Chapter Seven:
The teen supers made their way through the building, following Ted's clues to find the mysterious lab they'd once been held in.
"Take a right, go down," Ted instructed.
They were in the upper levels of the building, and had entered a large metallic room. It was cold, uninviting and very familiar.
"What is this place?" Moana asked.
"It looks like the lab we were held in," Audrey whispered. "Just… empty,"
"This is the lab? I thought it was underground," Onceler asked in surprise. Vanellope opened her mouth to answer, but was cut off as a set of glass doors slid in front of them, separating the group.
"Welcome back!" A creepily cheery voice greeted over the loudspeakers. "It's a regular old family reunion!"
"What the he-"
The glass doors clicked into place. Vanellope was at the front, left at the farthest edge of the room. Audrey and Moana were stuck in the middle, while Onceler and Mavis were at the back door. As the mysterious voice continued to monologue, the door in front of Vanellope slid open, revealing a short man holding a small microphone - Mr. Candy.
"Hello kids," He drawled. Vanellope tensed, ready to run and attack the man. Instead of appearing scared, he knocked on the glass window behind him. There was a loud buzzing, and a squadron of Cy-bugs rose up to gather behind him. Candy grinned menacingly.
Everything happened at once.
The Cy-bugs crashed through the window, one encircling Candy and giving him an eerie exoskeleton. Vanellope shrieked and ran full speed at the open window, phasing through the shattered glass and jumping onto a flying bug.
Audrey turned to Moana, eyes wide.
"Oncie was right, the lab is underground!" She said, "If your sister is like me, she needs light to function, so the best place to keep her-"
"Is the original lab." Moana finished. The hydrokinetic stomped her foot, shattering waterpipes and giving them a way out of their glass cage. With a whoosh the two girls had removed themselves from the fight.
Oncie and Mavis watched both their leader and the girls disappear. Before they could react themselves, the door behind them opened, and the monster hunters grabbed them, dragging the two into the hallways and away from their team.
Sitting in the basement of Ralph's, Ted stared at the screen in disbelief. How had he missed them? And how was he going to help them get out?
Vanellope threw herself out the window, slamming into a Cy-bug as it careened down towards the road. She electrified herself to disable it, then phased onto another when it swarmed.
Rinse and repeat.
Candy laughed and directed more bugs down at her, and Vanellope reeled, trying to keep from being overwhelmed.
She phased and electrified, phased and electrified. She was a tornado of energy, but she was only one person, and there were at least twenty bugs honing in on her.
"Ahhh!" She screamed as a bug caught her mid-phase, spearing her arm to the concrete. More joined, restraining the young teen as Candy walked closer.
"You were always the more troublesome experiment," He muttered, glaring down at Vanellope as she tried and failed to phase out of the Cy-bugs hold. "A glitch. Something went wrong when we tried to give you powers,"
Vanellope stopped struggling.
"I guess I'll have to remember this for the next round of trials," The mad scientist said, then extended his cy-exoskeleton down at her. "After we eliminate the defective ones of course,"
He drew his arm back, ready to stab her through the chest, when suddenly, he didn't.
The ground shook, and Vanellope opened her eyes to see Candy pinned down by a large metallic suit of armor. The suit was silver, with a few painted lines of orangey red that Vanellope recognized as her best friend's favorite color.
The faceplate of the suit rotated off, and Ted smiled at the young super.
"Need some help Van?"
"I had it covered," She grinned, and sent out a ball of electricity, putting the Cy-bugs around her on the fritz. "How long has this been a thing?"
"This?" Ted asked, gesturing at the suit while also shooting something at another bug. "I call it the LORAX,"
"English Wiggins, english!"
"Life Organic Robotic AI eXoskeleton," Ted rattled. "Actually, it's a lot like Candy's here,"
The last bug fell to the ground in pieces. High fiving, the two heroes turned on the scientist, stuck in his crushed suit.
"This won't go the way you want!" Candy snapped, and Vanellope smirked and used her powers to shock him unconscious.
Right before it went black, Candy hit a button, and the Cy-bugs swarmed.
The monster hunters dragged Mavis and Onceler up to the roof before throwing them down to the ground roughly. Pushing his way to the front, the lead hunter tipped his hood back and revealed a grisly aged face to the teens.
"Did father tell you stories about me, little vampire?" He asked. "The Van Helsing line?"
"N-no!" Mavis coughed. "And I'm not a vampire!"
Van Helsing growled.
"I know your line, D'Cula," He said. Mavis paled. "Or should I say, Dracula?"
The old man continued his tale. He had been raised in a remote location, learning that the monsters - the predecessors to supers - had been the reason his family had lost their home in Transylvania and been forced to move to the US without their fortune. It was crazy, utter bullshit, but the man and his followers ate it up.
"Any last words?" One of the hunters laughed once his leader had finished. Mavis turned to fight, but he shoved a thick clump of something at her, and she hissed before tripping back over onto her face. Two other hunters swooped in to pin her arms and legs, leaving Onceler alone.
"Get off of her!" He yelled, but the hunters just laughed.
Van Helsing gestured for his minions, and they pulled Mavis up towards the edge of the building, leaning her over as the vampire hero gagged and her vision swam.
"I said let her go!"
"Quiet down little boy," One of the other hunters said. "Your turn will be soon enough!"
"I said. Let. Her. Go."
Van Helsing looked over to yell at someone to do their job, but stopped short.
Onceler stood up slowly, eyes cold as the roof below them started to shake violently. As it shook and more hunters started to look, a sea of green started to take over the concrete.
No one was sure if they had come from seeds scattered over the roof or coming through the O'Hare building themselves, but either way, vines were appearing all over the place.
"Let her go," He said again.
"Holy crap!" One of the hunters yelled. "Why aren't we taking him out?!"
"Get him!"
The vines moved like lightning. In seconds, the hunters were being slammed down, away and wrapped up. The stems coiled around their ankles and arms, binding while hoisting them up into the air, and Onceler stood in the middle, barely even moving his hands to control the chaos.
Van Helsing hissed. He stepped forward and reached into his coat, pulling out an old fashioned revolver etched with specific symbols on each barrel. With his men gone and this plant child proving to be an actual problem, he was going to have to use the weapon he would have prefered to save for the monster.
He aimed, pointing towards Fiore's chest.
The hero looked up, noticing at the last second, but it was too late.
"NO!" Empousa screamed, then moved at superhuman speed, tackling Van Helsing into the wall and transforming into a bat. She landed and transformed in front of Oncie, then grabbed him and they were sitting on the roof of another building somewhere in the city.
Oncie's rooftop.
"Well," Oncie breathed, mind discombobulated but slowly putting itself back together. "That was cool,"
"You were cool too…" Mavis said. He noticed her fangs as she talked, appearing just a little more pointy than normal. She was a different kind of super, and it didn't bother him.
"Hey Mavis," he said. "I love yo-"
"I love you too!"
Mavis grabbed Oncelers head with both hands and yanked him in, kissing the other super hard. Their height difference made it a little awkward, starting with Oncie tilted over at the waist and Mavis up on her toes, but as the kiss deepened, Onceler straightened up as Mavis's feet floated off the ground.
"Another fun vampire skill?" He asked as they broke apart, and Mavis shrugged.
Before she could answer, there was a loud buzzing, and the beating of mechanical wings rushed around them as hundreds of Cy-bugs appeared at Candy's command.
A ground swung down towards Empousa and Fiore, who effortlessly slid into fighting stances and started to defend themselves.
Fiore raised viney barriers while tangling the swooping bugs in stray plants. As the vines wormed their way into the engines and tore them apart, the empty mechanical husks crashed into the asphalt and flowered into tropical bushes.
Feeling a new type of adrenaline that accompanied her new powers, Empousa flew up into the air before turning into a bat and zooming between the bugs. Transforming back and forth, she ripped their wings off, sending them slamming into her partner's wall, then moving onto the next one.
The fight was over in seconds.
"We've got to go," Oncie panted. He pointed back towards the direction the O'Hare building was. "Look where they're going,"
