Author's Notes: Hoo baby, this is getting flippin' intense…
Running through endless hallways, that's all Bo's life seemed to be.
The alarm was nerve racking, but she knew Zurg's base well enough now that she could navigate her way where she guessed Star Command would have broken through. There was a large port where she landed earlier. It wasn't very heavily secured.
However, to her dismay she found that the fighting had already begun. It seemed too familiar, being on the wrong side of the battlefield. She remembered the promise Woody had made many years ago that he would not fight anymore. Bo wondered if he even remembered the promise.
She found the Hornets using the snakelike hallways to their advantage. It seemed every path that would get her to the port was filled with lasers and bloodshed. There was only one way to get to where she needed to be, and that was through the Hornets.
There was an upstairs balcony that overlooked the port. If she could survive the jump, that was probably her best bet. She remembered the familiarity of that too. Once she did jump from a balcony on a Star Command ship, and that didn't work too well.
Nobody was even upstairs. The battle was on the main floor, which made things relatively easy for Bo. Her guess was correct. Star Command had entered through the port, and waves of rangers poured through the facility. She tried desperately looking for Woody in the midst of the crowd, but it was almost impossible.
Something caught her eye above her. An electrical wire had been cut that looked like it was attached to the doors opening into space. It was a ways ahead of her, but she thought she could make it.
Bo took a deep breath, and then jumped.
She flung her hands out in front of her, trying to grasp the small wire. She shut her eyes for a moment, fearing that she had missed it, but the cord met her hand smoothly. Her weight broke the plastic pieces keeping the wire attached to the ceiling, letting her descend. It was bumpy, but it was working.
Until the hornets noticed her.
Avoiding lasers in the air was extremely difficult. She was almost all the way down when her hand burned horribly. She lost her grip and fell, landing hardly on the cold floor. Her hand was in bad condition, but she shoved it into her shirt and stood up quickly. The Star Command Rangers around her couldn't pay much mind since they were close to driving the Hornets back.
One ranger did step out of line and helped her back out of direct line of attack. He looked like a normal human being, and had similar composure to Buzz.
"You need to get out of here, miss! Were you a prisoner?" he asked quickly, moving her fast back to one of the star command ships that had forced its way into the port.
"Yes! I need to know if you've seen either Buzz Lightyear or a Cowboy!" Bo shouted above the utter chaos.
"Captain Lightyear was chasing Stoneheart with another guy. That might've been him. They were heading towards that way." He jerked out his thumb towards a desolate pathway. Apparently everyone else was paying attention to the main battle.
Bo nodded a thank you, and then ducked into the ship for shelter for a moment. There medics already had their hands full of the wounded. In the corner was a small family. They all looked forlorn and starved. Something about them struck Bo's eye. She couldn't put her finger on it…
One of the medics noticed her hand. He pushed her over to a table making her sit down.
"I can't stay! I have to find my friends!" she resisted.
"I need to do my job. If we don't get that taken care of, you might never be able to use your hand ever again," he replied calmly. He took her hand out of the folds of her shirt carefully. She winced. It hurt a lot.
The medic paused. He eyed Bo and then called to the woman in the small family in the corner.
"Mrs. Davis, could you please watch over this one while I get some ointment?"
The woman nodded and told her son something. The boy held his sister's hand. He had a worried expression on his face.
Bo sighed. At this rate she'd never get to her friends.
The woman walked up to Bo. She had a slightly wrinkly face and aging blonde hair, but she looked kind enough. She looked so familiar…
"Mrs. Davis! Of course!" Bo exclaimed. She'd been so blind! She'd already forgotten about Andy, Molly and their mother once again.
"Bo? Is that you?" the woman asked not quite as enthusiastically. She looked so thin that if she so much as yelled she'd be out of breath.
Bo nodded eagerly. She hugged Mrs. Davis promptly.
"I had heard you were the one responsible for all of this. I didn't believe it," the mother said. "I expect the fighting to end soon now that we've found you!"
"I escaped on my own, save the help of one of the rangers… And she's probably a ways away now," Bo said regretfully.
"Then you've got to tell people who you are! This will be all over soon."
"It's not that simple. I have to make things right. You haven't seen Woody lately have you?"
Mrs. Davis took a deep breath. "He's chasing after Stoneheart. Buzz and the rest of the gang followed after him. I tried to convince at least Jessie or Mrs. Potatohead to stay here, but they wouldn't have any of that."
"Why are you here, by the way? It's so good to see you again, but under the circumstances I wish you weren't here in such a dangerous time," Bo said taking Mrs. Davis' hand.
"After the events at the wedding we were in imprisonment here, for a long time. Andy used his boyish charm to make friends with one of the guards. He claimed that Stoneheart was up to something worse than everybody thought. The guard was still loyal to Zurg. One day he snuck us out, but he was murdered right before he made it to the escape pod with us. We landed in the desert, and we wandered for a long time until we found a town brought up by a family called the Andersons."
"I know that town! I've been there!" Bo exclaimed.
"Yes, they talked about you when they were transported up. Anyway, Woody had been looking for us as soon as he had heard we escaped. We had just departed the town when Woody arrived and then it was attacked. We headed to the last port town. It had been evacuated since Stoneheart's empire knew it was the only port town to Star Command that hadn't been destroyed yet. I made contact with Star Command, and we made it up shortly after you had left. They need medics on hand here. I had to come with them, and there is no one that can watch my children. Literally everyone is in on the battle," Mrs. Davis said wearily.
"So Woody was looking for you. That's why he was there at the Anderson town… why didn't he talk to us while we were there? He must have recognized Jessie and me," Bo said.
"I don't know anything about that, but I'm afraid if Buzz and the others don't get to him on time, he'll strangle Stoneheart to death."
She recognized the hallway. It was hot and humid, with bits of steam popping out of the walls as dull colored pipes lined the pathway. It was the way to the incinerator.
Bo didn't like how they were heading there of all places. It made her nervous for some reason. She had picked up a blaster from a fallen hornet earlier, but it wasn't like she needed it too much since there was no one in the eerie hallway. Her hand still hurt, but the doctor had put on a special cream and bandage so it started to feel a little better.
Finally she recognized the two doors overseeing the incinerator. Bo couldn't imagine another room worth going to in this section of the station. It would be the perfect place to… murder someone…
One of the doors led to the room she had been in with Jessie right after she had her panic attack. The other one had stairs leading down past all the monitors. She looked around for her friends everywhere out in the hallway, not wanting to go into either of the rooms, but it was dead silent save the gusts of steam coming out of the walls.
She couldn't get that image out of her head, the one of people down in the incinerator waiting for their destruction. Bo had recognized one to be Jessie in that vision, and that frightened her more than anything else.
Finally she placed her hand on the first door leading to the monitor room. The screens were all turned off, but she could hear voices coming from the stairs. She cautiously made her way down the iron steps as the sound got a little louder.
There was a main viewing deck she supposed workers observed on. It had another level with the same grated floor that looked like it wrapped up and around the incinerator. It led into a dimly lit room with a few control panels on it. In the middle of the main floor was a large glass chute that looked like it piled up trash until full, and then it released into a conveyor belt. The conveyor belt was in a deep crevice that fed right into the fiery pit.
As Bo made her way closer to the main floor, she could gradually see a figure standing on the viewing deck, and a few more inside the glass chute.
It was her friends.
