At that moment, Wally felt like hell.
"Can you walk?" he heard a far-off voice say.
"Y-Yeah, I guess…" he replied.
"... Just keep your eyes to the front and follow me, alright?"
"Sure thing, Doc." he said. And he was pretty sure she was a Doc, from the way she talked. It seemed very Doctor-y, if Wally had to describe it.
"...You know, we still have a stretcher to spare, if you're really not up for walking…" said one of the other Rhodes Island people.
It took a heroic effort of equilibrioception to walk another few steps, but walk them Wally did. Even with one arm bound in bandages, he could still balance with the other-
"Oof!"
He fell into the arms of another Operator.
"Alright, you need the stretcher…" he could hear, somewhat hazily, from behind him, or beside him, he couldn't tell.
Before the boy who called himself Kid Flash could reply, two Operators carried him into the stretcher.
This mission is pretty much toast, thought Blaze.
First off,they completely failed to find the source of these "strange energy readings" that the eggheads were going on about.
Secondly, one of their guys was dead.
Finally, they now had to babysit an entire gaggle of schoolchildren like they were teachers taking a field trip to Kazdel or some shit.
Not to say that she regretted rescuing those kids. If she were stuck in some time loop that made her do this mission all over again, she'd choose to do it again in a heartbeat.
… Well, everyone except those students.
When she found out what had happened to Operator Steven during the attack, his corpse hacked apart for meat like a farm animal, she went livid. She wanted to pull those cannibalistic fucks out of their little hidey-holes and introduce them to her chainsaw for real this time.
She would have. She could have. She very nearly did.
But still… they were kids. Kids locked in one place, slowly starving, having had to survive without adults for weeks. At what point does it become fair to blame hungry children for doing what they think they needed to do to survive?
… Plus, if she did set out to do that, she had no doubt that some nosy people would inevitably trace the carnage back to her, and by extension Rhodes Island. And Rhodes Island did not need another black spot on it's PR.
...
Fuck, this was all too much. She hated it when things were all ambiguous and complicated like this. She felt much better when she knew where all the bad guys were. Then, she could tear fools apart with her chainsaw without hesitation.
… And then there were those children, clearly not students, and definitely not Ursus.
They were… strange. Which was saying quite a bit, considering the staff Rhodes Island tended to hire. But these boys and girls were a different kind of strange.
For one thing, they were unusually well-trained for their age. Their bearing and training, along with their age, just screamed "child soldier" to Blaze. At times, they almost reminded her of Frostleaf and her ilk.
But while child soldiers were (unfortunately) not unseen in Terra, that's not what was bothering her at the moment. What she couldn't figure out, was why a bunch of them would be here in Chernobog, of all places.
Reunion may still be running around, but this wasn't an active warzone anymore. The army and police had since fled with their tails in the air.
She might believe that the Ursus Government had a change of heart and tried to retake the city. But knowing them, they would sooner do it with their own people, than stoop to hiring mercs (at least, not yet).
They also didn't seem like Reunion… wait, were they Reunion!? One of them was definitely infected.
But if they were, they were unusually noble Reunion goons, who just so happened to not wear their colours at all…
Nope, they're definitely not Reunion.
And none of them were native Ursus. One or two non-Ursus, fine, but none? In a country that was about eighty-percent ethnic Ursus? Blaze didn't believe it.
Not to mention, she couldn't even properly tell their races just by looking at them.
One of them was clearly Aegir, judging from the gills. The green girl might be some weird subspecies of Savra she's never seen. The rest were a bust, though. They had no Ancient features. At all. No Sankta features, either, or Sarkaz. They're not short like the Durin, and none of them have pointed ears. As far as race was concerned, they're as featureless as one can get without also being bald.
Most of them also wore these weird circus-y outfits, not anything a modern teenager would wear.
They're damn strange, was all that Blaze could come up with, and she was keeping an eye on them. At least, until the Docs looked them over and decided what to do with them.
The white-haired girl walked among the Rhodes Islanders in front, ahead of the students. The Operators didn't want to risk her getting killed by them, not after that… incident a few minutes earlier. A few of the students sent hateful glares her way. Some of them clearly believed that Zima should've just gone through with it.
All around them, a perimeter of Operators were looking in all directions.
Someone started walking beside her. Who would…
It was the blonde one. Of course. The one who stopped her from getting killed by that… justifiablyvengeful student. She bet the rest of them didn't like her very much for that, which would explain why she's even bothering to talk to a villain like her. She has yet to thank her for saving her life.
She wondered if anything she could give could repay that.
She wondered if she should have been saved.
"Hi! My name's Lada, but you can call me Gummy, everybody does! It's because I love sweets that much, I guess. What's your name?" the girl said to her, cheerfully, as if the last few weeks hadn't happened at all.
"…"
She wondered if it would be safe to give out her name like this. She then realised, it was a silly concern.
"Natalya…"
"That's a pretty name." Gummy replied, clasping Natalya's hands in her own.
Natalya blinked.
Before they set off, Aqualad made each of the Team do a little demonstration in front of the Rhodes Island people. They wanted to prove that they deserved to be among the ones protecting the students, instead of the ones being protected.
For Superboy, he started off by grabbing a piece of concrete debris larger than his fist, and crushed it into powder with nothing but his bare hands.
They still weren't convinced
Then, he lifted an abandoned car that he was pretty sure wouldn't be used anymore, and threw it all the way to the other end of the street. It flew about a dozen blocks or so.
Reluctantly, they allowed the Team to stand guard alongside them, so long as they followed Ms. Blaze's orders. They were "Impromptu, Temporary Pseudo-Operators" (or so one of them put it).
It rankled Connor a bit, that they treated him as just one step above a helpless civilian, even if he could understand. After all, it was a whole new world. Of course no one would understand what the "S" symbol on his shirt meant.
It was... almost kind of refreshing, actually. It meant that this symbol could be his, instead of some asshole whom everyone somehow loves, but looked at him like an eyesore for even bothering to exist.
…
Screw this. He wanted to smack some bad guys in the face.
Of course, it would be naive to think they would be able to get out without Reunion attempting a bit of resistance.
"Three on our six!"
They were quickly dispatched by Superboy smacking their heads together like acorns.
"Five more on our left!"
"Hell Yeahhh!"
Blaze let out a whopping cry, as she tore through four goons with two deft swings of her massive chainsaw. Blood flew everywhere. She bathed in it. The blood bubbled and steamed as it touched her.
Skadi was casually batting Reunion troops into the air, mostly with the flat of her blade, as if they weren't worth chipping the edge of her sword over.
Robin winced as he saw the Feline woman dismember her enemies with her moving saw.
"Holy shit… " said Artemis." They're really hardcore. Betcha lucky stars we didn't pick a fight with them, eh?"
"Artemis. We shouldn't be revelling in this sort of violence." said Aqualad.
Conner was silent as he looked at the two women causing mass devastation: Blaze's manic expression as she brutalised her way through a huge swath of the enemy forces, and Skadi's... Skadiness.
"... Meh, I could take them." he said
Meanwhile, Wally was trying to convince the medic that he could still fight. Totally. Really. While they still carried him in a stretcher.
"We know you can fight. Your teammates have told us that much, and they strike me as genuine people. But right now, you're in no shape to fight. Even our most elite and experienced Operators have had to take time out from the field after having sustained serious injuries. Believe me, you can't just will those things away with sheer force of will." said the medic.
Wally had no response against that sensical argument, and he was spent anyways, so he just fell back into the stretcher.
"..."
He idly looked to the side, and saw a burning building a few blocks away. His eyes widened.
"Wait, I think there are people trapped on the balcony there!" yelled Wally.
He could see the Ursus girl's form, even ten floors up, as she was silhouetted against the raging flames behind her. She couldn't be any older than ten, and she was trying to get as far away from the fire as possible. But she was on a balcony, and the only way to go further was down.
She looked down, but all she could see was bare concrete, and Reunion members looking up at her.
Wally desperately looked around, despite his mental haze. M'gann, the only one of their group with any flight capability, was tied down by an enemy. Literally. One of them encased her in a red ribbon that somehow reduced her to kneeling on the ground, blocked of her psychic abilities.
It was probably Magic.
Magic, though useful, was bullshit.
Everyone else… was way too busy keeping off the hordes coming in from all directions. The enemy goons were coming within a metre or so from the children, before they got shot or beaten into the ground. They were barely holding out as it was.
No other choice. Only he could do it.
Damn his body.
"She's dead. There's no point in going back for her now! The only way out is forward!" said a nearby Operator.
"No! I refuse to believe that!" said Wally, standing up straight. "So far, I've only been walking like a snail this whole time. Now,the rest of you people can see... why they call me Kid Flash!"
"Wait,kid, what are you-"
He leapt out of the stretcher, and disappeared in a yellow blur.
"Everyone, cover Kid Flash!" yelled Aqualad. Nearly at once, the Team's ranged attacks flew in the direction of that distant building. Arrows, smoke bombs, and jets of pressurised water came hurtling at the gathered Reunion troops. Those that weren't knocked out, had to dive out of the way of the barrage.
Wally then sped right past battered Reunion troops, leaving behind a trail of dust large enough to send them coughing and sputtering in his wake.
And all the while, his right arm screamed, like a million pins had started travelling down his arm from the crystal embedded in his shoulder.
Wally bit his tongue, and kept on running
He ran, ran, ran. His running built up enough momentum to overpower gravity, and he ran up the side of the burning building.
He leapt onto the tenth-storey balcony, landed on the railing with a wince, and held out his hand.
The girl flinched and drew back, afraid of this costumed young man who had done the impossible, just to get to her.
"... Hey, c'mon, don't be afraid... I'm here to help you."
Nervously, the girl looked towards her left. The building's interior held a cornucopia of raging flames, like it was the mouth to hell itself.
She glanced right, at the balcony's flimsy-looking railing, the only thing standing between her and a messy death on the asphalt below.
She looked forward, at the yellow-suited stranger.
She leapt into Wally's arm. Singular, given as his right arm was out of operation. He made do by hoisting her over his left shoulder.
"Close your eyes and hold on tight, kid, we're gonna go faaast."
He willed his legs to move on, despite the sharp spikes of pain now coursing through his legs with every muscle contraction.
He ran back down the side of the burning building, then all the way back to the group. All the while, the girl gripped his shoulder.
The yellow blur went to the medic and handed her the child, before collapsing to the ground.
"I-Is she alright!? Are you alright!?" said the medic, rapidly doing a checkup on the crying girl.
"My power cancels out inertia for anybody I'm holding. So she should be fine." he said, lying down in the dirt.
"Oh Great Savior of us all… She's alright..." the medic said, making the sign of the cross.
Wait, do Earth religions also exist here?
Meanwhile, a particularly large horde of Reunion goons was running straight at them.
"Quick! Everyone in the building!" Blaze yelled, pointing to a squat apartment block right behind them. She put herself between everyone and the rushing Reunion troops, and readied her chainsaw. "Defenders, to me!"
At once, men and women with shields of many makes and models, formed an idiosyncratic shield wall, with Blaze at their centre.
The first wave of Reunion crashed over them like a tidal wave of fury and scavenged weapons. Half of them got impaled by their own forward momentum, running into spears that emerged like spikes from the gaps between the shields.
"Fuuuuuuuucck Yoooooooooouuu!"
Meanwhile, Blaze was bisecting two unlucky bastards at once. They had the gall to think her easy prey, simply because she lacked a shield. But who needed a shield, when you had a huge fuck-off chainsaw that can cut two terrorists in one go.
Hot blood flew everywhere, as the chainsaw whirred.
At any other point, at any other time, the Team might've found it disturbing. They still kind of do. For now, though, they're just glad she was on their side.