Everything happened in slow motion.
It had been a regular day— Molly's dad was unsurprisingly absent when it came time to pick her up from school, and she'd called Giovanni on her cell phone to let him know. At the time, he'd already been in Spike's big SUV, laughing and punching the roof with the rest of his minions, so he was more than happy to shout to the driver's seat and tell Car Crash to make a quick detour to Sweet Jazz Jr. High School.
Even as Car Cr— Fred pulled unsteadily into the pick-up zone, there had been some slight premonition in the back of Giovanni's brain that he should take over. But to ask his minion to step aside would be like handing him a sweater that said "I don't trust you" stitched in big, ugly letters on the front, so instead he calmed his fears and then distracted himself by joining in the chorus of cheers yelling "BEAR TRAP! BEAR TRAP! BEAR TRAP!" as the embarrassed 12-year-old girl climbed into the side of the SUV.
"How ya doin', Bear Trap?" Gio asked with a smile, reaching behind his seat to pat his youngest minion on the head. "Pull any pranks on the teacher?"
"What? No!" she exclaimed in surprise, but then smiled as she pulled the door behind her. "I mean, I did tell off a bully who was trying to make Trixie feel bad."
"AWESOME! That's my girl!" Giovanni exclaimed, and the other Banzai Blasters nodded in approval as he slapped her shoulder. "Didja start a fight?"
"No. But Trixie probably would have if the yard-duty hadn't come over," Molly stated simply. She took the seat directly behind Giovanni's— shotgun, of course— and gave the rest of the minions in the car a shy wave.
"Okay, everybody's seatbelts buckled?" Giovanni asked, turning around to make a pointed look at Spike, who was in fact not buckled up. She rolled her eyes.
"It's my car," she mumbled, but fastened the strip of material anyway, knowing just as well as everyone else that nobody went anywhere until Giovanni knew they were all safe.
"C'mon, Spike!" Ben whined from the very back of the car. "Now we're gonna be late to crime!"
"Don't worry about that!" Car C… Fred exclaimed from up front. And before anyone else had time to jump in on the conversation, the car was squealing away from the school building like a mouse running from a cat.
"So… what exactly are you guys doing?" Molly asked, a slightly concerned (but mostly confused) expression on her face
"Crime things," Giovanni replied proudly. "They're too dangerous for a non-official Banzai Blaster, though. We'll drop you off at home beforehand."
"Oh," Molly replied simply, and (perhaps deciding she was better off the less she knew), didn't ask any more questions.
Then the conversation had devolved into the usual Banzai Blaster complaining fest about the higher-ups, and bossy parents, and itchy sweaters. Molly watched quietly in amusement from her seat, and everything was picture-perfect as far as Giovanni was concerned.
And then the motorcycle sped by.
It would be explained later, by Spike and everyone else who saw it, that the motorcycle was fully in the next lane over. That it didn't suddenly swerve in front of the SUV, and that they were in no danger of rear-ending it at a meager speed of 60 miles per hour.
But it didn't really matter what they saw.
Because Fred was the one who was driving.
And in a split-second of terrified "realization," his foot had slammed the car brakes as far as they could go just before he could truly realize what a horrible idea that was, judging by his ear-splitting scream being immediately drowned by the BLARING car horn afterward.
"FRED, WHAT—"
And those were the only words Giovanni could get out to his before he was jolted forward from the source of a horrifying SHATTERING sound.
"BOSS!"
Reflecting on the moment later, Giovanni would remember with vivid clarity exactly what flashed through his mind as the glass from the back window flew past his own in slow-motion, the silver blur of a car following and veering off to the side in a desperate attempt to lessen its own impact.
Car Crash.
This is my fault.
Molly.
Every word screamed past that point didn't reach Giovanni's ears over the pounding of his heart. The car made its way to a pull-off that was miraculously only a few meters ahead before stopping, the silver one that had caused the damage already parked and flashing its emergency lights. The crew of minions rushed out in an instant, seeming panicked and all talking at once, the driver himself already breaking into tears in a way that ripped Giovanni's pounding heart right out of its cavity. But still he couldn't hear any of it. All he heard was an ominous, thudding, increasingly-fast Ba-dum. Ba-dum. Ba-dum Ba-dumBa-dumBadumbadumbadum—
Molly.
She was right near the window that broke; she'd been—
Spike pulled the little girl, shaking but unharmed, out from the backseat.
Giovanni had never felt such a strong wave of relief in his life.
"Beartrap—"
He was the baddest bad guy around, and yet at that moment his normally-booming voice cracked with emotion as he rushed forward and dropped to his knees to check the girl for injuries before pulling her against his chest. She was mumbling something— probably either apologizing or reassuring him— but the pounding sound in his head didn't die down for a good two minutes, which was about the same time he realized his vision had also been blurred by tears. Wiping those away, he reluctantly turned his attention from the smallest minion to the others, who were also understandably shaken.
"Boss, what happened—?"
"I-I-I'm s-sorryy—!"
"Boss, a-are you okay?!"
"The driver's getting out, what do we do now, boss—?"
Giovanni managed to pull himself together enough to answer all their questions in turn, and then the ones from the people in the silver car that had rear-ended them. Another miracle; they seemed more frightened than mad, and the driver of the car (a boy no older than Giovanni himself) wasn't sure who's fault the crash had actually been… which was good for them, because it was definitely not his.
After exchanging numbers and triple-checking that everyone was at least physically all right— the Banzai Blaster Captain had never been so thankful for his own seatbelt rule in his life— things seemed like they were going to be okay. All things considered, the amount of small miracles that seemed to be on their side was nothing to be scoffed at.
But that didn't change the weight of the silence on the tow truck ride home.
"Boss?"
Giovanni looked up from his phone, blinking out of his daze. "Huh? Yeah?"
"Umm…" Molly, who sat cross-legged on the foot of her bed, glanced pensively away. "Are you… doing okay?"
Giovanni felt a rush of guilt at her apparent concern. "Why, of course!" he flatly lied. "I'm here with my favorite minion, aren't I? Why wouldn't I be okay?"
"It's just…" Molly hesitated before mumbling something under her breath.
"Just what? I can't hear you when you mumble," the older boy insisted out of habit.
"You've been kinda… broody for the past couple hours?" Molly asked with a note of uncertainty. "Er, well… the past couple of DAYS, really."
"I'm a villain, Bear Trap; of COURSE I brood." He flipped his cape so as to lie on it dramatically, one hand covering his forehead. Molly giggled, but more out of politeness than anything, which irritated Giovanni to no end.
What she said next, however, quickly replaced that feeling with a myriad of other emotions.
"...Do you wanna talk about it?"
The pink-haired man blinked twice at the question. "Talk about…?"
Oh. Ohh, there went his heart. His little Bear Trap, all grown up, taking her boss's advice and confronting emotional problems with bravery and courage.
How was he supposed to say no to that?
Sighing, Giovanni sat up, scooching a bit closer to Molly— although only slightly, to assuage his own guilt. He felt like if he got too close, he might accidentally hit her or something.
"I'm… really sorry for what happened a week ago."
His voice was humbler than usual. Not the voice of a Banzai Blaster Captain. Just a scared and sorry teenage boy.
Molly blinked in surprise... and then her features softened into an apologetic understanding. "Ohh. Is that why you went MIA on us for two days?" She added quickly, "I mean, I kinda figured, but… I dunno, I thought you'd gotten over it then; you seemed okay when you showed back up."
"How can I 'get over' it?" Giovanni spilled immediately, the chest-guilt starting to flood up into his eyes as he looked at the floor. Yes; he HAD tried to move past what happened, but… "I put you in danger— I put all my boys in danger!"
"I mean…" Molly chewed on the inside of her lip, clearly debating whether or not to bring up the next point. "You weren't the one who crashed the car…"
"THAT WASN'T HIS FAULT!" Giovanni screeched, perhaps a little louder than intended. He lowered his voice immediately seeing Molly flinch, but the burning in his eyes dripped out. "He's… I'm his boss! Anything my boys do under my watch is on me. And— I knew he had a problem of some kind! I shouldn't have let him drive with all my other boys in the car…"
"If it helps," Molly offered with that pleading, encouraging look of hers, "it wasn't even that bad of a crash. Nobody got hurt… we were really lucky."
"Yeah, that's just it." Giovanni sighed, his angry voice dipping into weariness in record time. "We got lucky. What if we hadn't? What if—"
"Boss."
Giovanni glanced over, feeling just a touch of irony at the role-reversal. "Yes, Bear Trap?"
"It didn't. We're okay. That's the important part."
Then Molly smiled— an actual, genuine smile. Not the fakey-fake polite one that she used for customers. "I mean… was it scary? Yeah. And I'm really, really glad it's over. But… it wasn't nearly as bad as it could've been."
She glanced away just for a moment, and Giovanni recognized the flicker of emotion in her eyes that only happened when she was around fire. But it was gone in an instant as she looked back to him. "I know you always do everything you can to protect us. I mean, if you hadn't told Spike to put on her seatbelt, she probably would've gotten seriously hurt!"
Giovanni's stomach flipped at the thought, but he realized with some gratitude that she was right.
"And," she continued, "if you're worried about the future, now we know what to do differently! I mean, Fred… er, Car Crash, is getting an eye exam now, right? That wouldn't have happened if you hadn't calmed him down after the crash."
Giovanni's memories of that were a little blurry, but he did recall talking down the curly-haired boy, holding him by the shoulders and reassuring him that it must've been his defective eyesight that caused him to crash.
"You're the best boss ever, you know that, right?"
Giovanni blinked, the last of his tears falling away as he looked to his minion.
He pulled her into a hug, and she didn't protest.
"And you're the best minion, Bear Trap," he said softly back.
He couldn't see it, but he could feel her smile against his chest. "You say that to all your minions."
Giovanni rocked her gently, more as a motion of comfort for himself than for her. "Yeah, I know." Then he pulled back slightly and shot her a teasing smile.
"But with you, I mean it."
(A/N: My part of a writing/art trade I did for ice-the-irken on tumblr! She requested Giovanni feeling guilty after CC crashed a car with Molly and the other BB in it... I mean, basically exactly what you read. XD Trades are closed right now, but please remember to leave a comment if you liked the story!)