It was late at night. Wally was dead asleep in his bedroll, his skin burning up and slick with sweat. Here and there, he would fearfully mumble nonsense.
How is he doing, Artemis?" Kal'dur asked, his tone softer than usual.
It's… weird." the archer opined. "He just said that he felt like going to bed early tonight, and then the moment he hit the pillow, he was like… this!"
Getting hurt (or even worse) was nothing new in the Heroing community. It was a risk that was obvious to anyone with more than two brain cells to rub together. After all, while Heroes might be bound by an oath of minimal force, villains and invaders of humanity have no such compunctions. Many heroes over the age of ten knew one or two fellow heroes who've since fallen in the field.
But it wasn't often dwelt upon. Not when children deciding to don the mask was so commonplace as to be socially accepted.
"Perhaps he'd merely become infected due to that wound on his shoulder." said Aqualad.
Artemis grunted.
It was possible. Who knows what pile of garbage that brat pulled that crystal-thing from?
After a few moments, Robin looked up. "...Wait, guys… What if the crystal itself is causing this reaction?" he said. The rest of them looked among themselves.
When they approached the subject of Originium, Ms. Morozova looked rather nervous. She spoke well-enough about it's widespread use as an energy source (analogous to fossil fuels in their world). After that, though, she refused to speak any further on the matter.
The books, too, spoke of Originium as a wondrous energy source that made technological advancements on Terra possible. Paired with those words, however, were grim warnings about how dangerous the stuff was. They wrote about specialised crews "decontaminating" areas containing Originium, usually growing where it was most inconvenient. Such as, say, in land slated for development. But there was nothing about why Originium was so dangerous.
There was something people didn't want to tell them, something big. This hesitancy irked Robin.
Once again, they contemplated just pulling out the damn crystal, now that they know it was supposed to be some kind of dangerous toxin. The sound of a chainsaw a few levels down, though, broke their train of thought.
Wally woke up with a shout.
The Rhodes Island Ops team crept through barely-lit hallways. Those with missile weapons pointed them at every angle conceivable. Melee operators stood between their ranged teammates, ready to cut down those who got too close for comfort. The team's medic walked at the group's centre. They moved in teams of two, always within shouting distance of one another.
One of those pairs noticed an unblocked door. They signalled to the others that they were venturing inside.
They entered, and an entire classroom of screaming students descended upon them with knives and hammers.
"Holy fuck, there are children here!" said one of the pair.
And soon as he said that, a rusty knife pierced his stomach. He gurgled and collapsed to the floor.
His buddy backpedaled wildly, firing bolts at the charging crowd. He kept firing, even as he saw his friend's corpse getting butchered like the carcass of a game animal.
He took down one, two, three, before one child got close enough to cut his shins with a fruit knife. He turned around and ran like hell.
"Guuuys, help!"
He ran behind Blaze, whose hand reached for her chainsaw.
She lifted the thing out of its case, raised it into the sky, and revved it up.
*BBBRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR*
The whirring sound of the moving saw reverberated throughout the entire hallway. Facing the crowd, the Feline took on the scariest face she could muster.
"So you wanna take me on, brats!?"
The children hesitated, their weapons going slack in their hands. Some form of sanity returned to them, even if only out of naked self-preservation.
"..."
Then, the other side of the hallway collapsed in a sea of dust. A hatted, white-haired figure stepped through. Skadi.
Most of the children noticed the white-haired Aegir, and decided to rush her instead.
Blaze dropped her scary face, and yelled.
"Skadi, they're just kids, don't hurt 'em!"
Skadi paused, and looked at the children now charging at her with fruit knives and letter openers.
"..."
She opened her mouth, and the ocean flowed out.
"Younglings, you are all being very foolish,
Believing yourselves the bigger predator.
Bless the Gods that watch over you,
That I am in no mood for death this day."
Instead of pulling out her sword, she swatted aside the first child that reached her with the back of her hand. The second child reached her, and tried to sink a knife into her guts. The blade broke into two. Skadi knocked the child away with a metre rule she picked up from somewhere.
The child flew into a shelf of cubby holes, leaving her dazed in a pile of splintered wood.
Skadi then knocked away another child, then another, then another. She batted children left and right like an old-fashioned schoolmarm.
"Ahh! Monsters! There are monsters all around us!" the rest of them yelled. They ran in all directions, anywhere other than the two women bracketing the ends of the hallway.
Meanwhile, a noble girl was creeping behind Blaze with a knife, ready to shank her, when a pair of arms behind her choked her out by surprise. The thump of an unconscious body falling to the floor made Blaze turn around. She cocked an eyebrow at the strangely-dressed boy before her.
"Y'know, I could've handled her myself." she said. "And you are… ?"
"Just call me Robin, your friendly neighborhood Boy Wonder!" he said, backhanding yet another charging noble.
"... Uh huh, you definitely don't look like a local. Can I ask what the hell's going on here? These children were attacking my people like a pack of wild animals! Has this whole place gone completely insane?"
This "Robin" character rubbed his hands behind his head.
"Weeell… It's a long story, see…"
"Aww c'mon, I was never actually gonna use it on those kids. What do you think I am, some kind of psychopath?"
When everyone woke up to the sound of chainsaws whirring, it was that Aqualad guy and his strange band who volunteered to investigate.
They left before Zima could even give them the okay, which irked her something fierce. Weren't they supposed to be part of the group? Did they consider themselves part of the group? Even after helping them cook, scavenge, and fight off those noble bastards, apparently not.
The Self-Government group expected all sorts of things to happen to them downstairs. Gummy worried for them. Some thought that Reunion had finally started going for them, and urged the rest to flee the school while they still can. As if that didn't entail running into Reunion territory. A few fantasised about those strangers getting killed in their place, so they didn't have to deal with those moralising worms anymore.
Zima didn't particularly think much of anything. She just sat up in her bedroll, and waited.
They returned.
Gummy gasped. "It's new people!"
Meanwhile, Zima was doing her utmost best not to start smashing windows at the sight of even more strangers from outside.
"Blyat, did Peterheim secretly transform into a lighthouse or something? Why do idiots keep wandering inside this place." Zima said, holding a hand to her head. "Anyway, Lada, don't cook anything for them."
"H-Huh? But Sonia-"
"No buts. Our food stores are running out. Very soon, we'll have to eat our own arms and legs if we keep holding out our hand to more strangers."
"Nah, that won't be necessary…" said the woman at the head of this new batch of strangers, an intimidatingly-built Feline woman. "Because all of you children are coming along with us back to Rhodes Island."
"Ms. Blaze, what about the energy readings?" said one of them.
"Screw the energy readings, it's probably nothing anyways. This, children starving and going all Lord of the Flies to survive, is the real priority here! I'm no bleeding-heart, but I'll take saving kids over investigating some strange anomaly. My orders. If any of you worry about getting heat from Doc Kal about it, just say that it was all from me. I'm supposed to be Team Leader for this operation anyways…" Blaze said.
"Err… Rhodes Island?" rasped Wally.
"Some kind of medicine company or another, I wasn't really paying attention." said Artemis.
"And why the hell should we trust you!?" Zima roared.
One of the newcomers stepped forward. A person with a halo like that of an angel, and wearing the garb of a field medic, approached Zima with her hands raised.
"... You shouldn't feel obligated to trust us. But we are one of the only organisations in Terra with expertise in caring for Originium-caused diseases and medical complications. Even if you don't want to trust us, at least think about your friend over there." she said, gesturing vaguely at Wally's direction.
"... He's not my friend…" said Zima, half-heartedly.
"At the moment, though, Robin and Aqualad looked at each other, and they nodded in unison.
They turned to Wally.
Wally shrugged. "Hey, it's not like we have any better options, right?"
Aqualad turned to the representative.
"Give us a few minutes to gather everyone of us here. We're leaving with you." said the Atlantean
"... So that's it, then? You're leaving us behind?" asked Zima.
Robin turned towards the Ursus girl.
"You're right, "General" Sonia, we can't save everyone. The least we can do right now is save those who need it the most. In this case, it's our teammate who needs it the most, not some self-styled leader too stubborn to accept help when it comes knocking on her classroom door!"
Zima grunted. She looked away, then back again. She gritted her teeth.
She locked eyes with Anna, and then with Lada (Gummy's real name). Lada gave her a sad smile. In her hands Zima saw her red frying pan, dented yet clean and well-kept, even in this hellhole.
She looked at the junk Gummy carried in her pack, all those various knick knacks she put to use somehow. She looked at the great vault door she picked up from somewhere, for self-defense. The Ursus Scout motto came to Zima's mind (what little she could remember from overhearing their after-school practice, at least). To never let anything go to waste, to always be prepared, to never leave anything or anyone behind.
From the back of the group, someone pushed their way forward. The others parted, and the rest saw.
"... U-Umm, Miss? S-Something happened to Mia…"
Zima turned to the voice. It was a boy, one of the small gaggle of survivors that made up their little group. He was helping a fellow classmate walk.
Zima could see the crystal lesions on her neck.
She clenched her fists so hard, the veins turned white.
All the students were outside now, looking back at Peterheim, their home for the last few weeks (miserable though it was).
As the students turned away from the school, a voice cried out from the rubble.
"Wait!"
Everyone turned, to see a girl stagger out of the ruined building. She was Ursus like them, tall and with hair as white as snow. She wore what was once a preppy school uniform, that had since been reduced to a state little better than rags and animal skin. Her hair was unkempt, and her eyes were wide and pleading.
"P-Please… Let me go with you too…"
Zima looked at her for a few seconds, then glared at her hatefully.
"You…" she said, and the tone made the white-haired girl flinch. "You were with those fucking noble kids!"
For a breathless while, nobody spoke.
"... Yes, yes, I won't deny it… I won't- I won't deny that it happened…" she said, falling to her knees before Zima's stare.
Zima slowly reached behind her, and pulled out her massive woodcutter's axe.
She swung it back, then swung forward as if to behead her.
She slowed mid-swing, such that the blade barely nicked her skin. Blood trickled out of Rosa's neck. Her face twitched in pain, but also surprise.
"You bitch, do you know just how fuckin' many of us your merry little band killed!? Did you even know their names!? Alexei, Anya, Lora, Nadie… I bet you won't know who the fuck I'm talking about, but their blood is on your hands... and I'm collecting the debt personally."
She reared back her arms, axe-in-hand, readying the final blow. The noble girl continued to kneel, not moving, not responding.
Blaze and Robin moved to intercept, but Gummy rushed past all of them.
She caught Zima's axe arm before it could swing the final blow. Zima grit her teeth as she tried to wrench out of Gummy's grip, but they were surprisingly even in strength.
"Sonia, s-stop! There's no point in killing her anymore!" the chef girl said.
"Let go, stupid Gummy! Didn't you see what they did!? What she, the responsible student council president, allowed them to do!? Did you remember all of our classmates that her people butchered like animals? Let me fucking go so I can even the scales right fucking now!"
"No Zima… I'm sick of death… I'm sick of people dying around me… No more deaths Sonia! No more! We're leaving all that behind in Peterheim now! Please, Sonia..."
She looked at her group's chef, at her friend. The sole cheerful light in their miserable group. Zima then looked back at the noble girl. She was in utter ruins. Her clothes were more fit to be burned than washed. She looked down at the dirt. She kept kneeling, awaiting death like a saint.
… Well fuck that.
Dropping her axe, Zima instead grabbed the chin of the noble girl, forcing her to look eye-to-eye.
She then punched her in the face.
The punch sent her sprawling all over the rubble, a stream of blood rushing from her nose.
"Fine, I'll let your maggoty ass follow us. But you keep your mouth shut, noble. You try anything, and I will gut you like a fish."
The noble girl nodded tersely, as she stood up.