Chapter XXXI: Lost and Forgiven

AN:

Hey there, Fan-fic-folks!

Double update today. If you didn't catch Chapter 30, go back and check it out.

Last chapter! Finished another one. Quite proud of this. It was a bit of a struggle, trying for the superhero thing, and I think I ended up somewhere halfway between a Superhero Movie and a Spaghetti Western Flick. It seems to have worked. Plus, the worldbuilding for the Island has been very fun. Really enjoyed putting that place together and feeling out that setting.

Hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!

Thanks for reading and, as always, please review.

The City was a Warzone. I pushed forward, spun low, and rammed my fist into the armoured stomach of a Prescott guardsman. He groaned, then screamed as I grabbed hold and, with a little force, threw him upwards into a second storey window.

There were several feral snarls and the man started screaming. Apparently an I-series had been raising offspring there. And the nest was hungry. I was always happy to feed the hungry.

I pushed forward again, the dozens of armed and angry mutants and offshoots around me following my lead and throwing themselves into the fray with the feral enthusiasm of the desperate. It was chaos and even I couldn't keep up with it all.

Two Prescott guards in heavy armour swung sparking batons at me - one high and one low - and I dodged back. For a moment, I half missed my swords. Instead, I raised a thudslug and fired directly into the midriff of the first. He fell back with a groan, pulling the attention of the other just in time for me to shove him back where he was swallowed by the crush of angry citizens.

We pushed on again, dozens of Prescott agents and guards falling to our strikes and drowning in the tide of anger.

I hoped the others were doing as well, leading their sections. We were close to the next rendezvous anyway. The Rivergate Stronghold.

The Rivergate Stronghold was another big ugly building, a mis-matched mess of shipping containers, temporary shelters, Prescott prefabs, and military concrete walls. But it was holding firm, with Prescott troops and mutants posted up in cover and taking potshots at each other.

I arrived at the same time as Brooke and Shad and scurried into cover by them. I could see Stan a little ways behind them, and was incredibly worried to see he'd gotten a rifle from somewhere and was shooting and swearing at the Stronghold. At least he was happy, I guess. "Have you got anything left to shift this?"

They shook their heads. "Nope. We used it all on the Prison."

That was fair. Prison was a bad word for it. Shipping Facility was more accurate. And the Prescotts put about as much care into the living things they transported as the Postal service did into "Fragile, this side up" labels. If any place in this city deserved destruction, the Prison was it.

"Okay. Well, how are we going to get that gate open?"

"Can you jump it?" Brooke asked. I could tell she was remembering my little trick at the Prescott barn.

I shook my head. "The Gate, no. I may be able to jump from a building, but they'd see me coming."

"Then I have no idea what we could do."

There was a sudden earth-shattering roar as Jane entered the fray. It seemed every Prescott guard on this side of the wall focused fire on her, the bullets ripping pieces out of her as she charged. But her momentum was too much. Her massive bulk slammed into the gate and she broke it open with two swings and a single downward slam of her mighty fists. Her muscles bulged with the exertion, but I could see the smile on her face.

Then someone inside launched an RPG at her, followed swiftly by two more. The explosions tore red from her body and she fell still. Even the R-series couldn't recover from that wound. Another friend was gone. But the Gate was open.

"Charge!"

This time, we went for no trickery. The Abattoir was already destroyed anyway. The main entry to the Mountain was simple and defended and open. No sneak attacks possible. Instead, I called back to the City and waited. Then the shelling began. The Fortifications were taken out easily, the guards on the emplacements and walls outside quickly retreating back through the main door.

The moment it sealed behind them, I gave another order, and every artillery piece in the City fired at that door at the same time. One, maybe two, it could've taken. Two dozen blew it and the surrounding rock open like a cracked egg.

It was a lovely sight.

I gave another order. "Charge!"

Entering the Mountain through the front door was like walking into Moria. Or Erebor. Grand halls, sparkling with adornments and art and all manner of rich people crap. And full of violence. Our offshoot army had thrown themselves into these halls and gone to work. Even in the entry hall alone, I saw at least a dozen bodies with axes and blades buried inches into bone.

I guided my team forward. I'd never really been down here, but I knew the way. There were also helpful coloured lines on the floor marking routes to the different sections. I was looking for the Hub - it was orange. At a junction, my team split off to follow a blue line down to the main server hub. That had been buried deeper, to allow for the intense amount of cooling the Prescott systems required.

I continued on and into the Hub.

The Hub was a large, open space that mainly served as the refectory and relaxation area for this part of the mountain. Think a mall food court atrium in a mountain base and you'll get the idea. Now, it just looked like the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse. Blood, brains, and bullets were everywhere as the outnumbered and overequipped Prescott guards were pushed back further and further by the feral ferocity and desperation of the Offshoots.

I didn't have to do a damn thing, just strode through the chaos.

The elevator was free - though it did have a couple of corpses in it - and I stepped in and tapped the key as far up as this elevator would go. For a moment, the panel flickered like it was going to tell me my access was denied. But then it whirred, bleeped, and made a sound I couldn't even describe, and then flashed green. The doors slid closed and I began my last journey up this hellish place.

I closed my eyes briefly, just listening to the ridiculous hold music. Something Prescott's wife had written, I heard. It was pleasant, and a tiny bit calming.

Before I knew it, I reached my floor. The door dinged and slid open again. I stepped out into quiet. The attack hadn't made it this far, and there was a lot of steel and stone between here and there.

I turned left and loaded my crossbow with a couple of fuzzles. Their squawks came in handy for distracting the few staff still up here, giving me the opportunity to knock them out and hide the bodies where I could.

I could kill without risk of the hunter now, but I wasn't a psychopath.

Getting up the next few floors was a breeze, and I made it through quickly to the secure floors. I found myself standing outside the doors of a familiar lab. I reached out and opened the door, and Ratigan Moreau looked up at me with a smile. "The Prodigal Daughter returns once again! And I see you brought company!"

I gave him a puzzled look, and he turned a screen in my direction. It showed flickering security footage of the battle downstairs. "Very impressive. Far more so than your previous endeavour. I do believe you'll actually succeed this time." He smiled at me. "So, that's why you're here, I take it? It is the nature of the child to defeat the parent, after all."

Asshole.

"Yes. You're sick, Ratigan. And I'm going to make sure your experiments stop."

I launched myself forward, ramming into him and pushing him back. He fell with a crunch, hand flailing towards a hidden button. I grabbed him and dragged him away from it, shoving him up against a wall. He grinned, and blood ran down his teeth. "The strength modifications are holding then? I admit, I was concerned about the metabolic imbalance that might've caused, but it seems you've done just fine. Your friend was most informative, but one must see these things with ones own eyes."

My friend?

"Is Chloe alive?"

He blinked, almost offended. "Of course. I wouldn't want to do anything to hurt you, Max. The Trauma of Loss is a potent epigenetic trigger. Killing Ms Price would mar your glorious perfection. And there's no need to worry about any accidents befalling her due to your incursion - she's very secure, in a room only accessible by my pass."

I took said pass and punched him, and the man gasped with the pain. I let him slide down the wall and watched him for a moment, trying to take a wheezing breath in and gasping again as his ribs hitched. A wave of bitter anger came over me, and I didn't want to kill him. Not immediately. Instead, I pulled over some of the restraints and secured him to one of the wall fittings that I'd been held to during his experiments. He began to chatter lightly about his history, his successes and failures, his life's work...

"Look at me, chatting away. I'd've never done this before you, Max. You paid attention, you learned, like no creation of mine ever has. It's turned me into a teacher!" He laughed. "What a world, eh?"

I tried to find something to say to that.

"We shape our tools, and our tools shape us." He coughed, a harsh and rattling thing. "I'm proud of you, Max. My magnum opus. I'll never make another thing as magnificent as you."

That bastard. That fucking- Something in me snapped suddenly, and I lashed out with a bunch. Broke his nose and knocked his head back into the wall. It left a dint. Good.

Did also knock him out. Which was less good. But the chains would hold and I could clean the bastard up when I got back down. Prescott was the priority. Ending him would end all of this. I stood up and I left Ratigan locked in his lab.

I entered the first executive floor to find alarms blaring everywhere. The battle itself hadn't made it up here, but the news had. I headed for the main hall.

Ahead was a flock of heavily armed and armoured security. Not a single mutant among them. How much of an impact my short tenure here had had. In the middle of them all, a panicked and harried looking Sean Prescott scurried forward. I got a distinct burst of pleasure at seeing how worried he looked.

I grinned. Finally.

"Prescott!" I roared.

Sean whirled and his security immediately began shooting at me. I pulled on my power to dodge to the side - though many of them still winged me, sending bolts of pain from everywhere they grazed.

I dodged aside into an open-doorway. The room was just an office, with no other ways through. I'd have to push through the main hall.

There was no cover in the hall, just a straight run between them and me. I was fast, but I wasn't that fast. All it would take was one random shot, lucky or unlucky. And with those machine guns, they could fire a lot of shots. So... did I feel lucky?

As another hail of bullets rained over me, I thought vaguely that it might've been a good idea to bring back-up.

Suddenly, there was an explosion - the security flock was sent flying. Out of the smoke, stepped a familiar red-armoured form. "Where the hell have you been?" I demanded.

"Dodging these fucks-" He kicked one of the Prescott goons across the floor. "-and trying to find you. You kicking in the front door of this place made that a lot easier though, thanks."

He raised something I vaguely recognised from one of the experimental labs here and zapped the lot of them with some sort of arc laser that frazzled a second or two after firing. Well. That was humbling. So much for deadliest thing on this island, I guess. "Are-"

A door at the end of the corridor slammed shut and I checked the pile: "Prescott!"

Nathan tossed aside the arc laser, sparking and broken. "Let's go end this shit."

The door was locked - we pulled it off its hinges and took chase up the emergency stair Prescott had retreated into. I wasn't sure what he'd try now his guard was gone. The protocol had involved him going down, not up. Maybe that had changed with his purging of Mutants from his guard.

He was pretty fast for a middle-aged CEO. I guess all the spa treatments and expensive facilities helped with that.

When we ran out of stairs, he burst out of the door ahead and ran down a long, familiar corridor. Right would take us to that executive boardroom that I'd kicked Prescott out the window of during my second escape all those months ago. He headed left, and we followed.

The security turrets whirred for a moment like they were about to shoot, then deactivated. Thank you Brooke.

He burst through the last set of doors and into the most secure room on the mountain. If he'd closed the doors, we'd have had to wait for explosives to get in. I threw on one last burst of speed and kicked the door open moments before it clicked shut.

Prescott retreated back to his desk and pulled out some handgun looking thing, emptying it at me. His hand shook too much for his aim to be any good. Nathan strode forward and tore it out of his grasp, stowing it away in some compartment of his armour.

"Now, now- Max, I'm sure we can-" The man raised his hands toward me and began to offer what I assume he thought was a disarming smile.

"Shut up, Sean." The man's mouth closed with an audible click. "You have to know you're not getting out of this. All these years of blood and slaughter and money made from the suffering of others."

"Yeah, Dad." Nathan drawled, and Prescott's face opened in honest shock as Nathan took off his helmet and looked his father dead in the eye. "I've thought for years about this day, trying to work out what I'd say to you. You're going to die, and everything you've built is going to be tore down, and nobody will even remember you." He stared at Sean for a long moment, then, "Honestly, your face is enough. I'll remember that expression. You lose, dad."

Nathan raised a gun.

It was... I don't know, anti-climactic? We defeated the monster, dragged his body up to the roof, and tossed him down into the cold and desolate mountaintop. We watched him disappear into the snow and ravines and then went down to rejoin the fight below.

On the way down, we walked past the spot where I'd chained Ratigan. We'd killed Nathan's monster, now we would tidy up mine. I swore as I saw the dangling chains, empty. The only trace of him was a severed hand on the floor. I should've killed him while I had the chance.

When we got back to the Refectory, still full of fighting, I stepped up to the ledge and called out to the whole world: "Prescott is dead!"

The cheers that went up were thunderous.

We all sat around in Stan's rooftop spot. The others were all holding beers. Even Rachel was there, life of the party as always. Nathan had left his helmet off. Introducing himself on the island had been contentious, but the irritation over my own secrets was present enough to insulate him at least a little. The clean-up on the island had taken a while, enough time for us all to talk and clear some of the air. The irritation was still there, but we could accept. We could move forward.

"So, what now?" Chloe blurted, breaking the quiet.

I frowned. "What do you mean?"

Nathan rolled his eyes. "Are you going to keep going? Are you going to return to the Island and help them run things? Are you going to retire and just be a normal, slightly fucked up art student?"

Chloe pointed at him, as if to say "Yeah. That."

I just shrugged. My plans ended when Prescott died. "I don't know. My war is done. I don't think it would be helpful for me to be on the Island, for me or for them, so I know I want to stay here. What I'd do here is a question I haven't worked out how to answer yet."

What would I do? What could I do? Could I really retire, and just be a normal student with a distinctly abnormal past?

"Help protect those who need it, Max." Stan suddenly chimed in. He'd been mostly quiet since we got back. I think it was a little too... soldier-ey for him back there. Picking up that gun had done something to him. I wondered about Stan's past, what he'd been through to get him here. Perhaps the fight was too close to home. "That's what you did from the start, with those criminals. And the Prescotts may be gone, but there are still people like them out there. There's still possibilities for you to do good."

I thought about it for a long moment as my Team watched me. I looked at each one of them. Brooke, grumpy but willing to begrudgingly admit we did good work. Stan, smiling and scared and kind. Chloe, brave and bold as fucking brass. Nathan, a false apathy and an odd tilt to his shoulders. And Rachel, beautiful and impish and oh so encouraging.

"Fuck it. Lets be heroes."