there to talk about? You didn't take the only offer I had for you, so I figure that if I can't have him, then no one will." said Gene.
While the rest of the group was busy trying to distract Gene from following through with his threat to kill Mordecai and Rigby, Benson was busy trying to formulate a plan in his head. Eventually, one popped into his head, and he turned towards the group.
"High-Five Ghost, I need to talk to you in private. The rest of you, keep talking to Gene. Make sure he doesn't fire that gun."
The group nodded, before turning back to Gene, who had a slight look of confusion on his face as he looked at the group. Fives, meanwhile, followed Benson as they walked a few feet away from the scene.
"Hey Fives, do you think you can pull off that invisibility trick again?"
"Sure, why?" asked Fives.
"I need you to turn invisible and get behind Gene. I'll try to get closer to him to get that gun away from him. Once I give you the signal, I want you to turn visible again and try your best to scare the heck out of him. That should give me enough time to disarm him. Got it?"
Fives nodded, before the both of them returned to the group.
Once they returned to the scene, Fives hid behind Muscle Man as he turned invisible. However, before he could float over behind Gene, Benson suddenly noticed something wrong with the scene before them.
"Where's Thomas?"
Everyone began looking around, somehow not noticing that the goat has gone missing until now.
"It looks like your goat friend has flown the coop! I figured that guy was a coward." said Gene.
Little did the vending machine know, Thomas actually managed to sneak off while Benson was busy talking to Fives, and was now right behind Gene, Mordecai and Rigby. Once the group noticed his disappearance, Thomas reacted instinctively and sprang up from his hiding spot, jumping on Gene's back and covering his eyes, preventing him from seeing where he was.
Benson, meanwhile, was taken off guard for a moment from Thomas's appearance, but he refocused soon after, rushing towards Gene and grabbing the gun. Gene wasn't going to give up without a fight, though, refusing to give up the gun, even while he was completely blind. However, once the rest of the group joined in, Gene didn't have much of a chance. Skips took the vending machine down to the ground after Thomas jumped off, and Benson finally took control of the gun, pointing the rifle at Gene.
"Don't move!" yelled Benson.
Even though Gene couldn't see, with his face being flat against the ground, he was pretty sure that Benson had the gun trained on him, so he stayed still.
"Now, we're going to take Mordecai and Rigby and go back to the park, and if you even think of coming to try and take them back, I won't hesitate to put you six feet under." said Benson.
Gene was well aware that it was an empty threat, but he didn't want to push his luck, so he didn't make a move.
As Benson kept the gun trained on Gene, Skips and the others were looking at Mordecai and Rigby continuing to calmly rake leaves.
"So, what do we do now?" asked Thomas.
"We take them home." said Muscle Man, sounding as if it was obvious.
"I know, but it's not like they're going to simply walk home with us."
Thomas turned towards Skips.
"Do you have any ideas, Skips?"
The yeti didn't immediately answer, as he was busy thinking.
"I think the only thing we can really do right now is knock them out. Come to think of it, that should probably help us out as well when we work on trying to bring them back from the brainwashing."
"Sounds good." said Thomas.
Skips turned towards Benson, calling out to him.
"Hey, Benson!"
"Yeah, Skips?"
"We're going to need to borrow that gun for a bit."
"Why? I kind of need to keep Gene under watch here."
"We need to knock Mordecai and Rigby out so we can get them out of here. And you can just sit on him. It's not like he can get up on his own."
Benson reluctantly tossed the gun to Skips before sitting down on top of Gene, who luckily was still unable to get up.
Skips paused for a second as he held the gun, unsure if he should really go through with what he was thinking of doing. Eventually, he decided it was most likely going to be the only way he could do it and raised the butt of the gun towards the two groundskeepers.
"Sorry, you guys."
After apologizing in advance, Skips swung the gun barrel twice in quick succession, successfully knocking out both Mordecai and Rigby. Skips then turned towards Thomas.
"Grab Rigby and let's get out of here."
He then signaled to Benson that they were leaving before picking up Mordecai and slinging him over his shoulder.
As the group made their way back to the entrance of East Pines, the big question on each of their minds was just how they were going to be able to bring Mordecai and Rigby back to their old selves. None of them really knew, but they were going to have to figure it out if they want them back.
And that's the end of this chapter! I've been messing around a bit with how I depict fight scenes since the last time I did one god knows how long ago, so I'm hoping that you guys are really able to get into the details of how it went down. Let me know what you think of it, because I may tweak it again next time I do a fight scene to make it even better.
Anyway, next time's going to be the final official chapter. (Don't worry; there'll be an epilogue, too.) I'm really happy that you guys have enjoyed this story through the whole ride. While I did have fun writing it, and I admit I'll miss it when it's done, I'm really glad that it's gotten as well-liked as it has.
So, before I begin rambling, I think I'll probably stop things right here. See you guys next time. Bye!
RK
