Good Boy, Mike

Disclaimer: Okay THIS should be the final chapter.

Mike woke up on the couch in the garage. Julie and Chuck were playing bridge with Jacob and Roth. He could hear video games. He was hungry. His limbs were heavy. He went through his memories, sorting out the real ones from the bad dream he was having...

He spoke with a voice too hoarse to be his. "Did I forget to pick up the pizza?"

His pillow grappled him, and suddenly every living person in the garage was looming over him. Chuck's hands swept over his face and checked his pulse at his neck, and Mike realized that the grappling pillow was all of Texas, and he was somehow asleep in his lap. "Um-"

"Mike," said Julie, very serious. "Tell us the last thing you remember, if you can."

"I was having this awful dream..." Mike tried to dredge up the details. "Something about bugs and I kept trying to hurt you guys, but-"

Chuck reached down and pulled up his shirt, and Mike was ready to ask him what the hell before he caught sight of the massive purple bruise across his gut right where the dart had landed. His memories shuffled back into a proper order in a painful hurry. Fear laced his blood like a cold poison that ran from his heart to his limbs. "THAT. I remember that. The needle broke off in my stomach, there's metal-"

"Easy, son, easy..." Jacob put a hand on his shoulder. "Roth and I checked you up and down and every way from Saturday. Whatever that thing was made out of dissolved as soon as it hit your soft tissue. You're clean... in that regard, anyway."

"Apparently he doesn't remember the last three times we had this conversation..." murmured Dutch.

"Hey Mike!" Texas said right into his ear. "Punch yourself in the face!"

Mike answered right back, "No!" The fact that he did caught up to him a few seconds after, and he grinned. The grin hurt, and memories came back in pieces of his fixed smile, and the waves of pink fuzz that went through his head and made him laugh until he destroyed his voice. The noise that came out of him was small, involuntary, and broken, and he cowered into Texas's shoulder.

"OH thank goodness..." Chuck dropped against the couch in a nearly dead faint. "He is clean..."

"I... I really did all of that..." Mike went through every memory, all perfectly clear now that his brain wasn't trying to shunt them off as a bad dream. His friend's terrified faces played back to him frame by frame, even if he shut his eyes and buried them into Texas's shoulder. "I tried to hurt all of you..."

"I'm getting some serious unfounded remorse vibes comin' from Tiny, guys," said Texas. "Time for a puppy pile."

"Puppy pil- guys- wait!" Mike called out into a shoulder. All the Burners pulled him into the center of a massive group hug and sat there, barely fitting onto the side of the couch. Mike put forth one protesting grunt before realizing how nice it felt and relaxing into it. Jacob stood apart from the massive pile of teens to smile approvingly, while Roth hovered overhead and brooded over the nest.

"The basic rundown," Julie explained. "Is that you were under some serious duress, and we're not holding you accountable for the smashed cars."

"We're just glad you're okay." Dutch ruffled his hair. "Now we can start feeding you normal food again!"

"Yeah, you were... way worse off for the last couple of days than you are now," said Chuck. "Julie had to sneak KaneCubes out of Deluxe for you to eat."

Mike licked the roof of his mouth. It was fuzzy like cotton and tasted like chalk. "Oh yeah. Tastes like bad memories. You couldn't serve me anything else?"

"It's uh..." Julie hesitated. "It was a lot easier to force-feed you KaneCubes than pizza."

The conversation died. Jacob watched them all from the edge of the couch while Mike let the words sink in. Force feed... the last couple of days... Mike swallowed hard. "We've really had this conversation already?"

"Sometimes you'd come back to your senses enough to talk," Dutch told him. His voice stayed low, so even it was almost robotic, and Mike knew he was trying hard not to let his thoughts creep into his tone. Roth kept a little paw on Dutch's shoulder the whole time. "But then you'd fall asleep, or we'd say something that was a little too close to a command, and you'd relapse back into a super freak out."

"Again, not holding that against you!" Julie explained. "Kaia hit you with a dose strong enough for Kane, and... well, Kane's got a lot of bulk on you. Guess she figured she could just do the plan again as long as you were under her control."

"And you guys were dead."

Julie winced. "Mike..."

"Sorry, just... gimme my hands back, guys." The Burners untangled Mike's arms from the puppy pile enough for him to pull them in for a proper hug. His eyes stung. His tears were coming, and they hurt, but at least now he didn't have to laugh through them. "Just a lot to unpack."

"Take your time, bro." Chuck pulled him close enough to nuzzle his forehead before releasing him. "You're here and you're alive. We've got all the time in the world."

"Clearance granted to leave the garage in four more days," said Texas. "And then another four days after before you're allowed out of Texas's presence. I have decided this."

"Pfft, you're not riding along in Mutt, if that's what you're thinking." Mike let himself have a little smirk, despite the soreness. "There'd be no room for Chuck."

"Hey, I'm fine with just staying in the garage with Mike until he's at a hundred percent," Chuck said with a giggle. "No driving, no thrills, no danger. And no more KaneCubes!"

Jacob stretched and clapped his hands together. "I'll have Antonio deliver us a pizza."

Mike reached up and held the tiny mechanical paw where Roth was patting his hair. "Catch me up on everything I missed, guys! I still don't know what happened with Kaia. How'd you wind up taking her down?"

Far on the outskirts of Motorcity, away from hushed storytelling and worried glances, the Terras combed through their village in silence. Everything burned. From the scientists's best guesses, the fire in the lab went out of control once the villagers started throwing irradiated water on it. It ignited the raw potassium and sodium within the room, feeding the flames until they'd seeped deep into the dry roots in the ground. The walls of their canyon never seemed so high now that their trees, their mushrooms, were all reduced to ash upon the ground. Homes, food crops, feed for the deer... all of it gone. The only things left were the concrete rubble walls of old Detroit, scattered along the ground.

Ruins and one stupid crate of seeds, tossed down the cliffs on a parachute by the Burners with a single word written on the side: "Sorry."

Kaia's stomach turned at the sight, even now. Her people were strong and healed quickly, but the burn scars were still fresh upon their arms and faces. The mutated spores of their crossbows crept up their skin to feed on the damaged tissue, fusing them with their favored weapons permanently.

All because she had rushed the plan.

All because Mike Chilton and his Burners took her hard work and ruined it all.

She kicked at the ash under her feet, uncovering a little green prickle of thorns growing up from the toxic waste.

"Just you wait, Mike Chilton," Kaia hissed. "It's personal now."