"That can't be good," I mumbled as I watched the tower begin to fall. There was no doubt that it was going to come down right around us. "Yeah we gotta move," I told my team. I looked back at them, neither of my teammates were in the best of shape to be doing much of anything. Bloodhound was still injured from the kraber bullet and Mirage was highly concussed. I grabbed each of them by their arms and started running. At least, the best I could dragging both of them behind me.
The sound of the falling tower behind me, I ran as fast as my feet could take me. The tower was falling fast and there was no way we would be able to outrun it lengthwise. We were running out of the sides. However as it was coming down, I began to realize the tower itself was also quite wide. There was a loud crash as the tower came down right behind our heels. The impact kicked up a large amount of dirt and dust which knocked us all down to the ground again.
I began to cough the dust out of my lungs as I rolled myself over onto my back. Beside me, Mirage was groaning. I then looked over to Bloodhound, who was lying on their face. I rolled myself over onto my back and stuck a hand out to Bloodhound, smacking them a few times lightly till I heard them groan.
"Glad," I coughed again. "You two didn't die." As I spoke I heard the announcer come to life,
"All living legends must return to the dropship." I sat myself up.
"What?" Mirage and Bloodhound slowly eased themselves up as well.
"Yeah I don't think that was supposed to happen," Mirage mumbled as the announcer began to repeat itself, also adding that no more fighting was prohibited. I looked over at him, the entire right side of his face had now turned purple from where his boyfriend had kicked him with his robotic legs. I then look over at Bloodhound, whose wound from the Kraber had opened up again upon them hitting the ground. I was the first to stand up, being in the best condition and held out a hand to Mirage.
"C'mon," I said, pulling him up. However, as I did so, Mirage had begun to heave and I only had a second to jump backwards before he threw up, mostly hitting my shoes. "Dude!" I exclaimed.
"Anyone else really dizzy?" Mirage mumbled, before stumbling back over. I had caught him again and helped ease him back down to the ground.
"He's concussed," Bloodhound said, trying to stand up. I went over to them and helped them stand up.
"We're out of syringes," I said looking down at myself. I glanced back over to Mirage, "Stay with us Mirage."
"Pssh," he waved an arm out. "I'm f-fine. We nee-need to g-go!"
"That I can agree with," I said as I looked around. I wasn't sure how I was supposed to get an injured Bloodhound and a concussed Mirage out of this place in one piece. "Can you walk?" I asked, looking to Bloodhound. They were clutching their injured arm and nodded weakly. "Okay. Okay, I got Mirage." Carefully, I helped Mirage stand up again and I wrapped one of his arms around my shoulders.
For a brief second I thought that we might be able to make it out of here like this. That was when I heard a high pitched screech coming from overhead. The three of us all looked up.
"What the hell?!" I exclaimed, looking at the creature flying above my head. "Tell me that's not a mini dragon."
"A Flyer," Bloodhound said, carefully taking out their Longbow again as the creature flew closer towards us, still screeching.
"Have these been on this planet the whole time?!"
"The frequencies emitted from towers like Repulser keep them away from civilization," Bloodhound explained. "With that tower down..." they trailed off. The flyer in the sky make a swoop towards us and I could see it baring its teeth. I screamed a little as I jumped out of the way, dragging Mirage with me. Bloodhound fired a shot and hit the flyer in the head, sending it flying to the ground.
"You, you know w-what else that tower, k-kept away?" Mirage stuttered. I squinted my eyes and looked over to Bloodhound.
"The leviathans," I heard them say under their breath. "We need to move." They said speaking up. "Now!" I was about to question what a leviathan looked to where Bloodhound was gazing and saw one of the giant creatures in the water slowly making its way closer to the island. My eyes went wide.
"Those things come on land?!" Bloodhound nodded,
"We need to go," they said. I looked down at the screen on my wrist. Whoever was in control of the games had added different locations on it to where they were going to be sending these emergency ships to take us off of the island.
"There's one landing outside of Market," I said. "That's our closest one." Bloodhound nodded again and I looked back up at the sky where I could see a swarm of those flyer creatures. "Those are herbivores right?" I asked, trying to lighten the mood as the three of us started heading towards Market. Bloodhound looked at me and I could tell even with the mask they did not appreciate the timing of my joke We were moving almost as fast as the Leviathans approaching the island as I had to carry Mirage, who was now drifting off. Bloodhound was moving slow as well on account of their injured shoulder as well as they were still scanning the area with the Longbow.
I felt my stomach doing backflips, clearly none of this was meant to happen and clearly someone had done this on purpose. But why? My mind started racing with thoughts about if it was the IMC attempting to destroy more information. And if it wasn't?
"Sly," Bloodhound interrupted my thoughts. I snapped my head over to them and they nodded up ahead. I followed their gaze and saw a few people up ahead,
"So, we don't shoot them, right?" I asked. Bloodhound nodded
"Sh-shoot them!" Mirage suddenly exclaimed, seeming to be full of energy all of a sudden. I quickly smacked his gun away. I looked back at the people in front of us, they were positioned blocking our way to market. They had their guns out, pointed at us.
"Do, do they know, not to shoot?" I asked. Bloodhound had now raised their longbow at them as well. I looked back at the people. "Hey!" I shouted at them. "We're not going to kill each other right? We need help!" I watched as they slowly put their weapons down and one of the figures began running up to us while a second starting moving a little slower behind. When I could make out who the team was I couldn't help but sigh in relief.
"Amor!" Octane exclaimed as he ran up. Once he was at us he took Mirage out of my arms and lowered him onto the ground. Octane ripped the mask and goggles off of his face
Mirage looked up, saw who it was and grinned.
"Oh, h-hey there," Mirage said, trying to sound casual. "You're cute." With one finger Mirage booped Octane on the nose. Octane looked up at me,
"What happened?!"
"You kicked him in the face!" I exclaimed. Octane's face flushed, embarrassed.
"Well I didn't want to shoot him..."
"Hey rook!" I looked up and Bangalore had already thrown a syringe at me. I caught it and handed it off to Octane who began to apply it to Mirage.
"Do you guys know what happened?" I asked. Bangalore shook her head.
"All I know is that we need to get out of here ASAP."
"Where's Natalie?" Bangalore looked over her shoulder.
"She's alive." I tilted my head, displaying my confusion. "This is her arena and someone's destroying it." I nodded a few times. "She's processing." Bangalore looked over to Bloodhound.
"Surprised you aren't dead after that kraber shot." I could hear Bloodhound chuckle a little under their breath.
"You ran off before you could finish the job." Bangalore grinned a little.
"Well I'm glad. We're going to need you if we're going to make it out of here."
"Ay amigos!" Octane exclaimed from the ground. "Do we have any more heals? That one did nothing!"
"I'm f-fine!" Mirage tried to pipe in.
"We're out." I said.
"Us to." Bangalore added. There were more screeches over our heads and all of us looked up. More flyers. "Octane and Sly, you two get Mirage inside Market to where Wattson is taking cover." Bangalore instructed while swinging around one of rifles. "We'll cover you." I nodded and helped Octane stand Mirage up and the three of us began to hobble towards Market as Bangalore and Bloodhound began opening fire on the flyers which had started swooping down on them.
"You're going to be fine amor," Octane was saying to Mirage as we walked. "We'll get out of here." Mirage mumbled an uh huh as we dragged him inside. Wattson had set up a few of her fences and since I was right beside Octane I was able to slip through with him. Octane guided us into one of the side rooms where Wattson was sitting on the ground, head in her lap. She looked up briefly when she saw us but quickly put her head back down. "We'll watch Mirage," Octane said to me. "You go help." I nodded again and stood up as Octane threw me his tag to get through the fences.
I made a dash for back outside where the flyer heard had now increased and Bangalore and Bloodhound were fighting two each. I swung my gun around and started aiming at the flying creatures as well, taking down one that was above Bangalore. She looked over and grinned as we then focused on the next.
"We need to get inside!" Bangalore yelled over the sound of the wailing flyers. I was standing closest to the door.
"Go!" I yelled, "I'll cover!" The two of them started running towards me as I unloaded another magazine of my flatline into one of the creatures. I was so focused on keeping one of them back that I hardly noticed the second flying closer and closer to me. I only noticed when Bloodhound tackled me to the ground seconds before the flyer bit into me. Only now, the flyer bit into them. "Bloodhound!" I yelled as the bird tried to grab another hold of them. I wrapped my arms around their waist so it couldn't drag them off as Bangalore came back out with her weapon. She hit the bird in the head and it let go of Bloodhound and quickly she reached down and dragged the two of us in, slamming the giant door shut behind us. "Bloodhound!" I screamed again as they were pulled off of me.
The flyer had left multiple wounds in them and there was a lot of blood. Bangalore was trying to access the damage and she pushed me back when I tried to help.
"Go signal down the ship!" she demanded, taking off one of Bloodhound's layers to wrap around the wound. I nodded frantically and grabbed a thermite off of the ground and climbed up to the roof, praying the flyers had gone. I could hear the ship above and I activated the thermite as if it was a flare and tossed it onto the ground in front of me. The ship was about to fly over but I saw it stop and begin to turn around. I waved my arms like a manic at it and I realized I had been crying under my mask.
"Everyone get up here!" I yelled down the zip line. "We're getting out of here!"
~~~~~~~~~~~~
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