Loonatics: United
Episode 77: Pain And Gain
The agile sabretooth dodged the team´s attacks with his natural abilities, it evaded Ace´s laser vision and Lexi´s brain blast with a quick jump frontwards. With his magnetic abilities, Tech attracted a broken metallic bar from a destroyed store and grasped it, he flew upwards with his jetpack and got right over the creature, swinging the bar backwards and turning off his jetpack, with the intention of increasing the strength of his attack with the help of his fall. He landed and missed, hitting the ground with strength, groaning while looking back, noticing that the creature was now running towards Lexi.
Slam roared and used his tornado, approaching the beast with quickness, getting in its way, the tornado swallowed the creature briefly, Slam then stopped doing the tornado and with that sent the beast towards one of the rocky walls. The feline monster hit the wall strongly, screeching and falling to the ground. "Nice hit, big guy!" Lexi praised and Slam swanked with an arrogant growl.
"Couple blast, now!" Ace commanded and readied his laser vision, rushing to get closer to the beast. Lexi prepared her brain blast and got next to her boyfriend. They began to shoot their respective powers at the recovering beast, the two beams merged and created a powerful one that started to hit the sabretooth on its side. The feline screeched again, writhing over the ground, it stood up with a great effort and started to run randomly just in order to evade the couple´s beam, with no success as they followed the beast´s movements with precision. The beast approached the metallic railing that faced a rather small precipice, then jumped over it and collided with a fake rocky mountain which broke as an eggshell. The beast had entered another area through that aperture.
Ace and Lexi had stopped shooting. "Get in there!" Ace ordered and activated his jetpack, heading to the aperture just as his comrades. The four Loonatics entered, one by one, bowing their heads briefly as the aperture was not wide enough. They now flew under a permanent sunset that covered a jungle like environment, with lots of tall, leaved trees that simulated humidity on their surface, some tall mountains with cascades were being displayed at the distance. "Great." Ace expressed with frustration while slowly hovering down, getting in the fake jungle through one of the many gaps between the palm trees. The four heroes landed over the floor, which simulated wet dirt and plants. Sounds of exotic animals could be heard. Ace let out a long sigh. "Like a needle in a haystack."
"Not that much." Tech opined. "I bet about an eighty percent of these trees are digital."
"Well, either way, we must hope that thing doesn´t find us first." Ace began to walk with cautious, vigilant steps, followed by the rest, feeling rather uneasy by knowing that the ´ambient´ would be advantageous for the monstrous creature.
Meanwhile, Rev and Duck were at a wintry area, with fake snow falling and white mounds surrounding them, simulating a tundra. Rev left a red trace as he stopped running for a moment. "Alright, we´ve officially traveled through the entire mall and we haven´t find any infirmary yet!" He informed.
Duck sighed. "Just leave me here, Rev, I rather die than spend another second with you carrying me."
"No can do buddy." Rev narrowed his eyes as the snow made quite difficult to see further. He spotted a camping store, built with artificial trunks. "Stay here." Rev gently put Duck over the floor, which displayed a white snowy ground.
Duck gasped, still covering his wound with his hand. "Take your time..." He groaned
Rev rushed towards the store, entering and immediately looking for something that could be useful for Duck, switching his gaze between the shelves, the tents, the vests, the coolers, all of the stuff that was sold there, his eyes widened when finding what he was looking for, a set of first aid kits at a low shelf. He took two and rapidly left the place, leaving his characteristic red blur behind him. "I´m back!" Rev said when getting right next to Duck, crouching and lowering down the kits, made of hard, black plastic. He unzipped their covers.
"Hurray." Duck expressed sarcastically.
"Alright what we got here?." Rev said while taking out some stuff he found useless from the kit´s inside. He examined a bottle of alcohol with his gaze while holding it. "Okay." He put it at his side. Rev took a plastic bag that contained a needle and a roll of surgical thread. "Yup, this will do too." He placed it next to the alcohol.
"I hope that´s not for what I think is for." Duck looked at the bag rather terrified.
"It is." Rev took out a set of blister packed pills, which were antibiotics as he just read. "Okay." He took another set of pills, which were anti-inflammatory. "Yep." He finally zipped back the kits and took one pill from each package, then offered them to Duck. "Take ´em."
Duck hesitated a bit then took the pills with his hand and slowly got them in his mouth. He swallowed the pills, looking at Rev with doubt. "Thanks. Maybe this will be enough." He couldn´t stop thinking about the stitches.
"No it won´t be don´t worry Duck it only hurts a little...uhm...bit much?" Rev took out the needle and the thread and began to prepare them for the stitching.
"Man, you suck at reassuring patients." Duck said, with his gaze focused on the tip of the needle.
"Alright." Rev took the bottle of alcohol and put some over the palm of his hand then rapidly rubbed it over Duck´s open wound.
"Yikes! What the...?!" Duck groaned and gasped repeatedly, shaking a bit. "What the heck, Rev?!"
"You want it to get infected and increase the chances of losing your arm?" Rev warned, raising an eyebrow while looking at him.
Duck looked scared after his comrade´s words. "Uh, no, please." He almost forgot the pain he was feeling.
Rev just nodded and took the needle, with a large piece of thread hanging from it. His eyes widened as if he had forgotten something, so he unzipped back one of the kits and took about five wooden tongue depressors and then approached them to Duck. "Open."
"What?" Duck raised an eyebrow.
Rev sighed. "Your mouth, man. Just hold them with your beak."
"Why for?" Duck inquired.
Rev adopted a straight face. "Just do it." Duck opened his mouth hesitantly, Rev placed the wooden sticks there and Duck started to hold them.
"Rev, what is this for?" Duck insisted, with an opaque voice.
"Ready." Rev placed his hand on Duck´s wound, getting some shredded pieces of cloth out of the way.
"For wh..?" While biting the wooden sticks strongly, Duck let out a scream of great pain when Rev got the sharp tip of the needle through his feathers and skin. The scream echoed greatly inside the place.
On the meantime, Ace, Lexi, Tech and Slam were still waiting for the beast to show up. "Maybe it just ran away." Lexi opined.
"No. It´s just waiting for the right time." Tech replied.
"For what, Doc?" Ace asked, looking at his surroundings, seeing only fake palm trees and occasional stores.
"To attack, when we let our guard down." Tech said confidently.
"I never let my guard down." Lexi presumed then whistled melodically.
"Lexi?" Ace looked at her with an eyebrow raised.
Lexi sighed. "What?" She looked at her boyfriend while raising her shoulders. "I´m getting bored. Maybe that way he´ll show up."
Slam sniffed briefly and began to growl.
"Big guy?" Lexi turned and looked at him, stopping her steps, same as Ace and Tech.
Slam looked around for a moment then turned to the right, growling more intensely towards that side, calling Ace with a grunt.
"Let me check, buddy." Ace looked into that direction and activated his infrared vision. He narrowed his eyes slightly and managed to see the dim, orange shape of the sabretooth, in a high spot. "Follow me." Ace started to run along with his comrades, looking up, seeing how the color and the brightness of the orange spot increased at each quick step. The shape of the creature became a lot clearer, it was crouching over the top of a palm tree, and Ace noticed how it was preparing to jump. He deactivated his infrared vision and adopted a battle position. "There!" He pointed at the top of the palm tree. The creature roared and jumped towards Ace, he then dodged it with a half somersault.
Lexi approached the creature and threw a long kick at its jaws, the creature screeched and fell down briefly, getting up while growling, instantly rushing towards her. When the sabretooth jumped, Lexi got on her knees and then lowered her back, almost touching the floor, looking at the beast´s belly, which only had fur and no spikes at all, she threw a strong punch at it, making the beast to gasp and screech loudly. The monster bumped a few times over the floor, stopping next to a palm tree, slowly recovering. Lexi took careful steps towards the beast. "You want more, kitten?"
Before it could recover completely, Slam approached it quickly with his tornado, then he grabbed the beast with both hands, resisting the sharpness of the spikes, he growled and smashed the beast on the floor, breaking the screen, making some dead pixels to appear. The feline let out a loud scream of pain. It made an effort to get onto its paws again but Slam punched it again, now right on the face, his knuckles were bleeding, but he didn´t stop punching, every time the beast tried to get up, he threw another punch, stopping when thinking the beast was finally defeated. He walked away from the beast confidently, looking at his wounded hands, rubbing them while grunting.
"Slam! Look out!" Ace warned as he saw the beast standing up, suspecting it had fooled Slam. The feline ran rapidly towards him, roaring with craze and jumping onto his back, with its jaws widely open. Slam gasped when turning at the beast, then got his face sprinkled with blood, as Tech had pierced the beast with a pointy metallic tube he had effortfully ripped out from a palm´s inside. The coyote was breathing in and out with exhaustion, with the green glow that surrounded his hands dimming slowly, making the tube and the dead beast to fall over the floor.
"You okay, big guy?" Lexi inquired while approaching him along with Ace.
Slam cleaned some of the blood from his face, nodding and grunting with dubious affirmation.
"Pay more attention next time, Slam." Ace placed a hand on his arm. "We need our muscle up and running, you know?" He chuckled, getting the same response from Slam.
Tech was crouching next to the beast, examining it, he was checking its mouth, holding one of the flews with his hand. Tech got onto his feet and took out a small, spherical device then squashed it on his hand, making it to grow into a holographic, transparent bag. "A little help?" He asked Ace, who approached him rapidly and helped him carry the beast, both doing their best to avoid the spines. They moved it sideways to separate it from the tube then they put it inside the bag. Tech carried the bag against his back, holding it with both hands. "I´ll do him some tests in the lab."
"Alright, Doc." Ace replied then activated his comm in order to contact Rev.