The door slammed shut behind them. Light poured through the boarded windows, lighting the cement gray walls as the defenders set down their paper bags. An exhausted Hang sat on a creaky wooden bench next to Kyle. Andrew unpacked the goods while Pedro got rid of the dust and cobwebs. Michael just looked out the windows, as much as he could anyway.
"Alright," Andrew said as he took out the last can. "Welcome to camp, everybody. What do you think?"
Nobody spoke. Before the air could grow heavier, Hang looked around and cleared his throat.
"...It's very, uh, modest."
"Thank you, Hang," he sighed and reached into a bag.
"Man, I wish Waqas was here!" Pedro slumped against the wall, looking at his hands. "I bet he could fix up something fun for us to do. It feels like forever since I held a controller in these babies."
"Unfortunately, Waqas isn't here," Andrew said, "Which means this is the best we got." He pulled out a laptop and opened it on one of the tables. Its screen flickered to life, displaying a logo for Velox Tech. "Now listen up, all of you, because this thing's got a limited battery and Pedro's gonna get really unhappy if he needs to run somewhere to recharge it.
"Whoa whoa whoa, I never-"
"Okay, then do you have any better ideas?" He asked. When Pedro said nothing, he turned to face the others again. All eyes were on him.
"As I was saying, you better use this wisely because it's our only reliable connection to the internet right now, and we're gonna need it." Andrew closed the laptop and stood up straight. "If we want to get our friends back, and take down this monster, we can't keep banking on getting lucky like we did with Kyle. No, we need a plan."
The others looked at each other, silently asking for advice. After a while, Andrew picked up the laptop himself.
"If anyone has an idea, you know where to find me," he said as he walked into the back room through an empty doorframe. While Pedro and Michael started to move around, Hang looked over at Kyle and saw him staring at the floor.
"Hey, are you okay?" He asked. "Is there something on your mind?"
"Hang, you know what's on my mind…" Kyle grumbled back.
"Do you want to talk about it? I know that makes some people feel better." He rubbed the back of his head. "I mean, if you don't want to, that's fine-"
"Thanks, but I'd rather just get back into action already. Keeps my mind off things, you know?"
"Yeah… But Andrew's right, we kind of need a plan." He sighed. "You got any ideas?"
"Nope." Kyle paused and looked up at the ceiling. "Okay, that's a lie. I have a few but none of them are good."
"Anything helps, right?"
"Yeah, but all of them involve getting the older Slush Defenders back. Tall order when we can't even find the new ones."
"Older Defenders? You mean the people in the pictures?"
"Yeah, those." Kyle's posture started to relax, but Hang's eyebrows raised when he caught a spark in those green eyes of his.
"Y'know, I never heard a lot about them. Could you, uh, tell me more?"
"Oh, sure, who do you want to start with?"
Pedro watched while they talked. Their voices quickly became white noise and his attention drifted to the gray man doodling in the corner. Little stickmen in green ink covered the walls. Pedro walked over as he began his next drawing.
"Hey Michael," he said. The artist's head perked up. "How about you draw up a game for us while the others talk?" He sat down and Michael turned to face him, tapping the pen on his chin. His eyes darted around the floor, but eventually he drew a simple tic tac toe grid.
"Nice. You want to go first? You got the pen, it's only fair." Michael nodded and drew an X in the center before passing it off. His friend waited a moment before filling an O into one of the corners.
"You know, we could play like, hangman or something if you talked more."
As the words left his mouth, he finished a sloppy O and handed the pen back over to Michael. The quiet Defender's eyes lit up and he quickly drew another X. Right away he crossed a line through the game. Three in a row. Pedro glared at the floor.
"…Alright, we're going again."
They drew a new grid and restarted, this time with Pedro going first.
"...And so he ended up giving Wes the five bucks," Kyle said. "We didn't let him hear the end of that one for weeks!"
"Heh, wow!" Hang chuckled. "But that reminds me, what the heck happened with Wes anyway?"
"Oh, uh," Kyle scratched the back of his head "See I'm not normally supposed to talk about that but-"
"HEY, GUYS!" Pedro shouted out of nowhere. "ARE YOU GONNA CHAT ALL DAY OR ARE YOU GONNA JOIN THIS GAME?"
The two looked at each other, exchanged nods, and walked over.
—-
Soft snow pressed beneath their feet, chilling the soles with each step. Two figures ran across the winter landscape before them as the sun began to set beneath the trees. A lingering pine scent guided them on their journey until the white one slipped his bandana off, breath huffing out in clouds.
"Ben," he panted, "Ben, where are we even going?" The neon man looked back.
"North," he said. "We gotta head North as fast as we can."
"But why? What's that gonna do to help us?"
Ben stopped running, Tucker was not far behind.. Both were left panting heavily, the dusk chill filling their lungs.
"When I broke out of the prison the Blues were keeping me in, they had a huge listing of where they were keeping our friends. I didn't have time to get a great look, but I did pick up a few, and I know at least one of us is trapped up in the North."
"You think they've been moved by now?" Tucker asked, sitting down on the snow.
"Probably not. It also said something about an Aegis Project, so they probably need, uh, whoever's there a while longer." Tucker narrowed his eyes and a tiny grin crept across his lips.
"Of course you'd want us to go get Corey first."
"Aw, quiet. But if you know where any of us might be, I'm open to suggestions."
"Uhh…"
"Yes?" Ben leaned forward.
"I wasn't sure when it would be a good time to tell you this, but…" He looked away and played with the snow. "…We might've left Thomas behind."
They both stood there with blank expressions. For the first time since they started running, they could hear the wind whispering.
"…What."
"At the arena. He was there with me."
"HE WHAT?!"
Ben grabbed his head. "Ohh, this is bad! This is really REALLY bad! What are we going to do now? How far are we even from there?!"
"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Tucker held his hands out like he was trying to stop a runaway vehicle. "It's not that bad!"
"How?! "
"Well, Thomas said they were going to move him, so they probably have by now. Maybe even before you showed up. He's got to be around that area, or at the very least in a similar building somewhere else."
Slowly, the neon swordsman's breathing eased and he sat down. "Alright, alright, but he's still out there somewhere. What the heck do we do?"
"I don't know, I'm sorry," he said.
"Man, I wish we had Andrew. Or James. They'd know what to do."
"Uhh, I know it sounds silly," Tucker began, "…but what if we imagine Andrew were here? What would he tell us to do?"
"Well, he'd tell us to… uh… he'd want us to…" He rested his chin on the back of his hand before slumping over entirely. "I don't know, man, I'm not him. Dude's a mystery."
"Then what about Thomas? What would he want?"
"What Thomas would want?…" Ben brought the hand to his chin again, this time looking up as the gears began to turn. "If we're really talking about Thomas here, he'd probably want us to rescue Corey and the others before him."
"That does sound like him."
"Yeah, but not without making it all dramatic first. Like-" He stood up and pretended to swoon. "I'm sorry, but-" Sniffle. "You'll have to go on without me!"
"Oh man, that is dead-on! He'd totally do that!" Tucker howled.
"I know, right?" They laughed together, but it didn't take long for the merriment to die down.
"…We shouldn't be laughing at this."
"Yeah..."
Ben trekked across the snow, making soft crunches as he stepped, and extended his hand toward the man on the ground. "Come on," he said, "North or bust. It's what Thomas would want after all."
Tucker smiled and took the hand, pulling his bandana back over his mouth as his friend helped him up. The snow clung to the backs of his legs, leaving a chill, but it was soon forgotten as they raced off into the distance.
—-
"Oh come on!"
Pedro raked in a pile of green chips from the center of their seating circle while grinning from ear to ear. Kyle grumbled and gave his cards back to Michael who proceeded to shuffle them with the rest of the deck. Hang sat between them, having folded from the start.
"Kyle, I swear, that's the third time in a row," Pedro taunted, leaning over slightly.
"Shut it."
"Come on, you always play the wrong hands. It's like you're cursed or something!" While the two of them argued, Hang raised his hand. Michael nodded and let Hang leave for the back room.
The windows were closed, the only light coming from the main room and the laptop monitor. A blue glow cast over Andrew's hunched posture. His face was practically buried into the screen, bloodshot eyes darting left and right across walls of text. Every time his fingers tacked away at the keyboard, it drowned out the joking and laughing in the other room.
"Uh, Andrew?" Hang asked, stepping in from the doorway. "I-"
"Do you have a suggestion?"
"No, but-"
"Then go back to playing."
"But it doesn't seem right to just-"
His wooden chair creaked as he turned towards Hang.
"Do you have a plan?"
"No."
He turned the chair back around and hunched over. Without another word, Hang left and sat where he was before with his comrades. This time Pedro had his face buried in his hands while Kyle rested his elbow on a pile of chips with a smug grin.
"Cursed, huh?"
"Shut it."
Hang cleared his throat. "So," he said, "I'm still not clear, how do you play this game again?
Some time later in the back room, Andrew dragged his mouse over yet another "promising" link. This would be the last one for sure, and this time he'd mean it. Then, when the page loaded, he froze up. The voices from the other defenders muffled, as if underwater. Everything else drowned out as the screen burned into his eyes. He could almost hear the article's words as he scanned through. Reverse image search confirmed multiple sources for the attached image. Some of the pictures from different angles, but all containing the same subject.
Andrew took a deep breath, closed the laptop, and got up. When he entered the main room, he saw the other defenders seated in a circle with a huge stack of poker chips in the middle. Hang just finished adding more to the pile when he stopped and looked up at their leader. The others followed suit shortly.
"Hey. Pause the game, I have something to show you."
He set the laptop on the ground and opened it up. Its screen flickered to life and revealed the image of a pink pillar of light shooting into a starry night sky. Then it cycled through the tabs, each one showing the picture from a different angle.
"…Okay, it's a beacon," Pedro said. "What are we supposed to be looking at here?"
"Does the color look familiar at all?" He settled on a tab and scrolled down to the words below. "Not only that, but there's mention of a new base being finished in the Northern Tundra region alongside a sudden, strong increase in Blue presence in the area."
By now the four Defenders leaned in, watching what went on the screen more closely.
"Men, I think one of our own may be up there."
Andrew stood up, letting Kyle grab the laptop to bring closer. While they murmured among themselves, the blue leader took a soup can, opened it by the tab, and drank it like a soda.
"It'll be a long journey to be sure, but we got the rest of the day to eat and rest up. Plus I have a feeling this dump's not going anywhere anytime soon."
The Defenders got to their feet, standing upright like soldiers before their leader. Andrew faced them, finished his soup, and crushed the can in his hand.
"Pack your bags boys, we're all going North."
—-
SPLOOSH!
A sea of paint washed over the ground and quickly sank into the soil, staining it bluer than it already was. A Blue tipped the dripping vat back upright on the truck. As he sat down on its rear bumper and wiped the sweat off his brow, he looked out at the landscape.
The trees were wrinkly and barren, twisted branches reaching out for something, anything, to grasp. The grass surrounding the dump site displayed shades of lavender and purple instead of green. Scattered, malformed pumpkin plants brandished unnatural greens and greys. The whole area reeked of ammonia.
The lone worker got up and walked over to the driver window. He rapped on the glass with his knuckles and watched his reflection give way to a droopy-eyed driver as it rolled down.
"Hey, um, weird question but do you ever think we shouldn't be dumping all this paint here?"
"Nah," he shrugged, "You know this is junk paint anyway. This stuff's harmless, wouldn't be able to make a single Blue with how old it is. "
"But if it's really that safe, then why does the boss want it here instead of the Junkyard?"
"Heck if I know, the boss probably got a good reason."
"Yeah, yeah you're right," he sighed. "I'm just being paranoid."
"Mhm. Now get in here, I wanna hear how the Astronauts are doing."
The door shut with a "clunk!" and the tires screeched off the dirt, leaving the land behind to lay dead. A cold breeze blew, swaying the stiff blades of grass. The last blue paint drops sank and disappeared. No birds sang, no mice ruffled through the foliage. Suddenly, a faint rumbling shattered the silence. The soil seemed to move on its own, pushing itself out, buckling under internal pressure…
Then, all at once, something broke through the ground.
A cyan hand with blue spots reaching for the sky.
The end.