Chapter 17: Live Or Die
The shudder beneath his boots wasn’t an explosion. It was a puncture. A deep, wrenching groan of tearing metal and splintering fungal composite. They weren’t just at the door. They were in the walls.
Fred’s eyes snapped from the siege below to the roof’s access hatch, ten feet away. The metal rim was vibrating. He had seconds.
He swung the Slag-Spectre around, the scope finding the tripod-mounted breach cannon below. The henchmen were frantic, heaving a glowing canister into its chamber. His world narrowed to the crosshairs, to the faint seam where the cannon’s energy cell met the firing mechanism. He exhaled, half the air in his lungs, and took up the trigger slack.
The report was a flat, definitive crack.
The shot didn’t explode. It pierced. A hyper-velocity round of compressed stone, delivered with the patience Fred had learned at his father’s forge. It hit the seam. For a heartbeat, nothing. Then the cannon’s housing blossomed into a silent flower of white-hot light before the sound hit—a deafening WHUMP that sent shrapnel and two henchmen cartwheeling into the glowing ferns.
No more cannon.
He was already moving. He snatched up the Spectre, slung it over his shoulder, and grabbed his bandolier. The access hatch blew inward before he reached it, a twisted disc of metal clattering across the roof. A helmeted head appeared, clad in black alloy.
Fred didn’t break stride. He loaded Scorch and fired straight down the hole.
The roar of the Flaringo’s transformation filled the shaft, followed by a scream that was abruptly cut off by the smell of scorched synth-suit and cooked meat. Fred didn’t look. He jumped, boots landing on the rungs of the ladder, sliding down into the choking, heat-blasted darkness.
He hit the floor of the main chamber and the chaos swallowed him.
It was a warzone. The elegant blue neon was shattered, casting strobing, erratic shadows. The air tasted of ozone, spent slug energy, and the coppery tang of blood. To his left, Eli was a whirlwind of motion, using the red armchair as a pivot point. Burpy zipped around him, a furious orange comet, intercepting green ghoul-slug shots with pinpoint bursts of fire. Two henchmen lay sprawled at his feet, but three more were advancing, blasters raised.
To his right, near the console, Trixie fought with a calculated fury. She’d overturned a worktable for cover. She ducked a spray of crystal shards, her camera still strapped to her hip—documenting even now.
From the center of the room came a sound like a boulder fight. Kord and Nacho. They were a spectacle of pure, brutish force. Kord, a mountain of blue muscle, had Nacho in a crushing bear hug. But Nacho, pale skin slick with effort, was not yielding. His spiked pauldrons grated against Kord’s chest plate, his red eyes blazing with feral intensity. He was slowly, inexorably, forcing one clawed hand free.
Behind the bulky sofa, Pronto’s voice screeched over the din. “For the honor of Molemound!” A wild blast from his blaster sent a Hop Rock smashing into a light fixture, raining glass and sparks. He was pinned, a group of henchmen using the kitchenette bar for cover, their shots chewing the sofa apart.
Fred’s brain catalogued it all in a flash. Priority one: clear the space.
He slapped his blaster, felt the satisfying weight of Hammer’s capsule slide home. He didn’t aim with his eyes. He aimed with the instinct of a hundred practice duels, the geometry of the room etched in his mind.
“Eli! Trixie! Down!” he roared.
They heard him. They trusted him. Eli yanked Trixie behind the chair as Fred fired.
Hammer didn’t just fly. He erupted. The maroon slug became a blur, then a velocity-shockwave, transforming mid-air into the colossal, horned brute. He crossed the room like a living battering ram, not at the henchmen, but at the heavy weapon rack next to them.
The impact was thunderous. The rack—and the three henchmen beside it—vanished in a cloud of splintered wood, shattered blaster parts, and flattened bodies. The shockwave rocked the remaining attackers.
Trixie popped up from behind the chair. She met Fred’s eyes across the smoky room, a fierce, grateful smile on her lips. She brought two fingers to her mouth and blew a kiss—a spark of light in the darkness—before spinning and nailing a stunned henchman with a well-aimed shot from Bluster. Eli gave Fred a sharp, acknowledging thumbs-up, already moving to flank the remaining threats.
Pronto’s situation was more immediate. The henchmen, now focused on the new threat, had him cornered. Their leader, a hulking brute with a skull painted on his helmet, was levelling his blaster for a final shot.
Fred’s hand found Zero’s capsule. The chill bit his fingers even through the glass. He fired.
Zero’s flight was a silent streak of cold blue. He velocimorphed just before impact, becoming the icy ram. He didn’t hit the men. He hit the cavern floor directly in front of them. A wave of instant, profound frost exploded outward, crawling up their legs, seizing their boots, flash-freezing the damp stone around them in a cocoon of jagged, spreading ice. Their shouts died in their throats, trapped in a frozen tableau.
“Pronto, move!” Fred yelled.
The Molenoid didn’t need telling. He scrambled on all fours towards the relative safety of the forge.
That left the main event.
Kord was grunting, veins standing out on his temple. Nacho’s clawed hand was almost free, the talons inches from Kord’s eye. The Darkbane enforcer’s lips were peeled back in a silent, straining snarl.
Fred didn’t hesitate. This required a surgeon’s touch.
He loaded Voltage.
The vibrant blue Tazerling chirped eagerly on the chamber’s edge. Fred took a millisecond to aim, not at the massive, wrestling bodies, but at a single, pale point on the back of Nacho’s skull, just below the hair line.
He fired.
Voltage was a living bolt. A precise, crackling line of yellow-blue energy. He crossed the chaotic room untouched, a scalpel in a hurricane. He latched onto the exposed skin with a sound like sizzling fat.
The effect was immediate and horrific. Nacho’s entire body snapped rigid. A web of actinic electricity cascaded over him, crawling through his armor seams, erupting from his mouth and eyes in a ghastly glow. The smell of ozone became the stench of burning hair and cooked circuitry. The shock would have fried a normal nervous system, turned a brain to slurry.
Nacho screamed. It was a raw, animal sound of pure agony, completely unlike his earlier cool demeanor. His muscles, locked by the overwhelming current, went from pushing to trembling rigidity.
It was the opening Kord needed.
The cave troll didn’t roar. He simply set his feet, adjusted his grip, and threw a single, monumental punch. It started at his heel, traveled up through the mountain of his leg, twisted his core, and launched forward with all the kinetic force of a piston.
It connected with Nacho’s jaw with a wet, crunching POP that cut through every other sound in the room.
Nacho’s head snapped back. The electricity cut out as Voltage, mission complete, de-velocimorphed and zipped back to Fred’s bandolier. Nacho flew backwards, breaking clean from Kord’s grip. He sailed across five feet of air, crashed through what was left of the kitchenette counter, and lay still in a wreckage of splintered composite and spilled synth-stew.
A sudden, ringing silence descended, broken only by the crackle of a damaged light and Eli’s heavy breathing.
“Everyone okay?” Eli called, wiping grime from his cheek.
Trixie nodded, checking Bluster. Pronto peeped from behind the anvil. Kord was flexing his hand, looking at his knuckles with a sort of respectful wonder.
Fred began to reload, his eyes scanning the ruined hideout. The main threat inside was down. But the silence from outside was now more ominous than the noise had been. The relentless barrage had stopped.
Trixie noticed it too. She crept to a shattered viewport, peered out. “They’ve pulled back,” she whispered. “They’re just… forming a perimeter.”
“Regrouping,” Eli said, joining her. “They tested the walls. Now they know.”
“And they know we’re still in here,” Fred finished, his voice low. He looked at Nacho’s unmoving form. A enforcer that powerful didn’t get sent in alone just to test defenses. He was the tip of the spear. The real weapon was still outside.
As if on cue, a new sound filtered through the broken walls. Not the roar of a mob. Not the whine of blasters.
It was a slow, deliberate, mocking clap.
The sound echoed, magnified by some external speaker system. It came from the clearing.
They all moved to the viewports.
Dr. Blakk stood alone before his silent army, a tall, black silhouette against the amber glow of the cavern. He was applauding. The sound was crisp, ironic, and utterly chilling. He finished, letting the final clap hang in the air.
Then his voice boomed out, smooth and amplified, devoid of any warmth.
“A spirited defense! Truly worthy of the Shane name. You have eliminated my primary enforcer. You have repelled the first wave. You have proven this… fungal wart… is indeed a tough nut to crack.”
He began to pace slowly, hands clasped behind his back.
“But you see, a nut, no matter how tough, only requires a larger hammer.”
He stopped and pointed a single, elegant finger not at the hideout, but at the colossal mushroom stalk upon which it was built.
“You fought for your home. A commendable sentiment. Now, let’s see you fight as it falls.”
From the tree line, a new machine rolled forward. It was massive, treaded, a industrial abomination of drills and piston-driven pile drivers. Its sole purpose was unmistakable: to destroy the foundation.
Eli’s face paled. “The stalk… if that goes…”
“We go with it,” Kord finished, horror dawning on his broad features. “The whole pod’ll shear off.”
Fred felt the plan, their perfect, defiant stand, twist and crack. They’d prepared for an assault on their door. Not for the ground to be cut from under their feet.
Blakk’s final words drifted in, gentle as a poison gas.
“You have one last choice. Surrender the slugs and the Shane boy. Or be buried with your pride.”
The machine’s engines revved, a deep, grinding roar that vibrated up through the floor into their bones.
The grinding vibrated up through Fred’s boots, a tangible promise of collapse. He watched the machine’s massive drill bit begin to spin, shedding flakes of chitinous bark from the stalk. They had minutes. Maybe less.
His mind raced through options, discarding each one. They couldn’t shoot it from here; the angle was wrong, and the armor looked thick. They couldn’t run; the perimeter was sealed. A cold, clear certainty settled in his gut, its weight both terrible and calming. There was exactly one path.
Fred looked at Trixie.
He didn’t speak. He just met her eyes, and his gaze held a finality that erased all other sound. He knew what he had to do.
Trixie’s eyes widened in understanding. Her breath hitched. The tears came then, brimming over despite the fierce battle she’d fought to hold them back. She didn’t try to speak either. Words were useless. She surged forward and caught him in the tightest hug imaginable, her fingers digging into the oil-stained leather of his vest. Her lips found his, and the kiss wasn’t gentle. It was desperate, a sealed promise, as if it was the last time she’d ever kiss him.
She pulled back, their foreheads touching. Her tears streaked through the grime on her face.
“Don’t you dare,” she whispered, the words cracking.
Fred wiped a single tear from her eye with his thumb, his calloused fingers surprisingly gentle. He kissed her forehead, a soft, definitive press. “I’ll see you on the other side.”
Without another word, he turned and sprinted for the reinforced back door, the one leading to the maintenance ledge. Eli yelled something, but it was lost in the roar of the machine and the blood pounding in Fred’s ears. He threw the door open, cold cavern air rushing in. He didn’t pause. He sprinted for the edge of the mushroom tree’s wide cap, his boots slapping on the damp, resilient fungus.
He leaped.
The world vanished into a rushing void. Wind tore at his clothes, his mullet whipping behind him. He fell, quicker and quicker, the glowing forest floor swelling up to meet him. He twisted in the air, his slinger’s instincts orienting him. The machine grew from a toy to a monstrosity, its details sharpening: the grease-smeared hydraulics, the spinning drill, the oblivious operator in his cage.
He had one shot.
At fifty feet from impact, he acted. His blaster, braced against his chest, kicked three times in rapid succession. First, Bulk. The Armashelt transformed into his giant armored form and hit like a living cannonball, buckling the machine’s rear tread with a scream of rending metal. Then, Voltage. The Tazerling arrowed into the exposed engine block, flooding it with cascading, crackling lightning that blew conduits and melted wiring. Finally, Scorch.
The Flaringo plunged into the fuel reservoir.
The explosion wasn’t a fireball. It was a contained, voracious inferno that ate the machine from the inside out. Orange-white flame geysered from every seam, swallowing the drill, the cage, everything. The shockwave buffeted Fred in mid-air.
He had maybe two seconds left. He fumbled, his fingers sure despite the adrenaline. He loaded Webs and fired straight down at the fast-approaching mossy ground.
The Arachnet transformed. Six legs splayed, and the spinneret blazed. He didn’t have time for artistry. A thick, haphazard net of steel-strength webbing billowed out between Fred and the earth.
Fred hit it.
The relief was instantaneous, a gasped breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. The strands caught him, stretched, held. He was safe. The brutal deceleration crushed the air from his lungs, but he was alive.
Or so he thought.
The anchor points, dug into soft moss and not stone, tore free. The web dipped violently. His momentum, not fully spent, swung him downward. The firm ground rushed up to meet the side of his head.
There was no pain. Just a profound, silent blackness that swallowed him whole. He was unconscious before he knew what happened.
Back in the clubhouse, Eli wasted no time. He saw the eruption of flame below, saw the machine become a funeral pyre. He saw Fred’s form, a dark shape against the fire, then nothing.
“He bought it,” Eli said, his voice stripped raw. He grabbed Trixie’s shoulder. She was shaking, staring at the spot where Fred had vanished. “Trixie. Look at me. We can’t let his sacrifice be wasted. Not one second of it.”
His words were a spark on tinder. Grief hardened into something weaponized in Trixie’s eyes. She nodded, once, sharp. Kord hefted a scatterblaster, his face a grim mask. Pronto, for once, didn’t speak, just checked his blaster with trembling hands.
“Now!” Eli yelled.
They surged out the ruined main entrance as one, blasters firing. The henchmen, stunned by the machine’s destruction, were caught completely off guard. Burpy led the charge, a raging comet of vengeance. He ignored the grunts, bypassed the scrambling ranks.
He arrowed straight for the tall, black silhouette of Dr. Blakk, who was staring in stunned rage at his burning asset.
The Infernus slug hit him center-mass. The flame that erupted wasn’t for show. It was a concentrated lance of superheated plasma that burned through the obsidian fabric of Blakk’s coat, searing the tech-weave beneath. Blakk screamed, a sound of genuine shock and pain, reeling back as the smell of burnt polyester and singed hair filled the clearing.
“Retreat!” he roared, his amplified voice breaking into static. “All units, fall back!”
The order was chaos. The disciplined perimeter dissolved into a scrambling, panicked rush into the tree line. The Shane Gang didn’t chase. They stood, backs to their smoldering home, breath sawing in their lungs, watching the last of Blakk’s forces disappear into the glowing amber gloom.
Silence returned, heavy and charged. The machine fire crackled. The mushroom stalk groaned, wounded but standing.
Eli lowered his blaster, turning to look at the spot where Fred had fallen. Trixie was already running, sliding down the makeshift rope ladder Kord had anchored, her every movement screaming frantic urgency.
Trixie was already running, sliding down the makeshift rope ladder Kord had anchored, her every movement screaming frantic urgency.
The rope was just a thick cable Kord had yanked from the wall, its end frayed and smoking. It burned her palms as she practically free-fell the last ten feet, the impact jolting up her ankles. She didn’t feel it.
The others followed. Eli came next, his descent less controlled, leather gloves smoldering. Then Kord, the cable groaning under his weight, his massive hands simply enduring the heat. Pronto practically tumbled down last, a wail stuck in his throat.
They hit the soft, glowing moss and sprinted.
Fred lay sprawled across the collapsed web, a marionette with cut strings. The webbing was a tangled shroud around his legs and one arm, matted with moss and dark, wet patches. Above him, the scorched skeleton of the drill machine crackled, painting everything in a hellish, dancing light.
Three small, frantic shapes were on his chest. Voltage, Bulk, and Scorch. Their protoforms nudged at his jaw, his closed eyelids, emitting a chorus of desperate, clicking chirps. Voltage’s lightning-bolt markings flickered erratically, like a stalled engine. Scorch’s heat had cooled to a dull, worried ember-glow.
Trixie skidded the last few feet on her knees, the moss tearing. “Fred.” The name wasn’t a call. It was a denial.
Her hands went to his face, cold and too still. “Fred, come on. Open your eyes.” She patted his cheek, her voice climbing. “This isn’t funny. Wake up.”
She pressed her ear to his mouth. Nothing. No whisper of air touched her skin. The stillness was absolute.
“No.” She shook her head, her red hair falling around them like a curtain. “No, no, no. You don’t get to do this. You said you’d see me.” She shifted, slamming her ear against his chest, right over his heart. Her own pulse hammered in her skull, a frantic drum that drowned everything out. She begged the silence. “Please. Please, please, please.”
Nothing.
Then—a tremor. Not a beat. A faltering quiver, deep within the cage of bone. It stuttered, vanished, then came again. A weak, thready rhythm fighting through the stillness.
“He’s alive.” The words were a sob of pure relief. She buried her face into the crook of his neck, into the smell of oil and smoke and his sweat, her shoulders shaking. Her tears made dark spots on his collar. “He’s alive.”
Eli knelt beside her, his own face ashen. He put two fingers to Fred’s throat, holding them there, his eyes closed in concentration. “Pulse is there. It’s… it’s thin. Kord!”
The cave troll was already there, his huge hands moving with surprising gentleness. He assessed the web, the angle of Fred’s neck. “Don’t move his spine. We lift the web with him on it. We got one shot.”
“The hideout’s gotta be unstable after that,” Eli said, his gaze flicking up to the groaning mushroom stalk. “We need to get him to the Med-bay in the back tunnels. Now.”
“We just won,” Pronto whispered, staring at the retreating tree line. “Why does it not feel like winning?”
“Because it’s not over,” Trixie said, her voice raw but clear. She wiped her face with her sleeve, leaving smudges of soot and tears. She carefully lifted Scorch from Fred’s chest, the slug nuzzling her thumb. “He bought us a chance. That’s all. So we use it.”
Kord slid his arms under the sections of web, a low grunt of effort his only sound. He lifted, a seamless, powerful motion that brought Fred off the ground, cradled in a cocoon of strong silk. The slugs, understanding, hopped to perch on the webbing around him, their eyes fixed on their slinger.
“Lead the way, Eli,” Kord rumbled. “I’ve got him.”
They moved as a unit, a grim procession away from the wreckage, back toward the battered pod that was still their home. The victory was quiet, and it bled.