The vault was huge. Massive. It seemed to sprawl out endlessly, with no ending in sight due to the pitch black walls. The alarms had stopped.
I wanted to hurl. My heart clenched inside of my chest and I grabbed onto Navy to steady myself. There were tubes. Massive tubes, enough to fit...humans. Humans were shoved, pressed against the glass, as if they were shoved down with a stick. Any shape, any gender, all contorted in a strange yellow liquid. Wires were shoved in their bodies, monitoring heart rate and whatnot. It was sickening.
The Destroyers really love their experiments.
I shuddered, remembering my own torments.
Needles.
Drugs.
Scalpels.
My blood.
I could only imagine what the rest of my friends had gone through while they were sat at the lab.
Navy slowly encouraged me forward, trying to stay with the group. Mindlessly, I followed. As if my whole body had gone numb.
"He's transforming them." Angie choked out.
It took me a bit, but I saw what she meant. As we neared the end of the room, the bodies slowly transitioned to identical models of Grady. The Chief of the Destroyers.
I started crying. These were evil, evil people. Cold, black hate filled my body. The kind that blinds you. The kind that's dangerous.
But no matter how terrible I got, no matter how distorted their poor, defenseless bodies got, I couldn't tear my gaze away.
All of my person was screaming at me to leave, to run, to get away, to never come back.
But I stayed.
I felt as if I owed these people something. If this 'prophecy' is true, I'm the only one who can stop these, these, these...
Murderers. My mind whispered.
Cold blooded, evil, murderers.
There was no word to express how much I wanted these people dead. Every last one. Even if there was a janitor who dared work for these psychopaths, they're gone.
Dead.
I continued to soak in the rage, the anger, the hate. Seething at each body trappe-
No.
No.
It can't be.
Blindly, I charged at the giant tube in front of me. I slammed angry fists down onto the glass. Through my vision blurred by tears, I made out a familiar face.
"Not, not her..." Angie trailed off. She ran to help me. We banged on the glass, furiously trying to break it. Angie sliced through this glass like paper using her shields, and a mangled body rolled out.
Core.
"They must have caught her when I escaped." I said through sobs. "I blow darted her in the neck and just, left her there. She's here because of me." I crumpled onto the ground. Massive cries os sadness and pain wracked my body, sending me spiraling into the darkest depths of my mind.
"Hey." A voice brought me back to reality. The cruel, painful reality I live in.
"I'm here." Navy.
He held me there on the ground. I was vaguely aware of Raven and Angie trying to heal Core with potions, with Jackson removing the strange yellow liquid with his powers.
Because of everything, every sound I made, every moment I wasted, we didn't hear the footsteps.
Didn't hear the cruel laughter.
Until it was too late.
"I see you found my little cloning project." The blond man cackled. "Easiest way to be in a million places at one time. We all share one mind, you know."
The Chief. And about 20 goons. My friends took a battle stance. But I grabbed Jackson's wrist and said the words we all knew were true at heart.
"We can't win this fight." My hoarse voice whispered out.
One by one, my friends at next to me, protecting Core's frail body, and awaiting our deaths.
"No wonder you're the smart one." Grady laughed. "But you didn't mean to say that." His eyes went wide.
"Phoenix hinted at me having a bigger plan than ending the discrimination against my glorious regime. But not even she has any idea of what I have planned." His voice echoed throughout the halls, giving them an eerie feeling.
"Only I have ever successfully done what every other musicpotentia has failed to do. Only I HAVE THIS POWER!"
"Are you going to start monologuing?" Jackson asked sarcastically.
"Oh yes I am, dear Jackson. Yes I am." He paused, preparing for the biggest villain monologue given. As if on cue, a shieldpotentia trapped us under a green force field.
"You see, anything I sing will come true. To some extent. Using your power requires...energy." He slowed his speech and staggered towards us like he was drunk. "But not if you infuse your voice with something else. Isn't that right Cone?"
Angie looked away, unable to face her father. Her despicable father.
"Every thought you've ever had, every problem you've thought you've solved, has been, from, me. Me me me me me."
He laughed whilst my mind raced. But that would mean-
"Oh yes Nia!" His voice escalated, to quick, loud syllables. "I've been pulling at the strings, pulling at your thoughts, your words your whole, meaningless lives."
"Why not just kill us. Kill us, here, now, overthrow the world. It would take time, with your body's limited energy, but it could be done." Raven said.
"Life's more fun, toying with the unpredictable." Grady laughed, but this seemed to come from somewhere else, like a demon inside of him. Even the goons seemed, thrown off.
"I can do anything! I WILL HAVE THE WORLD, and have the most fun doing it." His voice became ragged and strained, yet powerfully toxic.
"You can't win, Chief." Core spoke. I whirled around and instantly regretted it. Her poor face. She was midway through morphing into that monster. Fresh tears sprung to my eyes. My fault.
"Of course I can, you think I don't know about your little ring that shields you from my power? I can just float it to my hand."
He took a deep breath in.
"Float here, float here. Right in front of me." He continued on in this mesmerizing feat. Slowly, the ring slid off of her finger and twisted through the air. His voice became soft and alluding, like a Siren.
"We can't win." I whispered to Core.
She looked down at my finger, as did I. The ring that was supposed to be there, given to me by Kaz. If only I had put stupid, childish feelings aside. I might have found a way out. But Angie-
Nope. One look from the Chief and his ring was now in his possession.
"See, this is exactly WHAT I'm talking about!" Grady spewed out. "Look at your utterly defeated faces. This is what makes life worth living."
That sick twisted- "YOU _______!" I shouted. "I'LL KILL YOU! I'LL LET YOU BURN IN HELL AND KILL EVERYTHING YOU HOLD DEAR YOU TWISTED MANIAC!"
"I hate you." I cried.
"Oh I know! I know sweet Phenomena! Your clever name and spiteful attitude. I created that."
I was about to deny it when Core sat up with a stick in her hand. Plucked from Navy's hair, no bigger than a pinky finger. It must have gotten stuck while we were trying to sneak onto the castle grounds.
But Core looked at it as if she had found a charming new pet.
"You see, Chief. You miscalculated. You failed."
"How so? I can tell you're stalling."
"I have that power, Chief. The one you fear. The one thing, the one thing that could end it all. You see, when I decided, no, was influenced to join the Destroyers as a spy, I thought to myself, I needed protection. So I used my power, the power to manipulate reality, to my advantage. I made myself immune to any potentia's powers. In fact, the exact spell was-"
She was cut off my the most beautiful, smooth, peaceful voice I had ever heard tried to sing, "I remove your-"
"Shut up." Core said with her hand outstretched. The goons let out a gasp. Grady tried to speak, but couldn't. "It's rude to interrupt."
"As I was saying, the spell was, I enchant this stick so that when I break it, any potentia's power will never work on me, and never affect my wellbeing in any way. Now you see, Grady, you miscalculated. I bet you said something along the lines of, oh, I don't know, the same thing. But you see Grady, I didn't use my magic on you. I used it on myself. I erased any prior knowledge of my existence away from everyone's mind except my brothers. You see, Grady, that cost me the world. My baby, gone. But it was worth it. So you die."
Hope. It fluttered in my chest, blossomed into a spark. We were going to live.
"And now, you are powerless, but we can't escape. Stalemate, right?"
Welp, there goes my hopeful spark.
"But there is one way." Core's voice slowed and quieted down. "To bypass your power."
I sat there, confused. It was, impossible. Right? How was she going to pull it off?
But I realized too late, far too late, to stop it.
"I enchant this twig so that when I break it, every word Grady, the Chief of the Destroyers has said, is useless. His current influence will be no more. And his powers will vanish and never, ever return to him. And the people in this room trapped under a force field will be instantly teleported to wherever Kaz, the leader of the Fighters, needs them to be. And Grady, the Chief of the Destroyers will fall over, dead. No spirit, no soul, no afterlife. And I enchant-"
But the force field was lowered, and Grady rushed forward, but the twig was snapped.
The power, released.
The world around us collapsed. As if the fabric of time fell apart around us. I took a glance at Core's mangled face one last time.
She smiled.
"Go save the world, Nia."
She paused, the last of her body dissolving into billions of particles.
"Go win the war. Take care of Dona-"
"But that sounds like-"
Then she was gone.
"Goodbyes."