Chapter Text
* * *
Powder knew she was ready. No one else thought she was -even Vi said that there were a lot of things she couldn’t do, and left her behind. But she had a bomb, and it would finally work.
It needed to.
But she arrived at the cannery a bit later than she would otherwise. Not long, but a little bit. Why she was a bit later, well, it was because Vi told her -and Mylo and Claggor- about what’d happened. About a monster of flesh and chems who killed Benzo and a half-dozen enforcers, and the true evil that stood behind the monster: the man with the black eye who took Vander away.
Of course, it had been Ekko who told Vi about the man -Vi didn’t have a great view of things, locked away as she was. I hope Ekko’s alright . . .
Regardless, Vi had shared everything she could, and it was scary. And it was even scarier because Vi was scared. Powder could tell, even if Mylo and Claggor couldn’t. The monster had killed a half-dozen enforcers and Benzo -how could Vi win?
The simple question terrified Powder, but she believed in Vi. Vi chases away the monsters. She always has. She always will.
That didn’t mean Powder wasn’t afraid, though.
The fear made failure worse, made her lose time as she screamed and tears streamed down her face as she beat her fists into her mattress. But it also gave her a sharp focus when she had a goal, and the monkey bomb came together.
Still, Powder was just a little late.
When she got to cannery, and climbed to the top, Powder didn’t see Vi fail. She didn’t see the monster beat Vi.
What Powder saw was a cavernously large room, with the bottom floor covered in crates full of little pink-purple vials. Above the bottom floor was a catwalk connecting two ends. On one end was a handful of figures, one dressed in almost Piltie-like finery, another in rough undercity clothes. On the other end was a door, and pounding on it, a monster. Large and twisted, muscles swollen and shot through with pink-purple. It snarled, and Powder almost jumped in fright.
The entire place was dark, though, lit only by moonlight shining through broken windows on the ceiling.
Powder didn’t know what to do. There was one bomb, and one monster . . . but Vi’ll chase away the monster.
She always does.
And Powder caught a glimpse of the moonlight glinting off of something black.
An eye.
Powder always had good vision, but it was prone to tunnel . . . and that was exactly what it did. Powder stared at the man, dressed in fine black and gold clothes, with his pale skin and black hair and one black eye. Standing next to him was Sevika, but Powder didn’t care. Near him were a couple of goons, but Powder didn’t care. It looked like he had some of those pink-purple chems, but Powder didn’t care.
Vi’ll chase away the monster.
And the black-eyed man took Vander.
One bomb, one black-eyed man.
Powder scurried across the outside of the cannery, as the shimmer monster pounded on the door but failed to break it down. She got to the window overlooking the black-eyed man and his goons -and they hadn’t noticed her. All of their attention was on the door, and the monster. But not Powder’s.
Powder took out her contraption, a simple wind-up monkey. A string around it’s neck hung a hexcrystal between its cymbals. The other couple hexcrystals went inside of it. One’ll set off the others . . . maybe . . .
She took a short breath, then stared into its eyes.
“You have to work,” Powder begged. “For me, okay?”
Mouser, Whiskers, Tiger . . . sometimes, Powder could feel them promising. But it never came true.
She didn’t get any feeling from the monkey -I haven’t named it!
But she didn’t have time to, so she pressed her forehead against it quickly, hoping it would work, then-
Clang!
Something came loose. The monster was getting through, and Powder knew that bombs blew up. She always tried to take cover before one of her bombs went off, so she wanted there to be a wall between her newest bomb and her family. It would surely be enough to protect them -Vi said it would be for her other bombs!
So Powder wound up the toy monkey, placed it down inside the cannery, then bopped it on the head.
It started to waddle forward.
Step by step, it marched.
Time ticked down with the unwinding of a spring.
An uncaring machine, whose sole purpose was to destroy.
All in the shape of a children’s toy and a little crystal.
Powder’s eyes shot between it and the black-eyed man, staring and hoping.
The little monkey stepped and stepped, its clangs but a whisper compared to the pounding on the metal door by a monster.
No one noticed it, especially as it was coming from behind them.
Time ticked down, and as it got to the last few seconds, Powder turned away and took cover behind the wall, curling up and covering her ears with her hands.
There was a horrifying pause, then-
Clang!
Crack!
BOOM!
A wave of blue energy erupted just a couple meters away from Silco and Sevika, and rocked the cannery itself. Flecks of blue light flew across the air and into the night sky, almost forming a mushroom cloud with crackles of lightning all around!
The sound was deeper than Powder expected, and she felt it in her chest more than her ears-
And the light was so bright and beautiful-
And the heat that washed over her was intense but good!
She didn’t turn at the last second to look inside, so she wasn’t blown from her perch by the shockwave. Which was quite fortunate -children who fell a couple dozen feet down to concrete didn’t tend to survive. Powder made it through the explosion unphased.
Silco and Sevika weren’t so lucky. They had no chance, not even time to react before they were simply . . . gone. Reduced to bloody chunks that were further beaten into nothing but a pink mist. Far below, the rush of the explosion made it all the way down to the labs, where it scorched the doctor . . . or rather, singed him.
Across the catwalk, the shimmer monster was buffeted by the explosion . . . but shimmer made it disgustingly resilient. Even had the bomb gone off only a couple of feet from him, he would’ve survived. Given that it went off all the way across the room, all it did was throw him off his feet, making him slam against the door one last time.
The steel door gave way under the weight of the monster and the explosion that threw it, collapsing backwards. Vi, who was bracing the door, was thrown inward -directly into Vander’s now-freed arms, who caught her and held her tight. The force of the explosion flew through the room like the hottest and heaviest wind, but no more. It went off far enough away that the force was spread out much further, so it didn’t break the wall or do much of anything to them.
The cannery itself survived the explosion surprisingly well. The catwalk and the platforms it was connected to survived but for a twisted hole in the ground where the bomb went off, and the nearby railings were blown away as well. The wall near that platform was blown outward, the bricks shattering under the force, but the superstructure survived. The broken windows on the roof were emptied of glass entirely as the explosion was contained within the walls of the cannery and went upward, out the roof.
When the smoke cleared, the dust settled, and the sparkles faded, Powder practically glowed with happiness.
It finally worked.
* * *
Vander ached across damn-near his entire body. When the shimmer monster had come for him, he didn’t go down easily . . . but with his wrists shackled, he couldn’t do much more than get beaten for his troubles. The shimmer monster was strong, fast, and didn’t feel pain. Vander wasn’t sure he could win, if it came down to it, even if he was in top form.
He didn’t have a choice anymore.
With a deep boom and a scream of metal, the door had caved in and Vi had stumbled into his arms . . . bruised, bloody, and broken.
Right behind her was a monster of misshapen skin and muscle, veins a chemical pink and one eye corrupted by the same. The remaining green eye glowed with pain, confusion, and rage, but for a mere moment, it was staggered by the force of the explosion.
Vander pushed Vi at Claggor as he sprang to his feet, finally free.
“Get outta here!” Vander ordered, not even looking at his son as he went forward.
He bent down, sliding his left arm into his gauntlet in the same motion that he squared himself and tackled the shimmer monster backwards, taking them outside the room and onto the catwalk.
The main room of the cannery was different, now. Smoke hung in the air, and the bottom floor was full of fire. Vander had seen the chems, and knew that the fumes it gave off couldn’t be good. Need to move fast.
But he was beaten and tired. Even still, he pushed the shimmer monster back onto the catwalk before stopping suddenly, making the monster stagger backwards.
Can’t let it get around me, so I need to keep it on the catwalk . . .
Vander raised his weary fists, one clad in his gauntlet.
You’ll die for the cause, but you won’t fight for one?
The memory was pressing, recent, and showed that in the end, Vander would fight. For his children, his family . . . and it made Vander flinch. Where is he?
“Silco?” Vander called, taking a half-second to look around.
He didn’t see the man . . .
The shimmer monster lunged, and Vander blocked the blow with his right arm. It was punishingly strong, and Vander knew it’d cause at least a deep bruise. Gotta block with the gauntlet-
The shimmer monster followed up the lunge with wild swipes, and Vander took one of them to the gut while blocking the other with his left gauntlet, the metal denting slightly.
Vander barely had time to duck a follow-up right hook, then backed up with a new flare of pain in his stomach.
Too strong and too damn fast!
Vander snarled, remembering how the monster darted in and out of smog, killing a half-dozen enforcers -and Benzo- without taking a single scratch. And they were good enforcers -the Sheriff herself and her elite.
The shimmer monster came in again, and Vander was forced to dodge, block, and back up, staying on the defensive.
Usually, if Vander was outmatched in speed and strength, he could read his enemy’s style and try to break their rhythm, but the shimmer monster didn’t have a style. It fought stupidly, and was just strong and fast enough to make it extremely effective despite that.
Vander didn’t know what to do.
“VANDER!” Vi screamed.
“VI!” Powder yelled.
Vander glanced up at a higher window, seeing a head of blue hair there.
“GET OUTTA HERE!” Vander bellowed.
The shimmer monster lunged in again, forcing Vander to back up.
“I’m not leavin’ you!” Vi called.
“Once you’re outta here, I can run!” Vander lied. “Go! NOW!”
“We’re goin’!” Claggor shouted.
But the shimmer monster was too fast for him to disengage from. Even if he ran as fast as he could, the monster was just faster. And he couldn’t defend himself while he was running . . .
No, Vander knew it was his last fight.
But if he held the monster back long enough, his children would escape.
He backed up again, taking another couple of hits on his gauntlet and grunting in pain as a strike cracked into his shoulder.
In another time, the shimmer monster wouldn’t be able to stand up to Vander. He’d best it quite handily, before Silco stabbed him in the back. But that shimmer monster had taken the full force of a hexcrystal explosion at point-blank range, so when Vander faced it, it was already close to dead. This monster was much further away from the explosion . . . and was much stronger for it.
Vander was forced back again, almost to the end of the catwalk. He could only hope his children were already-
“Vander!” Powder yelled.
No . . .
Powder had looked on. At first, she couldn’t believe what she saw. Vi always chased away the monsters, and Vander was even stronger. He had to win.
But . . . he wasn’t.
And Powder . . . she was a smart kid. She figured out Vander’s plan, and she knew a thing or two about running away -more than a thing or two, in fact. She knew he wouldn’t be able to escape.
“RUN!” Vander yelled desperately.
But Powder hadn’t, and her plan was revealed with the clanks of metal on metal as something she threw hit the floor and bounced a little before settling. Vander didn’t know what it was -he didn’t have the attention to spare as he desperately defended.
Then he was surrounded by blue smoke -smoke that was the color of Powder’s hair.
What?
“RUN!” Powder screamed, echoing Vander.
Vander didn’t look a gift sump pump in the valve. He juked the monster, then dived to the side, disappearing from the monster’s sight, heading in the direction of Powder’s voice. The monster would expect him to go to the hole in the wall his children made, so he couldn’t.
Then Vander’s foot hit something and he stumbled, hearing the clack of metal on metal again as whatever he kicked tumbled off before hitting a wall. A wall that was almost right in front of him!
Vander ditched his gauntlet -he couldn’t climb with it- and heard it hit something. If that’s what Powder caused all this smoke with, I’ll need it to hide me as I go!
So Vander quickly bent down and scooped up a strange cylinder full of holes and with a handle rod and trigger sticking out one end. He stuck it in his waistband, then leapt, grabbing onto whatever he could on the walls of the cannery as he forced his way up. After all, Vi had learned her burgling ways from Vander -he was no slouch at second-story work.
Vander forced himself to climb, adrenaline shooting through exhausted muscles. Powder offered him an arm, but Vander didn’t take it -he’d be more likely to pull her down than anything else. Still, he made it to the top and twisted to fit out of the window, and into the night air.
Powder was right there, looking ecstatic, and Vander wrapped her in a quick hug.
“Thanks,” Vander said. “Might’ve saved my life. But we need to go, now!”
“It finally worked!” Powder exclaimed, practically glowing.
She didn’t really listen to what Vander said . . .
“Come on!” Vander said forcefully, pulling Powder to the edge of the building.
They made their way down together, free of the cannery at last.