WARRIORS HIGH
ISLAND OF THE LOST
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
MERCY
(continues from Chapter 44 of Warriors: The New Era)
For once, the Foxcave was quiet.
Fir had Foxleap, hyperventilating with simmering rage, pinned to his corner by the barrel of her pistol as she stared down Jaywhisker with a malicious glare.
"Take one step," she threatened, "And you'll be cleaning his blood off the monitors."
Jaywhisker nodded, hands instinctively in the air. "Yeah...I-I got that."
"Good," she growled, turning back to Foxleap, "As for you, if you ever want to see your sister again, you're gonna show me your little projects. Everything you've done and plan to do in this little hermit house of yours."
"It's not a hermit house," snarled Foxleap, who shut up as Fir shoved the barrel against the back of his head.
"Files, please. I will not ask nicely again."
Foxleap hesitated before opening up his file explorer and opening a .exe application, which showed a loading screen for a couple moments before prompting for a password.
"Shit…" muttered Foxleap, hands hovering over the keyboard.
Fir sighed. "You forgot the password. That's how this ploy goes, right?"
"Give me a second," said the redhead, hand idly shuffling through some papers on the desk and opening some empty drawers.
"This is awkward," he muttered, "Can you check the second drawer down on the left?"
"You mean the trap drawer rigged with liquid nitrogen?"
Foxleap froze.
"Okay, how the hell do you know about that?"
"How stupid do you think I am?"
"Alright, alright," said Foxleap, hands moving back to the keyboard as he shot a pleading glance to Jaywhisker.
He typed a word into the keyboard. Red text appeared under the prompt saying the password was incorrect. The genius let out a noise of poorly acted confusion and tried again.
"Caps Lock is on," said Fir irritably after the third try.
"Oh," said Foxleap quietly, "Whaddaya know? You're right."
Fir cocked the pistol, making Foxleap flinch and hit the Caps Lock key.
"HEY!" she shouted to her left, making Foxleap flinch and whip over.
Jaywhisker was frozen in place, a beer in his left hand. "What?"
"Put the drink down."
"What, a guy can't have a drink while his friend is being held hostage?"
Fir raised an eyebrow. "Have you ever been in a hostage situation before? Actually, don't answer that. Just put down the goddamn drink."
"Can I just finish the can? I promise I'll recycle it after!"
At her patience's end, Fir fired a bullet into one of the monitors just above Foxleap.
"JAYWHISKER, PUT DOWN THE FUCKING BEER!" snapped the redhead, pissed off at his useless antics and how they weren't currently working to save his life.
"Alright, fine," muttered the boy, very slowly setting the half-empty can on the table, the button with the label "Emergency Activation" turned away from Fir.
"There we go," said the woman, "Now, the password."
CLANG!
Fir and Foxleap turned back to Jaywhisker, whose hands were in the air amid the loud whirring coming from the back room.
"What the hell was that?" snarled Fir, cocking the gun again.
Jaywhisker just smirked.
"Must have been the wind."
Suddenly, the back door flew open and Jaywhisker stuck out his palm. In seconds, his hand was encapsulated in the metal protection of his power glove and before Fir could compose herself and fire the killing shot, Jaywhisker fired a concussive beam at Fir's chest, sending her flying with a crash to the back wall.
One loud thud later, she slumped to the ground, dazed and disarmed.
Meanwhile, Foxleap could only watch as piece after piece of metal flew from the back room, self-assembling like a puzzle until there was not an inch of skin left visible. All that was left was a dark gray metal suit sensationalized by light blue strips of LED lights and a bright insignia of a bluejay on his chest.
"Stay down," he said threateningly at Fir, who almost matched the avid shock on display in Foxleap's face.
"HOW THE FUCK DID YOU FINISH IT SO QUICKLY?!" screamed Foxleap.
"You think I was lying when I said I work best drunk? I haven't slept in six days."
"THAT'S NOT SOMETHING TO BRAG ABOUT!"
"It is right now," he said, shrugging him off and grabbing a quivering Fir by the collar of her shirt, hoisting her up.
"Talk," he said simply.
Fir wanted to resist, but realized that this was a lost cause. It was slowly dawning on her that she had too much to lose if she played stubborn.
"My name is Agent Fir," she started, "I'm a member of the Assassins of the Rising Sun. I was sent here to listen in and get as much information on the occupants of this house as possible."
"Who are you responding to?"
"My leader, Sky. She ordered me to do this in accordance with our alliance with Rock. Our primary objective is to secore Jack Graves by any means necessary. So I was chosen to impersonate the occupant closest to him. As well as the weakest."
Not a split second after, Fir was wrenched out of Jaywhisker's grip and he stumbled back to see Foxleap, holding her throat in a death grip and stuffing the pistol so far down her mouth that it tickled her uvula, making her choke.
He was pissed.
"I will blow out your motherfucking brains," he snarled, ready to blow her to pieces as she choked on her own gun.
"Stop," said Jaywhisker suddenly.
"WHAT?!" snapped Foxleap at the younger boy, infuriated that he thought he could stand in his way.
"I got radio," he said, holding a finger to his right temple.
"Foxleap!" shouted Jayfeather into the comm.
"This is Jaywhisker," he said, "What's going on?"
"Listen to me! Icecloud is here! The Icecloud here is an imposter-"
"We know," said Jaywhisker, glancing to the defeated assassin, "She's secured."
"PLEASE!" shouted a voice in the background he didn't recognize, "LET ME TALK TO THEM!"
Jayfeather audibly groaned. "Get as much information as you can out of her. Then you can ki-"
There was an audible scuffle on the other end. The next voice he heard was a voice she didn't recognize.
"My name is Crow," said the voice, "I'm a former member of the Assassins of the Rising Sun. Please don't hurt Fir! You can kill me or torture me all you like, but please have mercy on her! Let her live!"
"Why should I?" Jaywhisker growled back, "She impersonated one of us and tried to kill us. What possible reason should we see for her mercy?"
"T-This was supposed to be our last mission!"
Jaywhisker did a double take. Even the people on the other end fell silent at that.
"My mission was to get the real Icecloud back into captivity. This was not a mission I took on willingly! Since Fir went into hiding, Sky has been threatening to kill her if I don't do her bidding. I've been forced to be her puppet for the last three months! This was supposed to be the last time! She's offered us a way out of this life if we captured Graves. A lifestyle for us to settle down in hiding with each other. I know I'm an idiot for thinking that there was any legitimacy behind this claim and I know we've been cruel to you, but please listen to me when I say that I love her with all of my heart! She's an amazing strong woman that's been forced to put on masks and do cruel acts for years."
The plea was a mess of desperation, but Jaywhisker wasn't so quick to dismiss it just yet.
"Please," rasped Crow, who was now audibly sobbing, "If you have any mercy left in your heart, please spare her. I know we've done you wrong, but all we wanted was to put this life behind and get our second chance."
Fir's eyes were wide and tearing up at the voice of his boyfriend, and for a fleeting moment, Jaywhisker looked into her eyes and saw a raw plea for repentance.
"HA!" said Foxleap raucously, "YOU THINK YOU CAN IMPERSONATE AND ABUSE MY SISTER AND GET AWAY WITH IT?! THINK AGAIN!"
He prepared to fire.
But Jaywhisker was faster. He grabbed Foxleap by the shoulder and flung him with excessive force to the other side of the room, causing him to get a nasty bruise on his head and Fir to dissolve into a coughing spell as she regained breath in her lungs.
After a couple moments of shuffling and searching, Jaywhisker, still encased in his metal suit, grabbed a couple of zipties and after a couple moments of irritation at his enlarged metal hands, tied her wrists together.
"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?!" roared Foxleap, enraged that the boy was saving her life.
Jaywhisker just glanced up in the general direction of a certain room with blue walls and superhero posters.
"I think I'm sober," he said, his tone suddenly heavy and melancholy.
He disconnected the comm from his helmet and tossed it to Foxleap as he grabbed Fir and carried her upstairs in a fireman's carry.
He locked the door behind him.
"There's something you haven't told him, huh?" said Fir as Jaywhisker used a second ziptie to bind her to a leg of the kitchen table.
"What?"
In spite of everything, Fir smirked. "I'll be real, Crow isn't really the most persuasive guy in the world. The only reason you decided to spare me must be a personal secret or something, hm?"
"I'm not going to let you make me squeal about my past. You've made enough mistakes to not get that luxury."
"Just asking for the short answer."
Jaywhisker pressed a button on the suit's chest, causing the metal casing to open up and him to step up, his face heavy in grieving thought.
"Yes."
He grabbed the suit and carried it upstairs to the second floor, setting it next to the door.
He knocked, and moments later, Russ opened the door.
"Hi Jay!" he said cutely and excitedly.
The boy smiled genuinely for the first time in a good while.
"I want to show you something."
Business was always slow at two in the morning.
Axis wiped down the bar table, fighting away exhaustion for the fifth time. There were only two or three people in the bar, the quiet music from the seventies being the only background.
Stuffing his hand into one of the hidden shelves and turned up the volume of the television, which had the news on. He usually wasn't a fan of the news, but he was slowly growing tired of the cheesy ballads the jukebox played at this time of morning.
"We have new developments regarding the shooting that took place in the warehouse district in Riven."
Immediately, Axis tensed up and turned to look at the television.
The anchor babbled on about some death counts and suspect lists, but what got his attention was a security camera replay.
Two boys were seen running across the street and up a fire escape to the roof.
The camera zoomed in.
It was Dusty.
Axis stared in shock for a moment before running to the men's room, locking the door and pulling out his phone.
He dug up Dusty's number and dialed.
"...yea?" said Dusty on the other end, obviously waking up from this call.
"Why the hell were you in Riven?"
And that's it from me.
Jay's got the finale of this collaborative arc. Keep an eye out. Because there's a lot of hard feelings coming up.
Funny. Jaywhisker was supposed to be the sarcastic techy who can't sleep. He's grown into so much more now. I'm going to enjoy showing you who he really is.
There's a good reason he spared Fir. Trust me.
Sorry for the short chapter. Longer chapter is coming up next. Promise.
Best,
~Res