Lyrics to Hell to Pay by Drowning Pool
Act VII: Revolution, Chapter X: Fallen
Carly was but no match for any pheno here, what chance could she have against the seven? She hid behind Caroline of the captives and looked on. "How long were we inside...?"
Darcy and Luna, at able-bodied states, helped themselves and joined the unified group. "What's going on?" Luna went right as the wave of Medi-Sin Kids pushed right into them; fhe fight was on.
Lynn tangled with the two zoomers she had encountered earlier once again, breaking right through the barrier they had formed side-by-side, and then spun around Lyra, working the momentum to grab her by the arm and lead her hard onto the ground. This worked against the turned brunette, but left Lynn open to an attack from the doppelganger in that instance, and she wound up taking in an uppercut to the face by the doppelganger. Lemy went right at Lincoln, the only target the young boy had wanted since the start. With the active formula having hold over him, Lemy found to be sparring the Ungodly Stormbringer in nearly equal footing, throwing his punches at full strength and blocking the incoming ones with the same strength as the adversary before him; for a moment, Lincoln feared the brat had become his perfected equal, feeling the intensity and power from those unyielding punches rolled back after counter-blocking. Lincoln swung directly at him, missed and met a gut punch after the boy ducked the heavyweight fist, making him stop to regain lost breath. Lyle saw some potential to be Luna's current adversary, made the effort and pounced on her, elbowing her when he would have never done such a thing in his normal state, not that he was giving it much thought right now. It was rather odd, but the boost in his ability worked to make him believe he could very well be the victor between the two, so he tried and forgot everything else there ever was to exist. Leven jumped in to Lincoln's defense and took upon fighting Lemy. Lupa and Meli engaged each other in a short-lived battle that ended with Lupa tossing the feeble Chad right at her, knocking only the girl out. Troy drew his service pistol and took gradual shots at Lupa, the action that brought Liby tackling and disarming him, nearly breaking his arm in the process. Lupa had stopped those shots this time, letting them reach their intended target at halfway before breaking their pattern and letting them drop below. She dropped down to her feet and took over where Liby had been in fighting Troy, utilizing her uncanny supernatural gift to sweep him off the ground and push him a good twenty feet away from the fight, and good old Benny raced to catch him as if the agent was a baseball that the zoomer could not afford to let drop in the baseball game.
It was to Dylan Blood's joyous delight that his newly-made agents sewed destruction to the Louds and what remained of their allies. Never mind the group of strangers with their hands zipped tightly, for all he cared, his bunch could simply kill them right on the spot- and it seemed his trade secret had been out; he was once known as Isaac Sanger, and pray for the souls of those who knew to the Gentle Lord. Isaac Sanger and the Island of Death, the place where he was infamously known for, if no one had- and they hadn't- ever heard of Mister Dylan Blood, the Tacitus Kid with a metallic skull-shaped mask. Didn't matter if a soul put them together, for both iteration of the same person were matched in levels of devotion with dark, unrestrained action and low morale, if he truly had a low amount of it.
Time and time again, the aging collegiate-esque madman had challenged more than enough of those he had come to label as enemies, the sorts of sinners expert on vile work galore. Among these recent of his years, he deviated from bullies and the regular dickhead jock and the cronies behind them, to having moved on to see that the high-end six-figure moneymakers were of a potential foe when there were too many of them, and that was just one section of the rich and powerful, and the world had not had the decency to change, to drag itself from the epitome of the word poverty. He supposed they were mostly selfish people, and Cornelius Dietrich and his faction of elitists proved Dylan Blood right, in the end. Dietrich, forcing the lad to do his bidding in dire retribution for Dylan's long-ago attempt to raid the Dietrich mansion and leave it up in flames. It was during this slave labor era when Dylan- Isaac- heard the whispers, having eavesdropped on a call, detailing about this ballsy John Kirkwood and the account with $362 billion stolen from an investment fraud. And where did Isaac Sanger go from here if not towards the money?
Now he was here, stepping into a death match with mutations for opponents, stuff right out of silly comic books that he would not ever bother reading. Marvel was corny and kid-oriented, he thought, and DC had too many politics than he cared to keep note of. But either way, the concept of a superhuman dedicated to serve the common man and woman was seen as a joke to him. And he laughed until the week the New York zoomer twins turned reality into an unbearable shard of nonsensical fantasy. Crime fighters with speed-based powers, and even worse, they were praised and loved in such a blind fashion, as if there was no possibility that they could one day turn. Turn, an act dictated by human nature. And he grew to hate them. And he watered this hatred and was fixated on all the phenos the day Luna Loud broke them out. All of them, every single potential threat to man, breathing before them, set in a state of grand delusion where they just so happened to be the good guys when it was to him a case of subtle revenge that they dare try to justify and excuse. These very phenos, bred from a nobody, giving too much of their own time to bother- albeit successfully- chasing down all the big dogs responsible or connected to the deviant corporation.
He smiled widely yet again, daring to laugh and dearly taste the wonderful flavor of the Louds' cornering, as it had appeared to them that they were about to be beaten by his own squad. "Beat them all! Show them who the victor will be before the sunset!"
Leven swung at the scruffy-haired brat, but had dissolved his entire arm for the nanobots to break away and reform as a punch that hit in a complete 360 degree. Leven purposely fell over and dropped at Lemy's feet, looking up at him just in time to see the floating fist reconstruct and strike at Lemy's face. With the other hand, Leven grabbed and raised one of Lemy's legs to cause imbalance and throw him off his feet. Lincoln stepped back into the match, helping Lemy stay down in a chokehold. "Couldn't care less if you died, you little shit."
"That's enough!" Leven revolted, again finding himself to defy Lincoln, as if it was a good idea to start an ideology war yet again. "Look at him, he's not himself!"
"Don't you shovel that shit at me, we both know this brat was A-okay until now. He will be held responsible-"
Lynnette raced around her mother at a faster pace, exceedingly outperforming her like it was nothing. And then came Lyra for the nice kill when Lynn had struggled to keep up, leaving her open for a good old one-two from the otherwise docile, scrawny teenager. The girl in purple had yet some level of constraint, fighting back the necessity of violence, but with the dosage mix of chemicals that sent those signals to her brain dared to make it a challenge to concentrate between the eager Lynnette and Dylan Blood's word to revert her back to normal after she proved useful to him, a promise that had nothing to found over. She and sister knew this man for being nothing else than a merciless monstrosity self-proclaimed a deity to his followers, those being composed of enlisted soldiers of the Prime Federation, and the residents of the United States of Blood.
Benny revved back into the group fight at full throttle, targeting Lupa and Liby, choosing to challenge the albino clone, the bigger threat of the two. Meanwhile, Chad decided to beat it out of there, fearing for his life, scrambling with Carly yelling at him.
Lana and Lola were the only two phenos not engaged in the fight, right when it was looking like they were needed to help their siblings, even that psycho of a brother. They only gave each other concerned looks, but Lola grunted and tugged at her shirt. As if it wasn't enough being beaten once already, as if it wasn't enough knowing they weren't strong enough to avoid a non-zoomer-
"Lola, they-" Lana scanned the environment, with Lola's narrowing eyes following. The green zoomer with Lynn's face had turned the tables on Lynn, kicking her repeatedly once she hit the floor. Lyle went for Lincoln when Lemy had appeared to be losing, and Lupa had floated upwards, barely avoiding Benny's frontal charge; he made the mistake and tried to catch her by her feet, and Liby had punched him right in the chin too hard that his neck had snapped, and dead he fell. Even if he hadn't just died, Lupa came back down to earth once more and landed on the boy's chest, causing his ribcage to break from within and pierce his heart, a more brutal way to go.
Lana jerked her head away from the sight, but Lola remained stunned, her belief in their own winning this battle depleting faster than dollar store batteries. "She- she just killed that-"
And the trauma was to its max, considering Benny was a zoomer akin to the pair.
There's no way I can match someone like that- Lola viewed Lupa with scared eyes, a focused gleam in the blue of her eyes that dared to go unsteady, and that was the work of her sudden phobia of the clone- the growing phobia of the successor of her brother. She had little hope of going up against the merciless clone, but a graceful touch intruded her free hand until she felt and recognized the gentle, silk-soft touch of her twin sister's full hand woven within it. It was Lana, with a fighting smile set against the fears and the doubt, pushing through it with the strength of knowing herself that Lola was there, seen in her own eyes as the sister just as strong as her, still overcoming and triumphing over their obstacles. And it was that very Lola Loud who was needed at that very second, not a cowardly diva fearfully doubtful of her thought-to-be unrivaled skills. Not by myself...
"The albino clone's our biggest threat," Lana decided, voicing to Lola and Carly alike. "Lola, Carly, if we can get her down on ground, we'll have a chance to beat her!"
"Ergh..." Carly sucked it up when they looked at her as if they hoped she would agree with their plan- her role in it; she served as the bait to catch Lupa's attention. "You've gotta be kidding me! She'll tear me apart!"
"Not if we tag-team!" Loanne voiced, standing firmly and confidently by Carly's left side. "We'll be the diversion! Hurry to it, the others don't seem to be focused-"
Leia had wandered past the barrage of fights happening around her, seeing most of her super "friends", if that was the term she figured to use, were all fighting these other minors closer to her age, occupied and unable to feed her previously untapped desire for a type of rage she didn't ever realize she wanted sorely to use to vent and dish out her rage subsided in the sturdy, undetected cage. It started with a family van that caught on fire out of nowhere- Leia could not actually recall the moment it happened- and there was but a beloved girl who did no wrong, was no such troublemaker in school, kissed and blessed upon by the roaring inferno, her skin turning eclipse dark, the waves of heat making it gradually hotter while the smoke got into her lungs to further kill her. And she screamed. And she heard her parents in the front scream in the same manner as her, with terror and eternal pain. It kept up less and less until it had tragically ended with them, the fire of their own lives extinguished, survived by their child by some jackpot-struck miracle. Had the ballsy father of hers never chose to act to blackmail the strictly iron-fisted mayor of Greenwood, Leia would have never been here today, that's what she believed at any rate. No Dylan Bloods, no being concerned about two unnatural human beings, and the cherry on top? None of that Robin Hood-type of shit she'd venture about with that young, but dumb group of hers.
Here, she felt a fire undoubtedly, but that fire was inside of her now, becoming one with Leia to help her on her way towards all that was ugly unless she earned back total control, a state of clear mind. Leia saw Loanne first, the popular actress not at all moving. Why, Leia had looked up to the celebrity, considered her a role model even when it wasn't one of the tens of hundreds others before her, but Leia wasn't looking to praise her; Loanne had come out in the news as a brave woman who survived a terrible incident that left her co-star and lover dead, but Loanne Wardell had protected herself and killed the aggressor, and it was that reason that Leia had found herself angered. Angered that such a woman could not have been able to save her. What good was her bravery? While the media outlets had spoken of it and looked to Loanne as a victim and a heroine, there had been more, there had to have been. And if there were victims, then Leia had surmised there to be brave fighters, none of which had played the foretold knight in shining armor.
Leia rolled about like a barrel among the field after her idol had simply pushed her away without trying to hurt her, but had unintentionally gave it more power thanks to the black "suit" that continued to amplify her strength. "S-stop fighting...!" Loanne shot her hand up and had three of her fingers hover right in front of her bottom lip to show horror of both herself and the turned fanatical girl. "Oh, God, I'm sorry!"
Ultimately, Phoebe's planted feet had acted as the barrier against Leia. The cold eyes on the captured woman had widened and sparkled fearfully as Leia had rotated from the floor and met Phoebe's eyes with the milky pearls; Leia instantly recognized the fiend and opened her mouth to show off her sets of perfect teeth connected against each other, topping off with a low growl that could have been laughed upon and labeled adorable if Leia tried it on a normal circumstance. "Sh-shit!"
"Let her be!" Darcy yelled at them from feet away while giving Luna aid in fighting a resilient Lyle. "Go now!"
Leia had pulled Phoebe from her feet forward and then mounted right on her, utilizing her tiny hands to wrap around the helpless woman's neck and squeeze her life away. Phoebe whimpered and choked and cried, but had nonetheless understood that she was seconds away from death and without so much as an answer to the mystery behind her sister's disappearance. Why, Lynn was right there and could have possibly provided answers, but fate seemed to reject her closure. Caroline, Shepherd and the Supervisor had listened to Phoebe sobbing underneath her strains for life, and nothing at all from the determined, inhuman Leia who had been compelled by the Devil's Drug to murder the woman after her earlier horrifying encounter with the bitch.
Darcy set Lyle into a rough chokehold from behind, holding him tight for Luna to finish the fight. Lyle still had a surge of crazy strength that enabled him to continue their battle, moving about unpredictably, jerking his movements. "I CAN'T HOLD HIM!"
Just this morning, Luna was going her way, with all her friends and family on this side of the war going only the same way. Who was able to predict a fight amongst them just like this? The forced act to make Luna hurt these kids the way she had to. Why couldn't have Sam made it this far, to tell her it'd be okay? That it was either these drugged children or everyone else? "Suh-"
Lyle struck Darcy in two places, stomping on her left foot hard and threw his head back to strike her face, undoing her hold. Once he spun around, his hands slapped right onto Darcy's face, and twisted hard diagonally, followed by the sound of a set of thick snaps Luna had comprehended as Darcy's neck breaking in the young boy's hands. Luna's mouth went ajar, a soft gasp escaping- maybe there had still been time to save Darcy, but Luna's bodily reaction outweighed her current bravery and fearlessness, spiraling downward along with Darcy's falling body. Lyle twirled his head like a loon and, for a second, drooped down as if he were the lonely kid in class who had just realized how friendless he was. And then, the sandy-blond minor faced up the sky as high as his head would go, eyeing the heavens beyond the puffy, white clouds.
"Darcy's down!" Loanne swung her arm behind Carly and picked the small Asian girl by the collar of her shirt. "Pixie-cut Loud is doing a horrible job! One of you runners needs to-"
Lola waved her arm to nominate herself and sprinted to Luna, but as luck would have it, Lupa, still looking over Liby, plucked her from the ground and kept her from providing aid to Luna. "Why, that tramp!"
Liby kept herself at bay now, not intending to fight around. Lupa kept watch of her, ensuring Liby received no harm whatsoever at any means necessary. Lyle, Lemy and the two zoomers were lost in their own fights, and Leia was trying to match with their current adversaries, but Lupa found herself hoping that the adults could win... And if they were thinking outside the box, Dylan Blood just so happened to be in the proximity and could be stopped. Lupa saw none of that smart thinking, and neither could she have tossed in any such indication to have them give chase. This could end quickly...
Lola kept her eyes upon the floating Lupa, breaking a sweat now. Looks like she won't have us intervene... Yet she's not trying to fight us. Then, she faced below right at Liby. Not unless we provoke her into it!
Leven dragged the defeated Lemy away from Lincoln once the Ungodly Stormbringer had set his sights on Lyle. The girl he believed to be a mimic of Darcy had her life taken by the canine pheno, he had seen it last second right when he verbally duked it out with the Ultimate Clone. The young brat of scruffy hair had moaned and faintly opened and closed his eyes, dazed but fighting yet to remain conscious; today had taken a toll on Lemy and by now, he knew true weariness and fatigue. "Close your eyes, you're done," Leven advised with ease. "I can see how tired you've become."
Lupa took a breath of relief once Lemy had been taken out of the picture. That left only Lyle and the zoomers to fail Dylan Blood.
Leven gazed upon the frozen Lyle and Luna; Luna had still been careful so as not to move, fearing in having Lyle set his attention on her, and Lyle was acting erratically now, slumping over onto the flat grass and squirming around, rubbing his body against the grass.
"What is Lyle doing?" Leven snapped Luna out of it with a tender slap on her shoulder. "Hey, you okay?"
"That woman, man," Luna trembled, "he broke her-"
To everyone's shock, just before Lincoln had gotten dangerously close to Lyle, Darcy rotated herself miraculously and applied her hands right to her neck. "AGH, I CAN'T TURN MY HEAD! SOMEONE PICK ME UP- WHAT'S HAPPENING?!"
"DARCY?!" Loanne choked. "HOW?!"
This stunned Lincoln, making him wonder if this fake was who she claimed to be. It wasn't possible, not when he knew a Darcy Holmandollar to have a grave in this world. This "Darcy" should have died right when her neck snapped, but the only factor to possibly prevent it was the superhuman formula which could have been the target objective of a heist. And if it just so happened that a Darcy Holmandollar had it from an alternate timeline- You're not this world's Darcy! You- Is it possible you're here the way I am?!
"Hang tight, Darcy!" Loanne called out, still assessing the situation.
"Hey, clone!" Lincoln addressed Lupa, throwing a hand high into the air. "There's no way out of this, you hear?!"
Lupa only shot her cellular parent a dirty look, but acted to move Lyle underneath her to protect him. Leia had stepped away from Phoebe's fresh corpse, drunkenly moving around in a random pattern through the fighters, ignoring Loanne this time. Drool oozed down her lip on both corner ends, implying her rabid state had worsened. She was a zombie now, unable to facially recognize anyone around her.
Lana and Lola joined Luna to share their plan with her. "Lunes," Lana began, "she's our biggest concern right now, we're all going in for a frontal attack."
"Against her...?" Luna grasped at the offense play once stuttering, cautiously looking up at the sky and seeing the powerful clone, positioned like an almighty deity, waiting for them to make a move. "Is- is there truly a way to-?"
Loanne and Carly had quickly moved to Darcy, assessing that she was not able to move her head with that broken neck of hers. It had been proven by then that she was out of the fight from here on out. Leven and Lincoln, with them, went and added themselves behind Luna and the twins, facing their current telekinetic adversary with the vulnerable Liby and statue-like Lyle. "Let's end this before Lynn becomes the loser of her own fight with those two zoomers."
"You have so little faith in your own sister, man?" Loanne clicked her tongue, nodding with disappointment. "What a horrible brother you are."
"It's times like these I'm glad I'm the only child," Carly spoke on the side. "Seven against three, if numbers prove to be an advantage."
"Not so much..." Leven had them stomach forcibly. "Not while Link-D is front-lining it."
"Your secret group appears to have failed-"
Leven had then finally noticed Troy Lindemann's exclusion from the fight. "Hang on a moment, where is our defector friend?"
"Never mind him," Lincoln turned away, "no loss there when they've proven to be a fragile unit. One dead, one out cold and another decided to bail from this! An incompetent force so easily-"
"Can we not do this now?"
"It just might be her, look at the boy," Loanne took notice at Lyle minding nothing and nobody but himself, or whatever he was doing, moving the way he was. "He's freaking gone."
"Him and blondie behind us," Carly corrected. "I'm thinking this can be in our favor."
Lupa blinked, still following each of them with her eyes.
"Twins..." Leven said unto them, "I think-"
Lupa became aggravated when it appeared that the group had grown into whispers, going right out of earshot, conducting a laid-out plan that had a high level of intelligence to pan and carry out. She stood idly by in the air, and when the time had come, their offense had come in the form of both twins swinging around Loanne and Luna until they had built up the correct momentum (they timed it on what they felt was the correct speed and angle) and had both women soar and rip through the air. Lupa expected an attack to Liby, but this direct attack had proved to astonish and bewilder her so much that she knew not if she had to be amazed or angered. But she had managed to stop them dead in the air, and the diversion had then unmasked itself to reveal what its true form looked like. "F-fuck!"
The twins advanced and pinned Liby down by her hands with only medium resistance from her, and Lincoln and Leven went to lock Liby down firmly by forcing her legs in place. It was a perfect strategy that played out in Leven's head, only it didn't go that way at all. Lupa dropped both Luna and Loanne from their height and dove right down to save her remaining sister-clone.
"TROY, DO IT!"
Lupa split both Lincoln and Leven away from her sister, the only window that left her open to a steady shot centered in by Troy from quite aways. She never saw him, nor did she react faster than the speed of light to stop the bullet.
I knew it! Leven stared up from the grass, seeing Lupa take a fall onto one knee, wounded directly on her kneecap, which had not been where Troy intended to shoot, but the work had been done. "She's been hit! Now is the time to strike!"
Lupa let herself fall down to sit, both hands bloody yet again, as if she were meant to be injured in any given path she took. Why, she'd have allowed herself to bleed for her sisters if it meant they'd survive- maybe give her life for them. Maybe that's how it was, in another alternate reality not anywhere near as awful as this one. She bled, but had stuck her fingers in her wound to keep it from healing in seconds, tearing at the slits further even. I'll put myself out, maybe they can still save my Luan, if they don't-
Lupa made herself lie flat, offering her submission out of the fight. She was sure at least half of them would realize she'd be able to pounce back in and take most of them down before a second shot ultimately took her down, and maybe it would click for them all what her true goal was, but it was all dealer's choice, anything goes, anything went.
Liby flipped over on her stomach and moaned incoherently but with a high-pitch tone of worry. She learned to drag herself with only her arms, digging into the dirt and getting her clothed filthy and heavily soiled. Neither Lincoln or his male clone advanced to contain her again.
"Is- Is that it?" Luna lifted her arm but had let it fall back down to her side before it rose in a perfect line aimed at Lupa and Liby. "She's not d-dead, right?"
"We don't need her dead," Leven exhaled, "just out of the fight."
"Tsch," Lincoln snorted, clearly bothered. "Speak for yourself."
"I'll check on her," Leven nominated, carelessly walking over to Liby and Lupa. "Keep an eye on the others."
Loanne faced back behind the group to check on Leia, and it was a spine-tingling scare of a surprise seeing the young, short blonde positioned on all fours, vomiting dark-red blood with forced rasping from her mouth. Loanne freaked and huddled over rapidly without alerting her allies. "L-Leia!"
"What's she-?" Lincoln registered Loanne's cry as the fearful one it had sounded like, but it wasn't for the others. "What is that?"
"She... She is rejecting it..." Leven correctly calculated.
"Reject-" Lincoln sneered in disgust. "Why's it doing that to her only?"
"The serum is locked only to pheno genes to amplify the genetic make-up of all pheno formulas on the Vial database, and if it cannot recognize a supporting gene in the host body, the Medi-Sin will deem the inner body a hostile and decay it from within." Leven was caught wincing his eyed unexpectedly and with no context by Carly, bringing about a raised eyebrow. "Need it in English? It becomes a virus to the average human and kills the incompatible user who has taken it."
"Then-" Luna snorted through her nose. "He's condemned her to death-"
"No..." Leven faced the defeated Lemy. "He's condemned those two."
"I can live with that," the cold-hearted Loud shared, furthering adding tension among them. "That brat-"
"Can you shut the hell up for once?" Darcy scolded. "The deaths of two kids won't sit right by me, especially not this girl here!" Darcy's body realigned her neck and head back in proper order, it was a terrible sensation whilst a weird one, wordlessly bounced up stepped in front of Leia while Loanne had her own hands on the girl, helping her stay up on her feet. "It was Loanne and I who brought her here! If not for us-"
"No, do not be putting yourself responsible for her," Troy argued, "this was the Tacitus Kid's doing, doesn't matter how he did it, the Federation found her to be connected to him and you two intervened."
"Yes, and where did we take her?" Darcy clicked her tongue and shook her head, then pressed her hands over her ears. "Damn, she's d-dying!"
"No..." Luna had an idea. "The girl albino there said she was only working with Blood because he had the cure for her, so..."
"What?!" Loanne choked. "We- we can't-"
"She might kill us," Darcy concluded, running a hand through her hair. "Dying at the hands of a telekinetic is not the way I want in my bucket list."
"Tell me what it was again?" Lincoln asked, seeking to confirm her identity. "Forgot it."
"Aw, that's cute!" Darcy grinned cockily. "There's no way you could ever forget! After all..."
Solo double on three...
"-Solo double on three, the brainchild of your own doing."
"Solo double what?" Luna wedged herself in, curious about what the two were referring to. "Sounds like ice cream talk to me."
"It's nothing at all," Darcy sarcastically huffed, "other than a suicide pact we've made an oath on in blood. It was our last resort if we were ever cornered by our enemies back then when we were young and stupid..."
"You two? A suicide pact?" Luna wished she didn't give away any sort of surprise from her face, but the shocked look that took form had done well to betray her. Not in a million years could she have believed her brother, such a being of a cold nature, to have made a suicide pact with a person he had seemed to trust- one whom had landed the role over any of his sisters, also accounting for Lori Loud, a mere distrustee in his life. "Why would you-?" she had begun to ask, not knowing that was the wrong question.
"Let me make it perfectly clear-" Lincoln tapped his chest twice, his attention set upon Luna but his voice raised higher for the entire audience to witness with their ears. "We've wanted out and we needed a contingency in case our objective went south. I faced too many enemies, most of them lawmen, and that was before I decided to betray those I considered my blood brothers and sisters for years-"
Luna was unimpressed.
"It was only a matter of time before one group boxed me in and gunned me down, but I would not have given them the satisfaction of turning me into one of their trophies. Didn't matter which one it was, I just knew I was running out of time."
"The pact benefited him more than it did me," Darcy added in. "We set ourselves up for a heist to obtain a valuable tool, a tide-turning weapon we needed to free ourselves of the nightmare!" Darcy closed her mouth and formed a depressing frown. "I became a superhuman to step into pastures new, a clean, blank state that had nothing to do with those Freight fuckers. And suddenly..." Darcy took a slow, deep breath. "My identity's been reset, it's like... I don't know, Darcy Holmandollar died and a body double was reborn! And I didn't know what to do until..."
"S-so that's what you were doing..." Loanne reasoned. "Y-you carried out your half of the pact..."
"I decided to die because I felt I hit a dead end, that's-" Darcy closed her eyes briefly. "That's what I hoped would kill me."
"And that's when I found her," Loanne filled in, reaching out to Darcy. "Woman survived quite a fall, but she really did a number on the car she landed on!"
"Darcy..." Lincoln never shook the very special grave with its headstone engraved with her own name out of his mind. It made sense to tell her about it, to show her that, through an inexplicable
"No, don't you come at me with that!"
Loanne now had Leia carried over in both her arms. "Hey, I don't mean to kill your moment, but this sweet little girl's still dying! We need that cure for her and the boy there..."
"What about you?" Luna gestured at Darcy. "Your whole head was twisted-"
"Automatic restoration, no doubt about it!"
"Does that mean-?" Luna eyed down her brother with a cold chill going down her spine. Fighting him... I don't know if I could beat him like this!
"You're allowed to stay here and bicker about your moral state and reminisce dark times," Leven broke in, "but Troy and I have long since settled to take down the Prime Federation from the inside."
"As you've said before," Carly nodded, "you've done it, now all we need is that Blood guy, so you can count me in on the chase!"
"No, Carly, I cannot allow you to join us, it is still dangerous up to here, especially when we do not know what tricks he may still have up his sleeve."
"Oh, you won't have me sit this one out, will you?"
"Loanne, Darcy, I leave you two to remain here with Carly and the infected kids and to guard the war criminals. Today will see to it that they are charged for conspiracy against the human race, and no backdoor crevices to elude judgment this time!"
"What a cliche speech you've got there, whitey," Darcy unironically snickered. "But that does have a nice sound to it."
"The rest of you are free to join us, I'm sure numbers here could prove a great advantage. I won't force you to give more than you had to today, for I know how hard this day was for us all in terms of the fighting, the violence. The senseless bloodshed spilled by both sides, on both sides. All of that was the sole reason such criminal conspirators and the power they helm must never prevail, and believe me when I say that we have been victorious! We are the unsung heroes of today, and we may stay to be the heroes of tomorrow-"
Before
Leven had indeed touched the strange rock with the weird hieroglyphics spread all over on the flatter side. He, Linka, and Caroline were witnessing an unspoken, untold prophecy through paint figures, the second batch of human beings to ever see it. Linka moved along the hieroglyphics and when she had come up to the final two female figures, she dared to touch foreign element with her bare fingers.
And Linka had toppled over, away from the rock of an obvious foreign element; she had been the first to experience a phenomenon so suggested by the alien in armor. Subsequently, Caroline was the next while Leven challenged the mythical nonsense with the science and logic he was bound to and by. And when it was his turn to make contact with the Relic of Sauhlerstraam, he had been advised not to.
And he had come to regret it once it was over. How it began, was with dearest Linka softly whispering his name from behind in a world of infinite darkness, even where Leven had been standing was just as barren dark that he could have thought himself floating perfectly still in a high place without knowing it. "I'll be okay, Leven," she let out lowly, which had been uncharacteristic of her, a rather loud-mouthed clone with raunchy jokes and an untamed tendency for blood. She looked serious from where she stood, but her voice had told him a sad tale behind her calm words. Then, the world had grown cold, and the frigid earth dared to turn Linka's skin a cold-blue, her exhaling breaths of air able to be seen. "Just for a bit."
Leven gasped and found himself running with all his strength, but had somehow not felt anything, surely not his legs operating like pistons inside heavy machinery in a factory. No huffing and puffing from his running, but he had run to her, eyes still locked onto her. Knew fear of losing a sibling.
Lisa.
Leven had blinked, his only mistake in this strange world, where he then faced a different Linka. This Linka was sporting camo pants with knee padding, a black tank top with an armored vest strapped to protect her chest and back, and that was only before Leven had gone up to see three dry-red slashes running diagonally from the left side of her forehead all the way across her eye. An attack from someone at no doubt. "Linka?"
Now
"-but that can only be by moving forward, right? I'm giving it my all, and if it is written in the hard book of fate that I die today, then I welcome the hands of death in sweet comfort-"
Cheesy bastard! Darcy cringed.
"-knowing I fell so that mankind can continue to be..."
Carly smiled, but her grin went back flat, she was more alert knowing that Leven, a clone she had traveled around with longer than with the others, had accepted the embrace of looming death just up ahead of the dear path he set. But there was a chance of survival, and that was why she tried to smile yet again and keep that ridiculous smile- but it forced itself to straighten out instead. "You'll make it, Leven! We've survived worse, have we not?"
"I'll bet you have," Darcy sarcastically joked, a fruitless effort to lighten the mood. "Count me in, boys."
"Not us," the twins decided simultaneously.
"The zoomer twins here can replace us," Loanne proposed, siding with Darcy. "I'd like to punch Blood myself for ruining my day... And yeah, for messing with that Leia girl, obviously. Although I think we're all overestimating this, he's not a pheno, right?"
"Easy pickings!"
"Luna?" Leven looked to the main Loud woman for her answer, but he felt she would have decided to stay, and he'd not ask her to add more to the baggage she dragged behind. "I think you should stay with the twins. Plus, Lynn and the other two zoomers are still in play."
"We'll wait for her here, she's bound to defeat them..." Luna told him, but had really told herself, for them to witness her words into a statement. "She'll be fine."
"I sincerely hope so," Leven agreed, nodding away before turning off to the direction of the base. "Four of us, it's not ideal but it's something-"
"Five-" Lupa wheezed, nearly choking on herself. She gained their attention and had prompted her unloving cell parent into action, his hands conjoining for the knuckles to get cracked in between the palms. "I come-"
"No you don't-" Lincoln helped himself and threw Lupa into the ground. "I'm staying, should anyone try anything funny. Honestly, I say we save ourselves the trouble of babysitting these maggots, especially those three there."
Caroline, Shepherd and the Supervisor had heard him and the undeniable urge had left them to fear him more, had any of them already grown to be afraid of him.
"The girl there-" Meli was still out cold. "-and Elmont, too. And let's not forget the brat who ran off, I don't like any of this."
"I-" Lupa kicked away, dragging herself backwards until she hit into Luna's feet. "I played for him- Needed act, he sees-"
"Wait, you...?" Luna was quick to get the gist, undoubtedly accepting that she underestimated Lupa's intelligence. "It was all a show!"
"Enemy Blood-" Lupa was helped up to her feet. "Only Blood."
"He killed my Lynn," Lupa morbidly dropped, her heart skipping a firm beat with it. "Shot in head, I angry."
"Lynn's clone is...?" Luna halted herself right as Lana held a flat hand over her mouth, emitting a light gasp while Lola looked down without a peep. Luna exhaled sharply through her nose. "I don't know-" She clenched her hands into fists. "I'm... Sorry-"
"Do you better to come with us, Lincoln!" Lupa spat, angry yet cautious. "I bleed for Luan, I take serum and feel dizzy in head for cure promised!"
"Would you really pass up an opportunity to get your hands on Blood?" Leven addressed. "Knowing you-"
"I'd have to go through you bunch if I want him, right? Devil knows I'd go and kill him, the only one here intending to."
"I-" Lupa gurgled. "Join you. No care what you do to me, I want him gone!"
"Well, then I suppose we'll just have to cross that bridge when we get there," Troy settled. "Let's move out."
"H-hey, Lucy-" Luna waved out her arm in front of Lupa's face. "Are you sure this is what you wanna do? To quench your revenge?"
"Yes!" Lupa heartily answered. "Now leave me alone! Watch Luan!"
"Don't worry yourself, I have hope," Darcy believed carefree, "while these guys are acting like we're never coming back."
And within the following minute, Leven and Troy trekked onward, leading Darcy, Loanne and Lupa. Lincoln remained with his sisters, a reluctant choice on his part when it would have been purely harder to get to his enemies rather than follow the infiltrator and defector. He supposed Leven thought of it as dangerous on a fatal level due to how much Dylan Blood could access in so little time. There in the base, a normal person could arm himself to the teeth, or maybe copy out the entire database and do again what Leven had done originally. So many possibilities- "G-goddamnit."
He had reevaluated his choice and sighed with incredible disdain. "Okay, screw it... I'm going."
One Mile Away
Chad McCann was sure he had lost them, had any of them followed him. Wasn't too sure about it but it was a bloodbath that had him retreating and wishing he had more powers than just the one. He huffed and puffed and kept moving behind the trees he passed, ears to the ground. Not a soul had followed up to here, he was sure of it. But up ahead was a different tale.
A feeble twig had snapped, and he froze, assessing his directions. The sound had echoed from just ahead, so he swiftly rerouted to the left, and fifteen paces away, right into the third large tree he passed, Bethany Chang made her presence known. Chad helped himself to this nice eye candy before him and checked her out from top to bottom. "My, my, what's a cute Asian hiker doing around these parts, doll?"
Lissandra Mercer was there to block his confident advances, turning him over to face her so that she could set her sharp, inhuman fingernails against his throat. "Flirting with my girlfriend?"
"Who is?" Chad lost his mojo and sweat hard. "Me?"
"Chad McCann, is it?" Bethany verified, not breaking face. "Juvenile pheno with a shapeshift ability, the only one ever recorded with it."
Wh-why are the hottest chicks in this world lesbian? Chad gulped. "That sounds like me..."
Lissandra pressed her nails further. "If we didn't need you, I'd gut you for eyeing my girl with such disrespect."
"Take him," Bethany told her Southern partner. "He'll be the one to frame her."
"Frame? Frame who?! Where are you taking me?!"
"Relax, we just have a job that requires someone like you... And if you help us, we will pay you back in whatever you'd like, champ!" Bethany had gotten to calm him down, as he had already given it thought. And he agreed to what sounded like a great beneficial opportunity. "Good, that's going to make us real happy real fast."
Prime Federation base
"Troy is going to the main control terminal to find Blood, while the rest of us should fan out on every level."
"Splitting up?" Loanne grunted. "That's not a good idea."
"No, you're on the right track, but if one of us spots him in an isolated area, Troy can notify us who he's with and where." Leven and Troy went off on their own, breaking away from their group.
"Hm..." Loanne covered her nose loosely to avoid the smell of spilt blood around her. "All these weapons made to kill phenos, but he didn't come charging at us when we came. Is he armed somewhere, just lying in wait to pick us off one at a time?"
"D-don't put that idea into my head!" Darcy rubbed the sides of her head in a circular motion. "God, I didn't walk away from my old friends to have a repeat of feeling that kind of fear again!"
"Sorry..." Loanne grabbed her new friend's hand. "You can stick with me, I don't wanna be alone either."
Lupa spouted gibberish but had already made her move; she brought a cluster of guns to form into a wall in front of her. Whether or not all of them were loaded remained to be seen, but she didn't matter, all she thought about was going ham on her captor.
"She's gonna kill him, shouldn't we...?" Loanne wanted to stop Lupa.
"Hey, I want to punch his lights out, permit me to-"
"Get in line," Lupa dared to hiss, leaving the women behind.
"You're on!" Darcy turned it into a race. "Come on, Loanne, we've gotta get our hands on that scumbag!"
"Where did the fear go?!" Loanne laughed, dragged away by Darcy.
Outside
Luna, Carly and the twins were mentally weary that no one had expressed the want or need to verbally relieve each other of the nightmare so close to being over. They minded their own business, tended to their looming thoughts brought on by the stress, fear and even paranoia sewed into their persons now and forever, looking down to have staring contests with the blowing grass. And Luna was the first of the gang to hear three faint heartbeats from afar, beating louder and heavier as her head leveled. The source, the direction of the trio of heartbeats seemed to be in more than one direction. "Hey!"
The next seconds that followed gave them all a run for their money; Lynn Loud hadn't triumphed in her disadvantaged battle against the future zoomers, shown to the stricken Louds when her entire left arm had moved in a limping fashion to suggest it had been broken at the shoulder. And if that wasn't enough, she had been roughed up, suit scratched in multiple places. "THEY'RE MONSTERS!"
"Lynn!" Luna guided her younger sister to her. "Here! Lead them-"
Lynnette ran up behind her fated mother and delivered a knee blow into her back. The attack had propelled Lynn off her feet, making her cry out in agonizing pain. It seemed like Lynn was down for the count, but it wasn't enough for the blonde in the inverted suit. Lyra herself had come running back into the scene, arriving only to see Lynnette take off into the base with her mother in tow. Unlike Lynnette, Lyra had overcome the Medi-Sin, regaining full control of her thoughts and action, but the formula had yet to be expelled from her body. She raced off after Lynnette to prevent a mistake from being made possible.
"Get me after them!" Luna boomed her voice, scaring the twins.
"B-but-"
"NOW!"
Lola stepped up to plate, offering her travel service. "I'll be back, Lana!" she hurriedly promised to her twin, letting Luna circle and enclose her hands around her neck. "No breathing!"
"I KNOW!"
Prime Federation base
Leven entered the main control room, but not in its unoccupied state, a rare one at that. Dylan Blood had taken up a seat on the monitor system, accessing and reviewing the classified articles to him with the unconventional help of the living AI Linkapacity (I don't remember where the hyphen goes), the very construct that had kept him busy while Leven and Troy were secretly informed by it, unbeknownst to everyone else. "Ah, so glad to see I was right," the collected Dylan Blood had gleefully expressed, not turning away from the screen. "It is to be astonished by! A living sentient formed from a software implant..."
"I assume you know why we're here," Troy guessed, drawing his firearm from the holster it had been disturbed from. "Although I must admit, this is not what I expected to find. You, in a zone of high-tech weaponry, in an unarmed position-"
"Unarmed?" Dylan raised and wiggled a finger before connecting it to his head. "Ah, but this is my weapon, of course! Intelligence! Ideas! A brain can bring about the ends of the earth as long as there is a strong will, and I've come here down this path with the greatest of obstacles getting in my way, but they will never get the better of me! Not as long as I think and act before them... And you, of course!"
"Are you saying you have a way out of this?" Leven reduced simply. "You'd have to fight those who came with us, and not to mention those outside."
"So, you've bested the kids I've turned..." He finally faced the pair, his pale face no longer blank, expressing a disappointment on his part, an empty frown and dead eyes; he was weary of loss. "I hoped for the best, if I'm being honest, but... Foolish I am, to rely on a line of pipsqueaks. But then..." And without breaking stride, he rose up and placed his hands behind his back, locking them together. His face never changed. "No, I'm afraid I have been beaten. Or, that's what I would say if I had the intent to bother with all of you."
"Hm, what's this you're saying?" Leven grew naturally curious. "Is there another objective you aim to reach?"
"Hey, clone-" Troy tried to snap Leven out of it, to concentrate on the capture of the Tacitus Kid.
"I've come here for every bit of information that had been missing from my grasp, and it was easier to access thanks to your virtual friend here, even if it might have been a distraction. I mean, look here! Operation Wildfire- the file you see here- is the classified mission of releasing a virus upon the world, so that it could be painted a deadly outbreak by all countries' governments, and in turn, everyone had to be vaccinated. That's how the Prime Federation got everyone's DNA in discretion, the first step! Why, that accounts for mine as well! A pair of vaccines to fight COVID-19, but who could have imagined a dastardly ulterior motive by a shadowy organization at the time? But..." Dylan fixed his finger and pointed at Leven. "I imagine you've known all along, clone of Lisa Loud."
"Sure, maybe we did, maybe we didn't, what then?"
"This fact alone is pure chaos waiting to happen, an grave injustice that needs to be reversed. That is what I feel must be returned to the public, in light of the aftermath that virus has brought upon us all. That alone is such a file I've hoped to find, and therefore I am satisfied, so I will surrender peacefully here, and my humble audience will have seen it by now. Seen that I alone have gone where no other has trekked to, so that they can know the Prime Federation is responsible for the turmoil, the civil unrest, the permanent changes and damages in our society! They will love me, and they will lose whatever faith they had in the powers that be, they will all turn against the asses sat in the chairs, the liars in thousand-dollar suits, the sweet-talkers, the old profiteers! And I say, to that, to them, that there will be true balance now! The public is a power...!"
And it was true when he said it; LK had distributed the file to all existing emails and broadcasted Dylan Blood and his monologue to Leven and Troy to all current news outlets playing globally. You could be sure America's viewership had seen it, and so had the Canadians up North and the Mexicans far south. And it went across overseas to the other countries, translated with subtitles wherever it counted. The viewers had learned of Operation Wildfire that way, if they hadn't begun to check their emails first. And soon, a lot of calls would come flooding to the police, the offices of law, the Embassies and any other place the people figured to call and protest and directly voice their bubbling anger.
"I will be the hero of this story, not as a pheno, not as a law enforcer or a Prime Federation defector, but as someone who wants and has this nation's best interest at heart! No, not just this nation, but to those who deserve to live, those who've led innocent, hard lives! Those who will fight for their future! Those who will follow me!"
Troy approached him carefully, and turned him around and forced his hands. "I decree I am no officer serving the law, but you will face hard justice for God knows how many crimes you've committed, people you've murdered!"
"The sacrifice of which is an honorable one!" Dylan growled back. "They'll understand in time, but the blood in my hands may never be cleaned, and that is my gift to save them all."
"To save them all," came the distorted version of Linka's tender voice from the computer. "For all this, you claim this to be a selfless quest, but I assess that it has not yet ended for you."
"Yes, you're right," the Tacitus Kid agreed, "the work may never be done."
"This is over for you."
Troy tightened his tough grip of Dylan's hands. "Start walking, champ. Leven, you'll cover me, right?"
"With the female clone in here, we'll need Darcy and Loanne to help us out, I believe she'll want his head on a platter. And that's before we meet up with the others."
"Shit," Troy moaned. "Bastard, you promised them a cure, now she'll come to make you give it up... Which we know you don't have."
"Very astute of you..." Dylan chuckled. "I guess you'll just have to protect me for that broken justice system you believe in. So go on, fight for my life!"
"Keep moving!" Troy escorted the criminal out of the room, following Leven. "Hey, LK, where are the two females? Have them regroup to the exit without alerting the clone."
"Understood."
"There is a chance she might be waiting for us, if there's any indication of a heightened intelligence in her," Leven opened up to.
"That's not what I wanna hear, man!" Troy kept Dylan in front, almost as if to use him as a human shield. "How that one gained telekinesis is beyond me, you know!"
"I don't need to hear that every five minutes! Keep yourself concentrated on not losing him!"
Together, the pair successfully made it to the entrance of the base with soft footsteps and multiple glances around corners, front and back, and left and right. Loanne and Darcy had come jogging back in less subtle manner, drawing out the only sounds Lupa might have picked up on and heard if she were around. "Can you two be any more louder?!" Troy hissed at them through a whisper.
"There's that son of a bitch!"
"Stow that!" Troy pushed past, heading down the long, wide exit. "We're all out of here! Come-"
Lynn was body slammed right into Troy at a high speed, knocking him down with enough force to have his heart stop the very second she had struck him, leaving him to become a corpse before it plummeted to the ground. Lynn herself had rolled back several feet into the base with Lynnette having stopped right where Troy had been and focused on Dylan Blood, the one who would ascend to the role of Prime Supreme in the distant future. "Hrghhhh..."
Lyra went for a dive and tackled the green zoomer before she had made a move, trying to help her by snapping her out of the Medi-Sin's gripping control with measured punches when Lyra had found to come to hate. "Stop it! Clear your head!"
"They all can dieeee..." Lynnette simply responded, trying to block Lyra's weaker blows from the ground. "Do not d-d-defend-"
"All of you, get out of here!" Lyra shouted.
"Hey, LK!" Leven yelled with his head lifted up high. "You know what to do! Now's the time!"
"Time?" Darcy scanned around, believing Leven had requested something from above. "Time for what?!"
"Take him and go!" Leven ordered at the pair as he jumped next to Lyra to help her with the crazed Lynnette. "I've got her arms!"
"No, wait!"
Leven forced Lynnette's arms down, leaving her open for Lyra's punches only for her to suddenly flip on her side and cause Leven to flip forward, his neck in range of her serrated teeth, and Lynnette had indeed worked to take a nasty, gory bite out of Leven's throat. Lyra shot herself back and had her heart skip a trembling beat like a record having skipped a pair of audio seconds.
Lynnette reversed the clamping of her vicious jaws, pushing Leven away to tend to his own wound, forgetting him for someone else; mother. Lynn, on the other hand, had tired herself out on the fighting, and had, on one knee, gasped for fresh breath, watching the doppelganger of alternating colors. "Who... Who are you?" Lynn drew with slow breath. "I have to know."
"The self-destruct sequence has initiated. You have three minutes to vacate-"
"Self what?!" Darcy thought she misheard, but her brain had gathered otherwise. "WHAT THE FUCK ARE THEY DOING?! SHIT!"
"Keep it moving, don't stop!" Loanne kept shoving Dylan forward every chance she got. "How dare you involve a sweet little girl in your schemes!"
"No one's innocent, Wardell," Dylan casually talked back, rolling his eyes. "Sounds like they're in trouble with that zoomer, better go save them unless you don't care if they die in the explosion."
"Shut up, asshole!" Darcy pushed Dylan down to the ground, then had the savagery in her to drag him by the back of his collar. "Loanne, don't get any funny ideas, our priority is this asshat!"
"Damn, that Leven is going to have to fend them all off!" Loanne slapped herself silly. "He might not make it out of there alive-"
"Red zoomer might-"
Loanne shook her head. "I don't know... Did you see how beaten up she was?! Man-"
"HEY!" Luna had arrived, running towards the pair of girls. "Hey, where are-?!" And she noticed Darcy dragging a human lump of shit known as the Tacitus Kid on the hard floor.
"Hey, Leven and the red- Ah, her name's lost on me! J-just go save them before this place is decimated!"
Lynn withstood the next pair of blows from her future offspring, but the third one had changed direction, connecting down to her lower abdomen. The fourth blow was a roundhouse kick that cost Lynn a tooth, ending with her falling flat on her side. Lyra circled around and lunged herself over the untamed zoomer to slow her movement. "Cut it out! Don't make me do-"
Lynnette swung her leg back and kicked high in the air, the force of it providing her the strength to crush Lyra with her back. The fall had worked to knock the wind out of her and hit her head and elbows. Lynnette dragged it out further and jabbed her own elbows up to Lyra's face.
Leven, with both hands clamped over his bleeding throat, kept following the zoomers move around. "Lihhhh- Lynn!"
Lynnette rolled onto her stomach and slapped her whole hand over Lyra's face next, grabbing it sloppily and introducing it to the concrete. A few strikes against it had opened a gashing wound on the back of her head, and with a level of fuzziness that made everything unclear and blurry, Lyra had succumbed to defeat. Lynnette let go upon Lyra's halting motion, the hand finally releasing the brunette's soft face.
Lynn held her breath in and went for a direct tackle, headbutting into Lynnette's body, only for the latter to thrust her fists down on Lynn's back. And while Lynn had her hold on the green zoomer, Leven moved away from the pair, noticing a vehicle with an undisturbed, lonely turret waiting for a qualified soldier to put it to use. Bingo, he thought, one shot to take Lynnette down; so he ran to the turret, readied with a large belt chain of the finest .50 caliber rounds, as mother and daughter fought on during the countdown sequence. He'd have died here but he would have done more than enough to keep the drugged zoomer here to be caught by the explosion, and with time already running out, Lynn needed to hurriedly evacuate. "Get out the way, get out the-"
Lynn fell again but had been too stubborn to stay as she was; she attempted to get back in the fight but had been kicked repeatedly in the stomach, blood escaping from her mouth. And she took it all in, the pain, the breaking of her bones, the spikes of burning heat that followed up after each attack, and the face of defeat once more. Lynn's fate was now in the hands of the inverted doppelganger, it seemed to her, and there was nothing she could do but to picture the crystal-clear image of her old unit, the friends taken from her in an era she had yet to understand. All that time breathing and running being nothing but a waste if her time had come today, in this day of perfect calamity. Maybe it was already written, and looking up at the zoomer with her own face and ability, it was poetic and of deep significance in a messed up way; whatever deity made this happen was mocking and telling her she had been imperfect in terms of her character, persona. And she didn't know any flaw for she had been thinking herself as the untouchable sort, and there was a zoomer here to put her in her place.
Lynn laid down there to die, and that was how she accepted it- and it wasn't her time just yet.
Leven had manned the turret with both hands (Lincoln wouldn't have known if he never played GTA Online, more specifically the Motor Wars game mode), and had realized this marked the first time behind a turret. It rocked as it fired the thunderous rounds from the long barrel, shaking in Leven's hands. And where it struck, the rounds pierced Lynnette, going into and out of her body, leaving holes in her suit and skin. She bled and had a nasty tumble on her back, unable to stand with ler legs having been reduced to jelly.
Leven pulled his fingers away from the dual triggers, not bothered by the smell of gunsmoke or the erupting sound of hell loud enough to pierce anyone's eardrums. By then, his nasty gash left by Lynnette had closed up, but the red smears on his neck and hands, now brushed onto the turret's handles, had remained. He deserted the spot, confident he had killed the zoomer.
Lyra had moved about slowly, rubbing a hand on the back of her head as the healing kicked in, and saw her sister lying on the floor with a pool of her own blood. She gasped faintly but was just a little relieved that Lynnette had been shot up that she had finally stopped- if she had. "Finally, you've seen some-"
Luna clawed into Lyra's back, fatally aiming for her heart. Lyra stuttered and wobbled her feet, trying to walk away from Luna at the very least. Luna only dug her palm further, claws poking and then rupturing Lyra's heart at five different points.
"Mom-" Lyra saw it as an auspicious moment with her sister, the day they retreated their own time to change what had been written already, the most horribly unimaginable history to date. But only, Luna had been crying it out instead of praying and hoping for the best. Lyra had not ever understood it-
-until now, when it circled to this moment, when it made sense now. You've sent me to my death...? H-have you lied to us the whole-? Lyra fell for the last time, going out right on her face where Lynnette could see. And the blonde panicked visibly when she heard, with her super hearing, the declining of Lyra's heartbeat, the slowing breaths, the lack of fighting struggle of the dying girl. "D-dia-"
Lynnette's bullet wounds closed up, strength surging her back to power. "L-LYRA!"
"-ree..." And then, her eyes had stopped bobbing about, body perfectly still except for the blood escaping through the new wound. Lynnette heard nothing emitting from Lyra and panicked, eyes tearing up, her head feeling heavy. This, the sight that undid the Medi-Sin's reprogramming at last.
"NO, LYRA!"
"Lyra?" Lynn repeated under her breath, and it took less than five seconds for her to completely consider these two were distant relatives of her. "W-wait..."
Luna targeted Lynnette next, but was pushed to the ground by the healed zoomer, who then broke into a run and sped right out of the base. "Shit!"
"L-Luna, help me!" Lynn pleaded. "This place is gonna go!"
"Hurry, take off!" Leven yelled. "Take off and don't look back!"
Lynn placed herself on Luna's shoulders to be escorted away. Luna jogged it out of the base with her human load as fast as she could, Lynn barely able to keep on her feet by herself. "We'll make it, we'll make it!"
Leven stayed behind and sat himself in peace against the vehicle, in company of the dead bodies around him. "We've done it, LK. We've done what we've sought out to do, I'm just disappointed it took longer than expected, especially with the infighting among us. But..."
"There is no need to worry about Link-A, I trust there will be a flawless removal process for the SCX chip down the line."
"And I won't be there to see it, but I believe that at any rate..." Leven shared a sigh of soft angst. "For her sake, I know I'm making the right choice, regardless of whether it's fair or not."
"I agree that this is a choice that will hurt her, but I suggest you to run if you change your mind."
"No..." He smiled and closed his eyes. "This has been my choice ever since I came back from... Up there. If you can record into words the speech I've asked of you, to have it sent to Carly as an envelope. She's not to read it until the time comes for her to read it, and she'll know when she is to do so."
"As you wish."
"Take care of her," Leven calmly requested of LK. "Don't let her fall, ever."
"I shall do my best. Goodbye, Leven."
And he said nothing but had formed a peaceful smile for the final seconds on the clock. All was well, save for just one little nuisance that snuck into the final play, thanks to the Tacitus Kid- at the cost of having him kept there to have him detained. There would be severe consequences out of that, Leven had the idea on the aftermath of the file's leak, but it didn't matter now. Not to him, but he trusted the right parties would address that. That and his allies would be recognized as heroes of the nation. Whatever... Whatever the future held for the living Louds and company...
The base had then exploded, purging the dead and the library of content of all sorts. The center headquarters of a notorious organization wiped out now and forever, and for the good of man.
End of Dawn, part one.
I thought it wouldn't last forever
You were sure it'd never end
We should have known better
As our world caved in
I can't live in the past
Watch it slip away
It goes by so fast
My future's filled with doubt
I wanna cut my soul right out
As for me, the end is here at last
And we had to watch it fall
Then we lost it all
There's always hell to pay
To get away from yesterday, to sever
There's always hell to pay
When every day's like yesterday
And yesterday's gone
If that convoy had reached its destination, the frozen Linka would have disappeared far underground as long as possible, but Lissandra Mercer and Bethany Chang had crashed that party and slaughtered the armed squad riding in all vehicles, clawing and slicing them to bits.
Linka, safely secured in the middle vehicle, a six-wheeler cargo vehicle, was about to become free from her icy prison, too soon from the proper life-saving procedure she was promised. Bethany moved the corpse from the cab seat and took over the control, readjusting the temperature to melt Linka's prison.
Lizy allowed herself in the back, finally meeting another member of the complicated Loud family tree. "Is it on?"
"It's gonna get a bit hot," Bethany replied, exiting the cab. "Honestly...-"
"Don't start," Lissandra moaned, brushing the hair that blew into her face. "I know what it means to you, babe."
"I think I shouldn't have come here, already knowing how this is supposed to go, what we need Link-A to do."
"You mean what she did in the past," Lissandra offered theoretically, wrapping arms around Bethany's shoulders. "Who could have known we were behind that?"
"Behind-" Bethany winced painfully.
"Eh-" Lissandra withdrew, hugged Bethany. "No, I'm not referring to that, you know I'm not. Listen, you're not responsible for that, you had nothing to do with that woman's death-"
"This-" She stuttered, slurred even. "This factors in, I mean. If only..."
"No cold feet, Bed," Lizy sighed. "But I understand you, I'd be hurt too if I had to send the person who saved my life to their death. It's... Ah, dunno, if I wasn't here, Bed, if I wasn't a Primer maybe..."
"D-don't you think about just...?"
The Southern blonde knew what Bethany meant, only immediately shook her head. "I can't leave..."
"I don't know how long I can last being some soldier in some white boy's tyrannical dream. I'd like you to come with me, and we can run away from all of this. No Rose, no Alex, no Liberty, no shit from Letenko."
Linka, soaking wet, leaped out of the cargo vehicle. "Uh, hello?"
"We'll talk about this later," Lissandra concluded, kissing Bethany's cheek.
"Maybe..."
"Am I allowed to break the fourth wall now?"
"Come, girl, we're going on a little trip," Lissandra grinned innocently. "We need you to do a little favor for us."
AN: For a long time, notably in between the last chapter to now, this was in hiatus hell, almost not happening in the end. I've bee dreadfully busy, partaking in the AMC/Gamestop stocks, racing around late night in an old school Miata, and most definitely taking over digital markets and making bank to the point "D runs an empire on something so simple" is a commonplace phrase I'm positive Flagg thinks. And then some.
Right now I'm unsure if I'll go further to the next act, this chapter was definitely written to complete this act, or otherwise I wouldn't have felt right about leaving this fic discontinued as such. I'm still undecided but at this new rate I'm going it might not be worth it.
Oh well. Cheers for the future and good day.