Slusher Tower. Prized hall of Virginia Tech. Home of the Slush Defenders. Known the world over as an impenetrable fortress…
...was now facing the biggest invasion it had ever seen.
Alarms were blaring, warning lights were going off, Blues were flooding the building, ransacking and vandalizing the place, and all the leader of the Slush Defenders could do was stare at the leader of the operation.
"You may call me Big Blue," he said with a bow, "Or, if you prefer, the new owner of this building."
"New owner? In your dreams, this building will never fall to you!" Andrew rebutted, managing to sound much more confident than he was.
"Oh, you still don't understand, do you? It already has!" Big Blue charged forward at a blistering speed and socked Andrew right in the face. Andrew doubled back, momentarily stunned, before swinging at his opponent. Big Blue dodged easily and pushed Andrew over with a kick while he was recovering. Before Andrew could get back up, Big Blue grabbed his leg and swung him around, letting the surrounding Blues hit Andrew as he passed them. Then he let go and let Andrew fly into the wall. Andrew slid down in pain, rubbing his injured head.
"Wow, didn't expect you to tire out so soon," Big Blue gloated, confidently strutting up to Andrew, "I thought you'd uphold your reputation more, but I guess-" Andrew interrupted him by lifting himself with both arms and kicking Big Blue with both legs into the other wall. The Blues flinched, but Big Blue just gestured to them to keep going deeper into the building, which they obeyed. Andrew tried to run after them, but Big Blue grabbed Andrew's arm and yanked him back.
"Oh no you don't, not yet. You're staying here with me for a while!"
Outside, the Blues ran amok. Sean tried to control them, leaping around with his portals, tossing Blues away and catching them blindsided. He noticed a large group of Blues with their backs turned to him in another area of the campus and tried to catch them by surprise. He ran towards them, jumped into a portal, and reappeared in the middle of them, only for the entire group to scatter. Suddenly, walls sprang up and closed in on Sean, encasing him in a box with sides lined with mirrors. A trap! He tried portaling out, but anything he tried just led to him creating a looping tunnel within the box.
Back inside, Andrew was launched against a wall again and Big Blue kneed him twice in the gut before Andrew pushed him off. He unloaded two haymakers into Big Blue, but Big Blue only slightly staggered back when they hit. He didn't even seem hurt! He tried a third, but Big Blue caught his fist. He then pulled Andrew in and elbowed him in the face. Andrew fell face-down onto the ground, letting Big Blue pick him up by the back of the head and smash it as hard as he could into a wall over and over.
Further inside, Blues stormed the shockingly bare clubhouse. Only Pedro, Kyle, and Tucker were there to defend it. Pedro shot with his blaster, Kyle burned them, and Tucker sliced the Blues with his daggers. The three of them hoped to carve a way through the crowd, a goal which seemed more and more futile by the second. A couple floors up, James, fist still on the button, was surrounded by Blues. He eyed them all, some armed with guns, before he tried to brawl them on his own. Predictably, the group of Blues ganged up on him and quickly overpowered him. James struggled with all his might, but the Blues dragged him off and tossed him right out of the window, letting him fall on the hard ground below.
Andrew's face broke clean through the wall. Big Blue pulled him out and threw him on the ground one last time for good measure. Andrew wasn't moving. Big Blue kneeled next to him and checked his pulse. After a few seconds, he smiled.
"Still alive," he said to a small group of surrounding Blues. "Come on, let's get to the top floor."
"Boss, why don't you just snuff him out right now?" One of the Blues asked.
"Isn't it obvious? The others won't come after a dead leader. Now let's get a move on, still we've got thirteen more to go!"
"Twelve, actually, the dark grey one fell out the window."
"Oh, great!" He chuckled and dragged Andrew's limp body to the elevator. Just then, a flurry of orange swipes cut through a Blue crowd behind them and the three clubroom defenders finally broke through.
"HE'S GOT ANDREW!" Pedro shouted, making all three of them attack Big Blue. The other Blues threw themselves in front of him, taking the hits. Big Blue just barely ended up making it to the elevator, tauntingly waving at the trio as the doors closed. Kyle let out one last burst of green fire at him, but only ended up scorching closed, metal doors.
"Dammit! The stairs, quick!" Kyle said and they went for the stairs, only to be met with a confident group of Blues cracking their knuckles. Suddenly, the nearby window shattered and multiple of them fell over dead with holes in their heads. The trio easily picked off the remaining ones.
"All right, Eric!" Kyle cheered as they headed up. Back outside, Ben was handling Blues all on his own, cutting up the hordes that came at him with his StickSaber. Then he heard the pump of a shotgun behind him and turned around in shock. Luckily, Corey jumped in front of him and raised his arms, blocking the bullets. More armed Blues came at the duo. Corey kept the two of them safe while Ben took them out. At least, until someone shot Corey in the back. He fell over, in severe pain. In anger, Ben charged towards the assailant, managing to deflect their bullets with his saber as they came. He killed one, then backflipped through the air and sliced open another behind him until a third shot him in the chest. He fell right beside Corey, a gathering of Blues being the last thing he's able to see before blacking out.
Up on a higher floor, Omar was pinned against a wall with his own swords by a Blue. A Blue that soon after fell over, the back of his neck cut right open, to reveal Marc crouching on the ground behind him. The two barely had time to recuperate before a burst of red fire exploded from one of the doors, carrying out many unmoving Blues with it. Hang emerged from the blast with shaky hands and a terrified gaze.
"WHAT IS GOING ON?!" He cried with panic.
"We're being invaded, kid," Omar told him, "And it looks like it's a doozy! Don't let your guard down for anything!" Just then, they heard someone coming up the stairs. The three of them were preparing to attack when they saw Kyle's head coming in, followed closely by Pedro and Tucker.
"THEY'VE GOT ANDREW, WE NEED TO KEEP GOING UP UNTIL WE FIND HIM!" Pedro explained, running right past them. The other five followed him and continued heading up the building.
Michael, in his dorm, was hiding under the bed. Things sounded bad and they didn't seem to be getting any better. He swallowed his fear and knew what he had to do. He crawled out from under the bed, opening his closet and sliding open a secret compartment inside.
"Well, they were going to find out at some point. Might as well be now…" he lamented as he gazed upon a suit of gold armor.
Outside, Eric was traveling from cover to cover, dropping Blues like flies while Luke covered him. Luke tossed a tomahawk and struck down a Blue trying to shoot at them from a distance. He brought out his next tomahawks, but realized there were only two of them left. He saw two Blues with pistols trying to charge them from behind. He flung a tomahawk with each hand, killing both of them. Luke ran over and took their pistols from their cold hands, along with retrieving his blood-stained projectiles. When he returned to Eric, Luke fired wildly into the horde around the building, filling everything he could see with bullets.
A group of Blues toppled over a part of the wall, unknowingly opening themselves right up for Luke's onslaught. The slaughter drained Luke's ammo, but he just equipped his tomahawks again and moved inside the building with Eric. They managed to get behind a wall just in time as bullets flew in through the hole they entered.
Eric picked off the Blues that tried to charge them, but soon they were faced with a problem. Blues surrounding them on the outside, Blues surrounding them on the inside. They prepared to begrudgingly surrender when a door flew off its hinges and right onto some Blues.
Thomas leaped out, fists-a-blazing, blasting anything dark blue he saw with impunity.
"Thomas, what are you doing? You're not a Defender anymore!" Luke shouted over the battle.
"What, do you want me to sit in my dorm doing nothing?" Thomas replied while charring some of the invaders with an energy blast. Luke didn't respond and the three of them took to fighting as a unit.
As the group of six inside the building ran up another flight of stairs, Tucker spotted something below them and shouted muffled warnings to the others. They looked behind him and saw a legion of Blues following them up. They ran to the next stairwell as fast as they could, but were stopped by another group of Blues coming down that one. They ended up clustered in the middle of the hall as the Blues closed in from both sides…
Meanwhile, Big Blue walked up a staircase of his own, having left the restricted elevator long ago. He checked the floor he was on, one more until the top floor. When he looked into the current floor's halls, he expected to see the Blues wreaking havoc as usual. Instead, he was surprised to see a man plated in gold holding every last one of the Blues at bay just by pointing his crimson sword at them.
"What the- What's Gildedguy doing here?!" Big Blue asked. Nobody had an answer. "...Oh well! I've been waiting for a real test anyway," he said and charged at Gildedguy. Gildedguy swung his sword at him and, to his surprise, it bounced right off of Big Blue's painted skin. Gildedguy was football-tackled all the way to the end of the hall and pinned him there with a leg. Big Blue grabbed onto Gildedguy's helmet.
"Now, let's see what's under here, shall we?" He taunted, prying off the gold headpiece. Gildedguy desperately kicked Big Blue off, only to find a crowd of more confident Blues closing in on him. He awkwardly held up his sword, the fear in his green eyes visible, until he noticed the window behind him. He smashed it open and jumped out, running down the side of the building until he was close enough to jump to the ground.
"...That's one way to get rid of him," Big Blue quipped, only seeing him jump out the window. "Now come on, destiny awaits!"
Stucker's head hit the floor with a thud. The Blues trampled on it as they ganged up on Kyle, whose hands were held behind his back. Omar's battered body was left in the doorway, the door's bottom coated with blood, and a bullet-wounded Marc was slumped in a corner. After being beaten enough, Kyle finally passed out, and his limp body was dropped on the floor.
"There was another one here..." one of the Blues said before they heard a door open. They all turned to the source of the noise and saw Pedro trying to sneak out the fire escape. They pointed their guns at Pedro, but he threw his reflector up as he slipped out the door. The reflector projected a hexagonal shield, which the Blue's bullets ricocheted off of. Some Blues ran out after him, but Pedro was nowhere to be found when they looked out the door. Already at the bottom and having hidden in a bush, Pedro peered back at the tower.
"I'm sorry guys," he said to himself, "I'll be back, I promise…" Then he heard some rustling coming from nearby and immediately left to investigate. The Blues back in the tower surveyed the scene.
"Hm, four out of five ain't bad at all," one of them said and looked at Marc, who was barely breathing.
"...Weren't there six?"
Suddenly, a blast of fire came from the stairwell leading to the next floor up. Many Blues were torched, but some hit the floor and avoided the fire entirely, along with the unconscious Defenders. Once it passed, the surviving Blues ran to the stairs and fired their weapons up it. They just barely missed their assailant.
Back on ground level, Luke crawled on the ground and weakly reached out for his broken sunglasses before passing out from the tomahawk embedded in his head. Thomas slowly backed away towards the large hole in the wall as the Blues grouped up on him. Off in the distance, he watched Eric getting strangled and his body ceasing to move. Out of options, Thomas turned tail and ran away as fast as he could across Virginia Tech's fields. Unfortunately, he didn't look where he was going and stepped right on a bare patch of dirt. Before he knew it, a rope tightened around his leg and lifted him up into the air, dangling him upside-down from a tree. The Blues quickly caught up to him. Game over.
Hang climbed the stairs to the top floor, releasing explosive blasts of fire at any pursuers on his way up. Finally, he reached the door, threw it open, and found himself facing several gun barrels. He froze, not daring to move. Looking past them, he saw Andrew tied up in a chair with a steel cable and Big Blue watching the whole thing with the same sure grin on his face. Upon seeing Hang, Andrew tried to break free from his constraints.
"Aww, don't strain yourself so much. You are injured, after all," Big Blue teased Andrew before punching him in the head. "So, the new kid has arrived. And alone no less," he continued, now talking to Hang, "You know, I saw a few of your friends on the way up here. My Blues didn't shoot them multiple times, so they miiiight survive. You, on the other hand, will not."
The armed Blues leaned slightly forward. Sweat dripped down Hang's face.
"One more step and they all go off. So just turn back around and join your friends, okay?" Big Blue asked with a sickeningly fake friendliness. Hang sighed, looked the gunners in the eyes…
...and took a step forward.
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
Hang fell to the ground, holding his bleeding wounds. Andrew watched in horror as Hang gave him one last weak smile before closing his eyes. Then, his body crumpled to ash.
"Gruesome, but it had to be done. To be honest, I wanted as many of you alive as possible to see your precious Slusher fall, but I suppose this is pleasing as well," Big Blue mused as he looked down and kicked the ashes. He listened for a response from Andrew, but heard nothing. "Go ahead, cry if you want to, I-" he turned around and saw Andrew breaking right through his restraints like it was nothing.
"YOU MONSTERS! HE WAS JUST A KID!" Andrew roared and threw the chair at the Blues, taking out two of them immediately. Two more aimed at him, but Andrew charged right into them and knocked away their weapons. He then smashed their heads together, shattering both of their skulls. Big Blue started to back away, his smile gone. Andrew threw the corpses in his hands at Big Blue, both of them hitting him and crumpling upon impact with a sickening crunch. Big Blue desperately shoved the two dead bodies pinning him to the ground off just in time to see Andrew ripping the door right off its hinges and hurling it at Big Blue. He dodged, but the door went right through the wall, creating a hole in it. Big Blue looked down the hole and the very long fall to the bottom as Andrew slowly approached him, hunched over and nearly foaming at the mouth in anger.
"Oh, the things I'm gonna do to you…" Andrew growled, advancing closer step by step toward Big Blue. Suddenly he stopped. He felt heat coming from behind. He turned around and saw the ashes flaring up into flames. Hang emerged undamaged from them as they disappeared.
"...I probably should've told you about that sooner," Hang confessed. While Andrew watched Hang, Big Blue looked back through the hole and saw his Blues carrying off the other Defenders. He smiled, pulled out the mechanical ball, and dropped it.
"Hang, you're- you're okay?!" Andrew asked in disbelief.
"More or less. But, we can talk about this later. We still have Big Blue to deal with."
"Oh, I'm so sorry, but you're not gonna get that chance," Big Blue told them, back to his usual self. Hang and Andrew stood by each other and faced him, both at the ready to attack.
"What are you going to do? There's nowhere to go but down," Andrew snarled.
"Exactly."
Big Blue pushed himself through the hole and fell down right into Big Boy's waiting palm.
"ALRIGHT BOYS, LET'S WRAP THIS UP," he commanded. "ANYONE CARRYING A DEFENDER, SPLIT UP AND MEET ME BACK AT THE RENDEZVOUS POINT. THE REST OF YOU, STAY IN THE BUILDING, IT'S YOURS NOW. AND FOR THE TWO POOR SAPS STILL UP THERE…" He looked up at Slusher's top floor and belted out an evil laugh. "SEE YA!"
As the two watched Big Blue and his henchmen leave, they heard gunshots ring out behind them. Blues!
"Andrew, we're going to jump too! Grab onto me!" Hang told him. Andrew grabbed his arms without question and they jumped off. When they got close to the ground, Hang sprouted his wings of flame and lowered them gently. They immediately hid behind cover and not long after did they spot a yellow streak coming right at them. Pedro braked, revealing Michael in his arms, and the two joined them.
"He was the only one I could find! We gotta get out of here!" Pedro told them worriedly.
"NO!" Andrew barked, "We're not leaving until those Blues are out of there and Slusher is safe again!"
"Andrew, it's hopeless!" Pedro rebutted, "There's four of us and hundreds of them! It's over, we lose! Now let's get out of here before there's even less of us!"
Andrew looked at Hang and Michael. Both of them seemed to be in agreement. Andrew tightened his fists, closed his eyes, and groaned in frustration before he relaxed again.
"...Fine. We'll leave."
Andrew peeked out from their hiding spot. Blues patrolling everywhere for stragglers. He looked at the few team members at his disposal and hatched a plan.
"Pedro, think you can make it out of here in another dash?"
"Sure, but I can't carry all of you."
"You don't have to. Take Hang. I want to make sure he's safe. It's still his first invasion and I don't want him to be our first in-group casualty." Pedro nodded. "Don't come back once you're out, Michael and I will do something a little more efficient. Now go!"
Pedro picked up Hang and ran out of the campus.
"Okay, Michael, here's what we're gonna need you to draw…"
A minute later, the two of them threw out two green sketches of people. The Blues spotted them and filled them with holes as Andrew and Michael left their cover, carrying green riot shields. Michael stuck his green pen back in his pocket and followed Andrew out. Right before they stepped out onto the street, Andrew jumped in front of Michael and blocked a flurry of bullets with his shield. Michael hatched an idea of his own and took his pen back out.
The Blues continued to shoot the shields until they realized Andrew and Michael didn't seem to be moving anymore. They stopped shooting and moved in, sneaking behind the shields before littering the people behind them with bullets. A few seconds later they realized that they had just shot at two sketches of Andrew and Michael and the real ones were long gone.
Pedro peered out from atop a tree and came back down to join the others.
"Nope, no giant person out there, Andrew. Looks like we've lost them," Pedro said.
"Damn it! How could they even hide someone like that?" Andrew wondered.
"Beats me, but if we're going to get a move on, we should do it now before they find us."
"Alright, just let me be for a moment," Andrew said and walked off. Pedro turned to Hang.
"Hey, you gonna be alright? I know you just ran away from your old home and-"
"I'll be fine," Hang assured him, looking down. Michael put a hand on his shoulder to try and comfort him. Meanwhile, Andrew looked past the cars and buildings at Slusher tower, poking out from the orange horizon.
"...Goodbye," he said and walked away. He returned to the group and the four of them ran off.
The Slush Defenders were no more.