Would you rather go scuba diving or zip lining?
The rumbling didn't stop in fact- it only seemed to intensify with every step Emery took.
"What's going on?" Klaus asked as Emery passed by them.
"No time." He said. "Get out."
"Let's go!" Diego demanded as he pulled Klaus along. "We need to get mom before the whole place crumbles."
Emery continued on, bounding up the steps as cracks formed along the walls and fire built up around them.
He raced through the halls, desperately looking for Five's room. He hadn't known where the boy was or if he'd come back to the Academy and if he had- where.
Emery ducked purely on instinct as an explosion nearby sent piles of debris his way. He rolled out of the way and covered his head with his hands as dust covered him like a warning blanket and settled even as he coughed and pushed himself up, wincing through the pain.
"Five?" He asked when he caught sight of a figure rounding the corner. He pushed forward, the door nearly catching on a broken railing and toppling him forward but he righted himself and moved forward. "Five- we have to get out." He said, falling short when he reached Five's doorway only to see the room empty and untouched- as untouched as it could get in a house that was falling apart around it. "Shit." He said, whirling around to find the figure he had thought was Five.
It was Vanya.
Her eyes were a stark white, striking as she walked through the house in a calm rushed gate. Rooms exploded behind her as she walked, gaze set distraught forward. She caught his gaze or- would have if it didn't look like she was looking straight through him. But that just made it all the more unsettling as Emery booked it down the hall, throwing himself over the banister, and landed on the main floor with a thud. He dropped to his knees to minimize the impact was leaped out of the way when the bottom of the steps gave a dull buzz before they exploded outwards, pushing Emery along with it.
He sat up, coughing, and looked around. The night sky was above him now. Vanya must have finished destroying the rest of the Academy. He hacked for a moment longer, clearing the dust from his chest as he stood up and moved through the wreckage until he found Diego and Klaus.
"Stop stop!" Klaus said, grabbing onto Diego who was sorting through the wreckage, searching for their mother. "She's gone. She- she's gone." Klaus said sorrowfully.
"Let me go, what are you doing?!"
"She's gone, okay? She's..."
"So what do you wanna do? You wanna— wanna w-w-walk away from this?"
"No." Klaus replied, response little more than a whisper.
"What about Pogo?" Diego asked.
"He didn't make it." A new voice said. Luther.
"What?"
"Vanya killed him." Luther said sourly.
"But Vanya couldn't."
"No, I saw it." Luther insisted. "Just before we got out."
Emery sighed. "He's right. Vanya she- she's different. Not herself."
"Mom. Now Pogo." Diego said, sinking to his knees in the wreckage.
Emery's frown deepened and then furthermore when Five came stumbling in, waving a piece of paper in front of him.
"Guys." He said, voice shaky. "This is it. The apocalypse is still on. The world ends today."
"I thought you said it was over." Klaus said.
"I was wrong, okay?" Five admitted. "This newspaper, I found it in the future the day I got stuck." He shook the newspaper with vigor. "The headline hasn't changed."
"No, that doesn't mean anything." Diego said, his voice distant like he was holding back tears- close— too close to breaking down. "The time could've been altered since that newspaper came out this morning."
"You're not listening to me. When I found it, I assumed this place came down along with everything else. But here we are. The Moon's still shining, the Earth is in one piece. But not the Academy."
Klaus snatched the paper from Five's hands. "I'm confused." He muttered.
"Then listen to me, you idiot!" Five said. "Vanya destroyed the Academy before the apocalypse. I thought Harold Jenkins was the cause, but he was the fuse. Vanya is the bomb. Vanya causes the apocalypse."
Helicopters sounded above them, light flashing in the distance and getting closer.
"We have to find Vanya." Emery said. "And soon."
"We gotta go," Diego said, standing back up when the lights shone down on them in a blinding light. "Regroup at the Super Star. Go!" Diego pushed everyone forward as they all rushed away. Klaus one way, Allison, Diego, and Luther the other way. Five grabbed onto Emery and teleported them out of the scene before they could be tormented with the helicopters and the lights any longer.
They reappeared in a bowling alley a second later and Emery collapsed on one of the benches, closing his eyes and panting until he regained his sense of breath. Eyes were plastered on him but he ignored them as he slumped back and waited for all the others to get there. Five joined him at his side a moment later after telling people in what Emery assumed was the nicest way possible for a boy with the weight of the world on his shoulder to get the hell back to their games.
"I tried to get her out." Emery said after a moment. He laughed but it was humorless. "I tried to get her out even after I saw her cut Allison's throat. She tried to kill her and I still tried to get her out."
"You care about people." Five said. "It's an admirable trait to have but sometimes it can be deadly."
"Good thing I don't have super strength then," Emery said and he was truly grateful for at least that.
The others didn't take too long to filter in after that as they all collapsed in the seats and once those were filled, they filed around the one unoccupied lane.
"I hate to be the one to say this, but everyone needs to prepare," Luther said, barely wasting a moment before he was speaking.
"For what?" Diego demanded.
"To do whatever it takes to stop Vanya." Luther said, receiving a hard hit from Allison who was beside him. "We may not have a choice, Allison."
"Bullshit." Diego said.
"There's always a choice." Emery said. "There's always options." There had to be.
"Yeah? Like what?" Five asked.
"I don't know." I don't know, the hardest answer to give.
"Look, what we decide, we need to find Vanya." Luther said, standing up. "And fast, okay? She could be anywhere."
"Or... here." Klaus said, shaking the newspaper he had taken from Five and shaking everyone what was on one of the pages. "Here, look at this." He showed everyone a concert poster with Vanya and her violin sharing the details of her performance that was happening tonight.
"That's right. Her concert is tonight." Diego said.
"Hello." A new voice said, too happy to fit into this bleary conversation. Everyone turned around to see a perky woman nervously smiling at them. "I hate to intrude, but my manager says if you're not gonna bowl, you gotta leave." She smiled, turned on her heel, and walked away, effectively revealing said manager who was standing behind the bar and not looking too happy.
"Who's turn is it?" Diego asked, trying to play it off.
"Oh for-" Luther managed to restrain himself from finishing his sentence as he kicked up a random ball and chucked it blindly. It hit one of the lanes with a lid thud and rolled until it knocked down all the pins in a lane that wasn't even theirs.
Allison wrote something on her pad and showed it to Luther. 'She's our sister.' It read.
"We're the only ones capable of stopping this." Luther said. "We have a responsibility to Dad." Emery hated to admit that he had to agree with Luther. There was no other way.
"To Dad?" Diego raged. "No, I've heard enough about—"
"He sacrificed everything to bring us back together." Luther interrupted.
"I'm with Luther on this one." Five said. "We can't give her a chance to fight back. There are billions of lives at stake. We're past trying to save just one."
"Hey, you know, guys, uh... maybe I could help." Klaus said.
"Now is not the time." Luther insisted.
"No, let him finish," Diego said. "He saved my life today."
"Is it true?"
"Yeah, yeah I did— take credit for it, the real hero... was Ben." He said, greeted with only silence. Stunned silence from Emery and unimpressed from everyone else— unbelieving. Klaus sighed. "Today... listen. Today, he punched me in the face. And earlier at the house, he was the one who saved Diego's life. Not me."
"You are unbelievable, Klaus."
"You want proof? Is that it? All right. I— I'll give you proof." He picked up a red bowling ball. "All right, it's showtime buddy." He tossed the ball. "Catch." He said but no one caught the ball. It just fell straight through where Ben was supposedly standing and clattered pitifully to the floor.
"Is there any way to silence that voice in your head that screams out to be the center of attention?" Luther asked.
"You know, I liked you a lot better before you got laid." Klaus insulted. "Which was- it— it wasn't his fault, 'cause he was ridiculously high, right? And— and the girl, she thought he was a furry. And-"
"Stop!" Diego silenced Klaus before he could make it even worse for Luther.
"Okay." He resigned.
Allison grabbed her notepad and left with a glare, ignoring Luther and his attempts at reaching her.
"Excuse me." A new voice said, highly pompous and way too excited for the night the world ended. Emery rolled his eyes but forced himself to meet the person that belonged to the voice. There he found a joyous woman with her son in tow a too big and bright smile plastered on her face. "It's my son Kenny's birthday today, and uhh- wouldn't your son and his boyfriend be happier playing with kids his own age?" She asked. "Assuming it's okay with your two dads." She finished.
Emery's eyes were wide now as she looked between Klaus and Diego seated together and then back to the woman who he had no idea was capable of making so many wrong assumptions in one sentence.
"I would rather chew off my own foot." Five responded, with malice, effectively scaring them off.
Five smiled for the barest moment before he was up and moving down the lane to the ball return.
"Five?" Emery called out after the boy as he left Diego and Klaus behind who he started arguing like an old married couple.
Five lifted a hatch and pulled something out from inside.
"Five?" Emery asked again more cautiously as he peered over the boy's shoulder, looking at a cylinder message bottle from the Commission.
"How the hell did she find me?" Five asked more to himself than anyone. He paused for a moment then he was frantically searching his uniforms lockers before he pulled something out. A wrapper. He unwrapped the thing and a moment later he was holding a small disk-shaped pocket up to the light. He exhaled. "She's good." He said, dropping the tracker and breaking it beneath the heel of his bowling shoes. "Jesus." He opened the cylinder, discarding the lid and the holder entirely as he held up a single slip of paper- a fortune cookie slip that you would find in the cookie.
Time marches on— or does it?
"Shit." Five cursed as he tucked the slip away and stepped back until he was gone into another area of the city- swallowed whole as he left Emery behind.
"Jesus fucking Christ, Five!" Emery himself cursed though much louder as he kicked the discarded cylinder and watched with a clenched jaw as it skittered across the floor.
He ignored the establishment's manager that was giving him the death glare across the area and stomped back towards Klaus and Diego who had finally stopped arguing when they saw Luther and Allison come back.
"All right." The man said. "Where's Five?" He asked.
"He left." Emery grit out.
"Oh for the life of... where'd he go?"
"Didn't tell me."
"Well, we're not waiting around for him. The concert starts in 30 minutes." Luther said.
"All right, so what's the plan?" Diego asked.
"Well, I think that, uh..." Luther struggled to find his words after being placed on the spot. Emery frowned. It wasn't like him to be like this when placed in a role of leadership. Not at all. "We got it the Icarus Theatre."
"That's a location, not a plan." Diego said. "What is that all you've got? Look, you wanna be Number One, fine, but you're gonna have to get us on the same page. Because right now, we're all over the place."
"You're right." Luther admitted. "We need a plan."
But before he could come up with said plan, shrieks erupted around the joint and that was the only warning they got before they were showered with bullets.
"Get down!" Emery shouted over the noise, pulling Klaus to the ground where they used the tables as cover.
"Who the hell are these guys?"
"Maybe they're here for Kenny's birthday!" Klaus added in helpfully.
"No, I'm pretty sure they're here for us!" Luther shouted over the noise.
Diego groaned and then pulled something from his suit. He jumped up and whirled, letting his arm fly loose as a dagger found its mark in one of the shooters. It must have set off some sort of chain reaction for the lights went dark and then blue and then upbeat music started playing- perfect for a certain someone's birthday party but not for the kiss of death.
Diego kept throwing knives, Luther- heavy bowling balls, and Klaus even managed to nail one of the masked shooters in the face with a full-fledged birthday cake before ducking down beside Emery once more.
"Come on, Emerino. Do something." He urged but Emery just shook his head and covered his ears against the gunshots. Who knows what might happen if he tried again? But Klaus was adamant and a shriek from one of the kids left behind and caught in the crossfire brought him from his daze and Emery took a deep breath before he turned around and stood just for a second long enough to gauge what was going on. The people pursuing them were dressed all in black and donning face masks used in bombings so they could breathe through the chemicals. If all they were going to do was shoot at them, Emery felt like they were capable of much worse.
He thrust his hands, one for each masked individual, and twisted his pal into a fist, turning it and pulling- sucking the light that lit up the eyes of the mask into a warning red.
Groans sounded out as electricity sparked and the masks went dark, the men beneath them crumpling to the ground.
"They're blocking the exit!" Klaus exclaimed when he pulled Emery back down to safety after just narrowly missing another gunshot wound.
"What's the plan now Luther?"
"The lanes! Let's go!" Luther shouted out but Emery was moving before the finishing words even left the man's mouth, darting forward and down the lanes as strobe lights pounded the walls and the music beat through the floor with every step he took.
He flung himself into the pins, barely managing to cover his head before it got a new set of purple bruised and slid into the other side where he rolled into a stance and tried his best not to fall over when he immediately pushed himself into a run and helped all the others get up and out.
Out into the night and impossibly closer to the Icarus Theatre which very well could be their last memory before the final chord of death sounded upon them.