Good Boy Mike

Disclaimer: Well dang I guess it needs one more chapter. I thought this would be the last one, but nope!

Mike had a decent grip on Motorcity's roads, even with his head clouded over. It was finding the side streets, making sharp turns, and avoiding obstacles was painfully difficult. Not only was Chuck's voice not here to direct him to the clear streets, thinking was just getting hard. His hands were numb where they gripped the wheel. His vision was starting to blur. Things in the road appeared in his vision far too late for him to drive around, and after a few mailboxes and at least one abandoned bicycle wound up under Mutt's tires at 300-something miles an hour, Kaia started shrieking. She had already been screaming in terror, but now her voice took on a ragged, shrill tone that hurt his ears.

"What are you doing?!" Kaia clung to the seat even harder than Chuck usually did. Her knuckles had gone white against the arm rests, as has her toes where they mashed into the floor. Her back had nearly arched all the way out of the seat in her instinctive scramble to get away from the windshield. "Is this how you normally drive?!"

It was the last thing he felt like he could choose not to do; he said nothing in response. There was no shock of pain that came with not talking, and he clung to that little bit of control with all he could. Kaia, as expected, did nothing to punish him. She only screamed as Mike's passenger side tires bounced off a curb and sent her slamming against the seat belt and back down hard into the seat. It made him giggle, just a little, and he held tight to that.

"THERE! Take that road on the right!"

It was gone in an instant. His mind blanked and his arms moved without him, internally flinching away from disobeying and getting lost in the rush of joy when he did exactly what he was told. Motorcity came back into focus a pixel at a time, from the bottom up. The last thing he noticed was Whiptail coming in sharp on his left.

Kaia gasped "WHAT THE-" before Whiptail clipped Mutt's back fender hard and sent him fishtailing. Mike had to steer hard to keep on the narrow high road while Stronghorn caught up on his right flank. Her top popped open, and while Texas kept his attention on the road, Chuck in the back was aiming his slingshot.

"Get her good for me, Chuck!" Texas shouted.

Chuck's mouth flared in a snarl. Mike couldn't remember the last time he saw Chuck this angry, from the furrow in his windswept brow to the hard line of his shoulders as he pulled back the plasma bolt. "GET OUT OF MY SEAT!"

His shot narrowly missed Kaia's head, instead splattering- and shattering- against the windshield. Dull beads of windshield glass bounced off Mike's cheeks, normally just an annoyance but now stinging him like so many wasps against his cheeks.

"HA!" Dutch hollered. "See how YOU like it!"

Kaia readied a bolt into her crossbow and took aim just as Texas lowered the Strongarm's room. "That's enough!"

Her vision filled with yellow before she could take the shot. Mike's foot flinched on the accelerator; 9Lives after 9Lives circled Mutt as Whiptail and Stronghorn pulled off. Julie was trying to box him in again, keep him isolated. Kaia fired off one bolt, and another, and a third. None of them hit. She grunted in annoyance and shouldered her crossbow. "This is pointless! Break the wall! Speed up and get us out of here!"

Mike floored the gas, and Mutt dipped halfway into the wall of hologram 9Lives before the real 9Lives slammed into his driver's door. Kaia screamed from the shock. His stomach lurched at the familiar feeling of spinning right off the side of the high road and rolling onto ground level. Their seat belts held, and they landed on Mutt's tires, but it wasn't five seconds before Stronghorn flew off the side of the road and drifted right into Mutt's side. The cars smashed into the wall of a building with Mutt sandwiched between bricks and Stronghorn's armor plating. Kaia threw her weight into the door, but aside from gently rocking Mutt, the door didn't budge. Mike fell back into his seat to breathe. Chuck was watching him through Stronghorn's window, and Mike saw him watching out for him even now, and it made him... happy. A real happy, deep in his gut and away from the pink fuzz in his mind. He smiled at Chuck as best he could.

"Got him!" Texas cheered. "Go Texas!"

Chuck threw his arms into the air, knocking his knuckles against Stronghorn's roof. "We did it! WE DID IT!" He popped his comm open, leaving it on the broadcast channel to everybody. "Mike and Kaia are pinned!"

"We're on our way, guys!" Dutch answered for Julie. He had pulled to a stop on the high road, keeping an eye on 9Lives. He could see her through her broken driver's side window, shaking her head and re-orienting herself. She would need a minute, and he wasn't in a hurry to drive off an overpass if he didn't need to. "Everybody ready to jump on Kaia and go through all her pockets?"

Chuck pressed his face against the window, looking over Mike and checking his eyes. Still dilated way too much, still teary and red, but at least now, he wasn't attacking them. They had him pinned and they would all fix this together. "Can I jump on her a couple extra times, just to be safe?"

"Only if you save me a spot!" said Julie, making Texas and Chuck laugh.

Kaia took a breath, and Mike's throat clenched in anticipation.

"Mike," Kaia ordered. "Get out of this car and maim them. We'll come back for them once we're done in Deluxe."

Mike shuddered, and Chuck recoiled from Stronghorn's window. "Guys, Kaia said something and Mike's getting tense-"

The rest of Chuck's words were lost in a horrified wail as blue flame sliced through Mutt's hood. Mike leaped out of Mutt and made a dive for Stronghorn. Texas hooked his hand into the back of Chuck's shirt and pulled hard, flipping them out of the car just as the staff came down hard in Chuck's previous spot. Texas sprung on his hands and landed in a fighting stance, gunchucks audibly charging up. He fired three warning shots; Mike reflexively deflected all of them.

Chuck yelped from behind Texas, his slingshot snapping into space in his palm. "That could've killed me!"

Mike staggered. His legs came down hard in Stronghorn's interior, and he had to brace a hand against the steering column to keep on his feet. "Please..." he gasped through a laugh. "I don't want to..."

Kaia's form rose from Mutt's ravaged roof. "Stop talking and fight them!"

Chuck's voice dipped low, for Texas's ears only. "Can you hold him off?"

Texas cracked his neck and grinned. "Please. Who're you talking to?"

Heat surged as Mike swung down on Texas's head. Metal met gunchucks in a shower of sparks. Texas matched Mike's hits one for one, throwing himself into the blows to deflect the hits with brute force.

"Stop messing around, Mike!" Kaia screeched behind him. "Sweep his-"

The order cut off sharp. That plasma bolt hit, landing right on Kaia's shoulder and burning into her skin and the fine hairs of her wing joint. Chuck ducked back further from Texas and took another shot, and another, each one landing against her chest before she could get the words out of her mouth. With no new orders, Mike kept plowing forward in the same mindless attack pattern, leaving Texas to duck and flip into a Texas Tornado that knocked Mike onto his hip. Chuck could hear Whiptail and 9Lives on the way. All he had to do was keep Kaia on the ropes, away from giving Mike orders, until everybody showed up.

Something dark moved over Kaia's shoulder, and Chuck twitched hard and loosed a plasma bolt. The plasma bolt clipped something that smoldered into little fine particles of dust: the edge of Kaia's wing. The split-second of hesitation, the time it took for Chuck to even have the thought, was enough for Kaia to whip her crossbow into place and shoot for his legs. The vines jumped up his legs and started pulling him down to the ground, and Chuck fell backwards with a yelp.

"Hold up, Chuck!" Texas shouted.

He couldn't help answer, "PHRASING!"

"Texas to the rescue!"

Texas was at his side in a flash. He ripped through the vines with his bare hands and pulled Chuck free with a sick squelch of torn plant tissue. Chuck barely got a breath in before a sound filled his other ear. While engines were growing louder on his left, Mike's staff was revving back to life in his right.

"I'm getting tired of your stalling, Mike!" Kaia hissed. "How clear do I need to be?! Get over here and cut their tendons! Knock them out! If you want them to live, then you'll follow my orders! Now!"

Mike's face washed with a fresh run of tears. He spun his staff and dropped it as it slipped out of his sweaty hands. Even as he kneeled to collect it, he laughed. "Don't hurt them..."

"This is really messed up, Kaia!" Texas warned. "Like, even for you!"

Kaia snarled, and her wings snapped up. It drenched the two Burners in immediate darkness, lit only by the flames coming off Mike's staff. Chuck cowered, and Texas spread his stance to cover him that little bit more. "You two are the ones making this hard for Mike! If you had just stayed in your cells, I wouldn't have to make him hurt you! Once Deluxe was destroyed, you could have had places in the tribe!"

"Y-you think we're dumb enough to buy that?!" Chuck argued. "You're using him, and all you were gonna do was use us!"

"I was going to find ways to make you useful," corrected Kaia. "Now, I'm seeing you're not worth the trouble! Mike's the only useful one out of all of you, and even he doesn't know how to follow orders!"

Mike sobbed where he stood. In the flickering fire light, he looked half dead. His face never wavered from that horrible grin that showed all his teeth and kept him laughing, always laughing, while he broke into a sprint. "I'm sorry..."

Chuck winced. Texas threw his gunchucks into a hurried block. The ground between them flashed pink before it exploded. Chuck and Texas flew onto their backs and hit concrete, and when they sat up, 9Lives blocked their view of the scene. Chuck whuffed in relief and pulled him and Texas up to their feet while Whiptail tore another furrow in the ground with her laser.

"Why does everyone keep getting between me and the fight?!" Texas whined.

Julie jumped out of 9Lives, along with Julie, Julie, and Julie. Every Julie's mouth moved, but only the real one spoke. "Guys, ignore Mike! I was listening in; all we need to do is take out Kaia, and Chuck can do his programmer stuff on Mike and get him to stop attacking us. Rush her!" She dove into the dirt cloud Dutch had kicked up, the only sign of life inside behind Kaia's massive wings beating in the air trying to clear it.

"Texas is ALL about punching chicks who deserve it!" Texas beat his gunchucks against his chest and dove into the smoke. "TEXAAAS!"

"Save some for me!" Dutch called out into the dirt cloud.

Chuck wrestled with himself for a few long seconds before clenching his fists and diving in. "Mike, you better appreciate this when you're better!"

All eyes clouded by the dust, Kaia roared in anger. She couldn't see, but she could feel all of the stupid Burners touching her. One of them pinched the edge of her wing, another one- delicate hands, must have been Julie- had her ankle and was pulling with her entire weight. It was nothing to wrench her ankle back and kick her soundly in the solar plexus, but it was another when Texas tackled her gut and sent her shoulder into Mutt's crumbled fender. Whenever she kicked out or swung her hand, it connected with someone, but then another three grabbed at her somewhere new, somewhere she couldn't anticipate. Each punch felt like another second knocked off her all-important schedule. That drug wouldn't stay in Mike's system forever, and Kane was waiting above for her to command in ruin! Her teeth sunk into someone's wrist, and when they pulled away with a shriek- Chuck- Kaia commanded, "Get in here and defend me, Mike Chilton!"

"Don't let up!" Julie commanded right back. The dust was just starting to settle; Kaia could see her standing back from the boys, getting her breath back. Mike was struggling to his feet behind her, using his staff as a walking stick to regain his footing. He towered over Julie, even half-beaten and nearly knocked out by an explosion going off at his feet. "Just get her on the ground!"

Kaia's teeth gnashed. This stupid child was not about to stop her! She was the one organizing this rag-tag band in Chilton's absence, and she was more than out of patience with all of them. "Mike, get rid of Julie!"

Mike pleaded, "No..." and stood to his full height. Julie jumped at the sound of his voice. She had turned into a target fast, and options jumped through her mind. She wasn't a fighter like Texas. Her one ranged attack was the boomerang, and it took catching before she could throw it again, unlike Chuck's unlimited plasma ammo. If Mike started gaining ground, no doubt the guys would try to help, and then Kaia would get loose and they would be right back where they started this fight. Julie had one choice, and it wasn't a great one, but it would work.

Her last order was "Don't let up on Kaia! I'll be back!" before she ran into a dark alley. Mike followed her, exactly according to her plan.

Now her plan was "get away from mind-controlled Mike that had orders to kill her", and the reality of that hit her once Mike sliced his way through a fire escape ladder instead of vaulting over it like she had. Her heart pounded its way into her throat as she scrambled to put distance between them. His staff cut clean through everything she threw in his way, be it trash cans, boxes, or fences she climbed over. Everything fell in ribbons in front of him, and he just kept coming after her at a full run, sobbing the entire time.

"I'm so sorry..." He begged through his grin as half of a neon sign fell at his feet. The crash made Julie look over her shoulder. Mike was a wreck, all wild hair and rumpled clothes and sweat on top of a painful smile and tears. "Please, I don't want to do this. She's making me..."

"Mike, I know!" Julie could barely spare the breath, but she had to say something. She pulled herself up a fire escape, using it as a jumping point to get over a broken wall. "It's the drug in your system! I know this isn't you!"

"But it is..." His staff sliced through the brick wall twice in a V. He dropped his shoulder hard against the alley wall and pushed it over, just barely missing Julie's ankles. "Something's wrong with me... she trained me like Kane trained me, to follow orders without thinking, and doing it makes me feel good..."

"Don't!" Julie couldn't make herself say more than that. Everything wrong about the thought hit her all at the same time, and she couldn't decide on a single one. "Just don't think that about yourself ever again, okay?! I know you're-"

Julie turned and hit a dead end, a five story dead end with no light, nothing to climb, and no room to get around Mike's side. He blocked the whole entrance, and Julie was trapped.

"... good." Julie turned her back to the wall and backed against it, flush. Mike was closing in at the slowest he could make himself go. Her gut sank like a lead weight, weakening her knees and sending her sliding down the wall. All she could do against him now was talk... "I know you're good under there, Mike. You wouldn't do this if she wasn't forcing you."

"It hurts so much..." Mike was at her ankles, illuminated in fire, laughing and laughing until the sound meant nothing. All Julie could hear was the sobbing underneath, and the tremor in his fingers. "I hate this..."

It was like a door opening, illuminating the alley. The weight didn't lift out of her stomach, it just... disappeared, leaving her thoughts clear and hollow and floating in a void of clarity. Julie gulped and slipped her hand into her pocket. "Mike? I want you to know, whatever happens next... we all love you, okay?"

Mike lifted the staff above his head, ready to drive it down into her. His jacket was wet where the tears hit his shoulders. "I love you too..."

Julie gulped. Her eyes screwed shut. She took a breath. "Okay."

She flipped her boomerang on, but instead of throwing it, she lurched forward and jammed it into his gut. The electroblade fizzled out against Mike's skin, and the contacts at the base stabbed right through his wet shirt and into his skin. She couldn't use her boomerang as a boomerang, but in close quarters, it made a perfect taser. She held tight through Mike's spasms, even as he dropped his staff and the handle landed across her shoulders and dropped to her feet. She pressed it harder into his flesh even as he screamed, and screamed, and the sound filled the alley and all the winding paths leading to it. She had never heard a sound that raw and agonized before now, and it seared into her mind all the way to Mike's last gurgle. She only let go when he dropped cold to the ground. She only opened her eyes once he stopped making noise.

Mike was on the ground, unconscious. She knocked him out. His shirt rumpled at his belly, showing off the red burn mark left on his skin. He wasn't moving.

Julie gasped for air until she could hear again. Chuck was screaming.

Chuck was screaming! The world caught up to her fast, and she checked the sky above the alley. Kaia was in flight, and dangling from her leg was Chuck's unmistakable lanky silhouette. She threw her boomerang on instinct and tracked it as it arced into Kaia's side and sent them both plummeting. Julie had to get there, and fast! Her hands swept Mike's jacket collar until she found the mic for his comm, and she flipped it into tracking mode before sprinting for the nearest fire escape. She would have to gather him up later, once the dust had settled. Until then, Kaia was still an active threat.

Up on the rooftops, Chuck and Kaia landed hard. Hearing Mike scream sent her on the offense, and she had only just managed to wrestle the Burners off of her and take to the air before that cursed yellow bolt came out of nowhere. The boomerang hit her right in the ribs on one side, and she had the misfortune of coming down on her other. Chuck's grip never loosened, and even when she tried to get into the sky again, Chuck hooked his feet under a ledge and pulled back hard. Dutch jumped onto her back from behind. Before she could fully wrestle him off, Texas had her by the arm and pulled her crossbow from her wrist. Fury boiled in her blood.

"I am SICK of playing with you, children!" She planted her feet and caught Texas by the collar, throwing him over her shoulder and into Dutch. It was nothing to snap Chuck like a whip and send him skidding off to the other end of the roof. "MIKE! Get back up here!"

Julie scrambled over the side of the roof instead. "Mike's not coming!"

"JULIE!" Texas shouted and threw her boomerang handle back to her. "CATCH!"

A second too late, Kaia swiped at the air to catch it before Julie could. It flew past her, right into Julie's palm. Behind Kaia, the boys were pulling back onto their feet.

"We're never letting you get to Deluxe!" Julie shouted. "Just- give up already! We wrecked your village, we totaled Mutt, and Mike is- isn't coming back to help you! Your plan's over! We win!"

Kaia's third eye focused on something behind Julie before her main eyes did, and Kaia started to laugh low in her chest. "Did you now? Mike? Kill all of them."

"Mike?!" Julie's blood went cold. She looked over her shoulder and saw Mike's arm pulled back, staff ready to throw-

It flew over her head and straight into Kaia's forehead. It bounced up and over Julie while Kaia dropped to the roof, and Mike caught it singlehanded, panting and winded and soaking wet, not crying, not laughing.

"I," said Mike. "Refuse!"

"YES!" Chuck screamed.

"He did it!" Dutch wailed and punched at the air in triumph. The Burners jumped at the chance to get back to Mike, making a circle around Kaia's balled-up form. "You're back! What happened?!"

Mike spun his staff in his hands with precision, testing its weight in his palm and finding it perfect, before shrinking it back to a skull and tucking it into his pocket. He threw an arm over Julie and kept his eyes on Kaia as she curled on the roof in agony. "Amazing how a couple thousand volts can sober a guy up."

Julie laughed, relieved, and put an arm around Mike in return. "It's not a thousand."

"Whatever it was," explained Mike. "It hurt way worse than anything she did to me." Mike jabbed an accusing finger at Kaia where she lie in a ball. "And I'm not scared of her hurting me any more."

It was like slow motion.

Kaia's wings tucked back into her shoulders, and in her hands was a blow gun.

She took a deep breath and blew into it.

A dart with a long needle and feathered tips flew out of the end.

It landed, and sunk deep into, the center of Mike's torso.

He sucked in a wet, gulping breath, and Mike could feel his organs shift against the needle of the dart before it just... crumbled, just kind of dissolved inside of him. All sorts of emotions hit him at once, all of them reflected in his friend's faces as he took a step back and clutched at the pinprick pain on his skin. Like the bite of an alley fly. Horrified. Sick to his stomach. Angry. Julie's arm burned against his back.

He managed "help..." before it all came crashing down on his ears at once. The pink fuzzy fog tore through his eyes and blinded him in pinpricks of neon noise and clawing light against his skin. He broiled in his coat, his teeth frozen together and cracked and ground under the pressure of his own tongue. The floor jumped up to attack his knees and his ears and arms, throwing him into the sky sideways and landing in a constant roll that never stopped, always rolling further away from the twisting shapes of his friends and the green, the terrible green of Kaia, who was shouting orders at him, every order all on repeat in his mind and into his ears until he couldn't tell the green noise from the black noise, her voice from Kane's in his head, telling him to kill them all, every single one.

Kaia managed one order before every Burner descended on her at once.

These were not the Burners at playtime, the good little kids that played hero. Julie's fist landed on her open eyes. Texas grappled her elbow and wrenched it back far enough for her shoulder to pop. Dutch pulled at hair until it fell out and went back for more, tearing the feathers out of her own wings. Boot heels landed in her kidneys, nails dug into her skin, and everywhere she felt a hand, real pain followed.

Something exploded in the far reaches of Motorcity, distracting the Burners long enough to her to pull her head away and look. Through swollen eyes, she made sense of the skyline, lined it up with her mental map and traced the explosion to a column of fire reaching nearly up to the Motorcity ceiling... where her village was supposed to be.

"No." That pillar of fire was her home. "No! NO!"

Kaia took to the sky on her battered wings and flew, and the Burners let her go. They fell to their knees in shock, watching the flames lick at the horizon as Kaia turned into a little dot in the light, a moth to her flame.