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thelanternwielder · 7 years ago

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Too Late - Part Eight

Author’s Note:

Although this chapter isn’t too lengthy, you might notice the “keep reading” link below. I have gone back and put the link on all of the chapters because, originally, I was ignorant of the ediquette of posting fanfiction on Tumblr. Forgive me; it is my first attempt at this sort of thing!

Previous part: >Here<

The Start: >Here<

EDIT 2018/07/05: Part Nine is >Here< finally!

Tell me what you think. Feedback is always appreciated.

It was morning time. The cafeteria was quietly buzzing with the chattering of S.T.O.R.M. personnel while they grabbed their breakfasts and took them to their tables on trays.

X-Ray had collected his meal and was lethargically walking towards the cluster of tables at which his teammates sat.

He reached them. His friends turned to greet him.

Bravo said with a smile, “Hey –“ it was dropped in shock, “Whoa…you look wiped out, dude.”

The others were just as surprised.

X-Ray regarded them with incredibly tired eyes that he battled to keep open. He was losing. He wandered over to the seat next to Alpha and placed his tray on the table. He clumsily slumped onto the chair.

Alpha frowned at the bespectacled boy, “What happened to you?”

He weakly replied, “Couldn’t sleep.”

Tango remarked, “What? Too much screen time again?”

“No,” the boy explained with groans, “Nightmare. Woke me up.”

He slid his fingers under his glasses and rubbed his eyes.

Kilo had a mouthful of toast as he spoke, “That must’ve been some nightmare to keep you awake.”

X-Ray gazed at his friends as his eyes filled with fear thinking about last night.

Alpha nudged the boy with his elbow and reassured, “Hey, it’s only a bad dream.”

“But it felt so real.”

X-Ray saw his comrades’ faces of concern. It prompted him to describe the dream.

“I was strapped down on my back. Couldn’t move. There were these…glowing figures. They were green and made out of slime. One of them approached me and grabbed my head. The slime creeped across my face and into my mouth and nose. I couldn’t breathe. I thought I was going to die. The last thing I remember was the grin that monster had while I struggled.”

He shuddered, “Brrrr!”

The feeling of second-hand horror had spread around the table and leached into the children as they listened to X-Ray’s recount.

Tango’s eyes flickered to the side. Those creatures sounded familiar.

“That is so eerie,” she commented, leaning towards X-Ray, “I’ve seen those monsters in one of my dreams that I had last week.”

“Really?” Bravo’s eyebrows were raised.

Kilo crunched on his toast quizzically, bending his ears to the girl.

“Yes,” she said, “Although, I was able to fight them off with my Monsuno. I ended up flying away. They couldn’t catch me.”

Alpha’s eyes sparked with realisation.

“I’ve seen them too,” he smugly smirked, “but they weren’t able to touch me. I was wearing impenetrable steel. I was slicing through them with my sword.”

The girl of the group snarked, “Let me guess: you were a knight.”

“Yeah,” Alpha was serious.

Bravo pretended to cough to disguise his mocking words, “Knight kink.”

“What? Hey!” Alpha slammed his hands on the table as he shot up.

Kilo began to snicker, trying his hardest not to choke as he swallowed.

Bravo held his open hands to the standing boy, slouching back, “What’s wrong, Red? I just coughed.”

Tango was infected by the giggles. It would have claimed X-Ray as another victim, but he was too exhausted to pick up what Bravo had said.

The ginger boy glared at them, “Unlike you knuckleheads, I have an appreciation for a time when people were bold, daring and proudly fought with honour! And none of this tech that we use existed either, so you were relying on your strength and fortitude to win.”

The group’s laughter had calmed as he sat down again. The commotion had caught the attention of another person as he was collecting his breakfast: Chase. The boy in blue began to dawdle past Strike Squad’s seats, eavesdropping.

Kilo gestured to Tango, Alpha and X-Ray with his piece of toast, “So, y’all have seen these weird slime monsters in your dreams?” Chase’s ears pricked, “The same slime monsters?”

Tango shrugged, “Looks like it.”

Chase approached one end of the tables. Strike Squad noticed.

The boy was polite, “Hey guys. I was going to sit with the rest of the team,” he pointed behind himself with his thumb, “You wanna join us today?”

Strike Squad were somewhat suspicious. The two groups never really sat together. They were also still fierce rivals, despite working on the same side.

Chase tried to persuade them into the truce, “C’mon. A change is as good as a holiday, am I right? Eh? Eh?”

“Alright, I’ll bite,” Alpha said, standing up with his tray, “but just this once, Suno.”

“That’s the spirit, Alpha,” Chase smiled, “Any more takers?”

The rest of Strike Squad glanced at each other. They relaxed their scepticism.

“Only for one day. Can’t hurt,” Kilo mentioned as he got up.

The rest followed him, picking their trays up. X-Ray was a sloth in comparison to his friends, lagging behind them.

The boy in blue beamed as he led Strike Squad to Team Core-Tech’s table cluster.

At one of them, Bren saw Chase approaching. He then spotted Strike Squad. The boy with glasses had an expression that was a cross between bemusement and amusement.

“Uh, hi Chase,” he greeted.

Chase sat next to him, grinning back. Alpha sat opposite Chase, next to Jinja.

Jinja regarded the red-headed boy carefully.

“Deciding to sit with us today, huh?”

He looked back with a half-smile, nodding slightly, “Yeah.”

Dax and Beyal paused from their eating and glanced down the tables. Strike Squad had definitely joined them for breakfast. They were not imagining anything.

Dax waved mutedly at the people at the other end, mouth still full of cereal. Bravo waved back.

Before commencing his meal, like the others had already done with a clatter, Chase turned to the boy with the buzzcut, “Hey Kilo. There was something that you said that caught my attention, something about seeing green glowing slime monsters.”

The S.T.O.R.M. specialist was about to take another bite of his toast before he was addressed.

He answered, “Er, yeah. I did. Some of us have been seeing them in our dreams.”

Bravo added, nudging the tired boy in between he and Alpha, “Little dude over here had a nightmare about them.”

X-Ray grunted in confirmation, chewing slowly.

Tango asked, “Why are you interested, you snoop?”

Chase glanced at his team before replying. Both Jinja and Beyal were in reflective states.

“I’m only curious because I’ve seen them in a couple of my dreams recently.”

He took his first bite.

Beyal spoke up with a revelation, “So have I.”

Jinja was the same, “Me too.”

“Whoa…” Bren’s words were trailing off with unease, “That’s so spooky…”

Jinja turned to Strike Squad, “Were they attacking you in your dreams? They were in mine.”

“Attacking?” X-Ray whimpered, “They were trying to kill me!”

Chase gave a troubled look to the boy.

He hesitantly replied, “They were trying to murder me too. They seemed to really despise me, but I was able to retaliate in my dreams.”

“Same,” Tango was beginning to see the similarities.

Alpha nodded, “Yeah, ditto.”

Dax looked at Beyal, “What about you, Monkfish?”

“They tried but they could not land a sludge-coated hand on me.”

Dax turned his gaze to the rest of the group.

“And it’s just been you three,” he gestured to Alpha, Tango and X-Ray, “over there that have had these dreams.”

Kilo responded, “Bravo and I haven’t had those dreams.”

The blond boy shook his head.

Chase added, “And it’s Jinja, Beyal and I who have seen these ghouls too.”

“This can’t just be a coincidence,” Tango stated.

“My thought exactly,” Jinja concurred.

Dax glanced at Beyal again. The monk was pondering deeply.

“Monkfish?”

Beyal blinked out of his brief trance.

“I have realised something,” he said in his neutral tone, “It did not feel like a normal dream whenever those creatures appeared. They felt like visions.”

Everyone stopped eating upon hearing the last sentence. The clanks of cutlery on trays served as a sort of record scratch. There was an astounded silence at the tables.

Bravo was the one to break it, turning to the opposite end at where the monk sat, “Visions.”

“Yes, and every time those otherworldly beings appeared I have also seen the symbol of an X with a line through it.”

Bren’s eyes widened, struck with recognition, “Hey, I remember seeing that symbol at those ice caves.”

X-Ray gulped.

The monk continued, “I do too, before I was kidnapped.”

Alpha added, “And I remember seeing the symbol in my dream. It was on the armour of a knight that I was versing, except it was actually one of the monsters inside it.”

Chase gave the red-headed boy a mystified look before turning to Beyal.

He pointed out, “Isn’t that symbol the one you saw in your vision when you were captured?”

“Yes,” Beyal’s eyes grew as he began to slot the pieces of the surreal puzzle together.

He regarded his peers, “The eight glowing figures…I think I know who they are.”

Team Core-Tech were more familiar with the monk’s vision than Strike Squad, but everyone had a rough idea of what he spoke of.

“Who?” prompted Chase.

“The blue ones are you, me and Jinja. The yellow ones are Alpha, X-Ray and Tango.”

The monk hesitated. Alpha’s eyes narrowed.

“I thought you said eight. That’s only six.”

“The other two, the red ones, I am unsure,” Beyal’s voice was full of uncertainty, “but I believe they were meant to be Dom Pyro and Hargrave.”

The others, who were following the monk’s train of thought, had become derailed by his perplexing remark.

Bren’s eyebrow was cocked, “Uh, what brought you to that conclusion?”

The monk elaborated, “Those dreams that we have had were, in fact, visions.”

Chase stated with scepticism towards his friend, “But I thought you could only get visions if you had the Monsuno voice.”

Amazement began to swell among some of the group at the implication of the boys’ words.

Bren dampened the swell, “Hey, I was able to have a vision…once…and I haven’t been visited by these monsters.”

Chase recalled that moment, “B, you were holding my head while I was meditating. I projected that vision onto you.”

“Yeah,” the spectacled boy crossed his arms stubbornly, “but it still was a vision.”

Kilo had a look of envy flash upon his face.

Dax turned to Beyal, pointing his spoon at him, “Didn’t you do that to Mr Deranged and the Creepy Butler when you were tied up?”

“They did see my vision,” the monk responded, “and were able to do so without touching me.”

Dax’s spoon drooped as his eyes popped.

“That’s not possible,” he declared.

“Not unless they have the Monsuno voice.”

The boy with dreads banged his hands on the table, “You’re bleazing kidding me!”

Beyal reservedly replied, “I am neither bleazing nor kidding.”

Dax had an immense feeling of injustice towards the truth. The others were still attempting to digest all of the new information on top of their meals.

“So, we have this psychic power,” Alpha had a wily grin stretch across his cheeks, “and we didn’t even know it.”

“So do our enemies, apparently,” Chase observed, “And those slime monsters that keep appearing,” he glanced at Bren and Beyal, “are connected, not only to all of us, but to the mountains.”

X-Ray hunched his shoulders, “I don’t wanna go back there.”

Tango commented, “Something tells me that’s where we’ll end up.”

The two unified teams continued their breakfasts, clanking and crunching, reflecting on their discussion and what it could entail for the future.

However, Beyal still had a question left about his enigmatic vision: who was the ninth figure that burst through the floor meant to be? Its crimson colour suggested that it was someone who was associated with Eklipse. But there couldn’t possibly be another member of that team that possessed the Monsuno voice, he reasoned.

The monk mulled it over, munching away.

Meanwhile, in the Eklipse Resistance ship, another mystery was unfolding: The Curious Caper of the Missing Madman. Nobody had seen Dom Pyro get up that morning. He had vanished, it seemed.

Hargrave was the self-appointed detective on the case, determined to solve it as quickly as possible. He was heading straight towards the control room to review the security footage of the last twenty-four hours.

He marched down the hallway that led to the room and abruptly halted when he entered.

Before the butler was Dom Pyro, still in his pyjamas, sleeping awkwardly with his head on one of the chairs in the middle of the room. The rest of the slumbering man was draped along the ground.

Hargrave wandered up to behind the chair, regarded the man for a second and placed his hands on it.

Taking a step back, the butler yanked the chair from underneath the man’s head.

Bang!

The man awoke with a jolt from smacking his head on the floor. The butler contently pushed the chair to the side. He stood in front of the man with his hands behind his back, watching.

Dom blinked, powering up. He lifted himself drowsily to his hands and knees. His eyes met dress shoes. He followed the figure upwards.

“Oh, hello Clockwork Man,” he was dazed, “What are you doing in my bedroom?”

The butler corrected him, “You’re in the control room, Dom.”

“Hm?” the man sat up, gazing around.

He looked back at the butler, “How did I get here?” he clutched his head, “And why does my head hurt?”

“I was sincerely hoping you would be able to tell me but clearly not,” the butler raised an eyebrow, “Perhaps you were sleep-walking and fell, which would explain the sore head.”

Dom shook his head, “But I don’t sleep-walk.”

“How peculiar.”

The butler went to the console and switched the computer on.

The man in pyjamas got up, “I thought I went to bed after what happened last night.”

The butler’s fingers began to rattle the keyboard as he accessed the security footage.

He queried, “Was there some sort of incident?”

“You didn’t hear the squelching sounds?”

He turned to the pyjama-clad man with a furrowed brow, “No.”

Dom pointed to himself with his hand, “Well, I heard this squelching, along with growling, outside my door. It was keeping me up,” he folded his digits into a tight fist as his eyes widened with excitement, “So, I decided to get up and track it down, whatever it was.”

The butler faced the massive screen again, “Why am I not surprised?”

He summoned the footage of the area in front of the bedrooms during last night. He began to speed through it, searching for any movements. The cameras had a night-vision setting so darkness wasn’t an issue.

He paused it when Dom suddenly popped out of his room.

“There I am!” the man recognised himself, “I told you that I got up.”

The butler scrutinised the man in the footage. He noticed something baffling about him.

“Your eyes are closed.”

“Huh?!” Dom’s jaw dropped, “But I was awake! I swear!”

“Our cameras do not lie; those eyes are shut tight.”

Dom was quite bewildered. He was certain of what was real before seeing the contrary on screen.

The footage was played at normal speed. The man in the video was striding down the hallway, as if his eyes were open.

Dom began to narrate, noticing that his movements mirrored what he had experienced when he believed he was awake, “After poking my head out of my room, I spotted this light at one of the ends of the corridor. I approached it. That was where the sounds were coming from.”

As the man in the footage drew near the corner of the hallway, he began to sneak.

But there was no light. In fact, he crept towards nothing.

The butler asked, watching the footage with disbelief, “What colour was the light?”

“Green.”

The butler’s pulse seemed to hasten at that moment. The man in the video suddenly froze and regarded the emptiness with what appeared to be fright.

Dom commented, “I discovered this slimy monster slinking in the hallway.”

The man in the footage began to back away, “It was snarling at me, reaching towards me with its sticky tentacles. It was staring at me with all those eyes. So many eyes!”

The man bolted away, down the corridor and around the corner. Hargrave rapidly threw onto the screen the footage of the camera that would have seen the man. He began to track the man in this manner.

The butler was trying to make sense of the madness, “So, you found this…slime monster and it proceeded to chase you.”

“Yes,” Dom crossed his arms, “I was meant to be the one hunting it, not the other way around!”

The man abruptly skidded to a stop at a corner and tried to go the other way. He was impeded by some invisible force. He glanced at both ends.

Dom said, “At this point, there were these two humanoid figures in front of me, coming towards me. Behind me were three more.”

“There were five of them?” the butler was now horrified, recognising the type of monsters the madman described.

Dom smirked, “Silly slime people! They thought they could trap me,” he chuckled, “Oh, how wrong they were!”

The man in the footage suddenly charged towards the corner, seemingly dodging the obstacles that stood in front of him. He banged against the wall with his back before slipping away.

The man was running so fast that Hargrave had some trouble keeping up with him. He gave up trying to make the footage flow seamlessly.

“For someone who is meant to be asleep, you are awfully rapid!”

The madman chortled again.

Eventually, the camera for the control room was reached. The shut-eyed man slid into the room, head twitching about as if his eyes were seeking something.

Dom’s smile disappeared, “This time, they really did corner me. I could hear them, shouting, calling out to me.”

The butler wondered if the monster with the red streaks under its eyes was one of the beings that pursued the madman.

In the video, the man approached one of the chairs and picked it up. He held it in a weaponised way. He then flattened himself against the wall next to the entryway.

The butler’s eyes narrowed. Another stupid smile appeared on the madman’s face, knowing fully what was about to happen.

The man in the footage, all of a sudden, began to wave the chair violently at his invisible foes. He swung with such force that the swishing that it generated could be picked up by the camera’s microphone. It would have been enough to permanently knock out someone.

“Oh, my giddy aunt!” the butler exclaimed, “What are you doing?”

“Defending myself,” the madman’s teeth gleamed.

Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!

Eventually, the man in the video put the chair down.

Dom explained, “Those slime monsters ran away,” he hid his teeth, “but I chased after them with the chair.”

The man began to sway while facing the front of the chair. He collapsed forwards, chair sliding as his head landed on it. The footage then paused.

Dom frowned, “I tried to catch the monsters, but they were too slippery and escaped. Then I went to bed afterwards. Why didn’t I act that out?”

He looked at the butler who was in a state of contemplation as he cupped his chin with a finger and a thumb.

“Clockwork Man?” he tilted his head to the side.

The butler faced him, “Those monsters that you speak of are the same ones that appeared in my last vision,” he gestured to him, “an elaborate dream. However, there were only three in mine.”

Dom glanced at the screen, “A vision. I was enacting a vision,” he began to lean on the terminal, body more angled towards the butler, “So, you reckon that I should’ve only seen three of those things.”

The butler suggested, “Maybe your vision is to inform us that there are actually five of those hideous creatures out there. I hope not,” he sighed, “but visions normally come true, don’t they?”

“Normally.”

The butler turned back to the computer and closed the application for accessing the ship’s security footage.

He briefly regarded Dom from head to toe and remarked, “I recommend that you get dressed. You don’t want to keep the Doctor waiting, do you?”

“No,” the madman began to wander towards the doorway, “I hope we do something today. That dream has put me in the mood for a hunt.”

The butler soon followed suit and departed from the control room, now satisfied that he had closed the case on the morning’s mystery.

As for Dom’s wish, it was never granted. For the entire day, everyone was stuck inside the metal ship recuperating from the last expedition to the ice caves.

Evening fell on the frigid mountains and nothing eventful had happened.

In the steely halls of the Eklipse Resistance ship, Charlemagne had wandered up to one of the bedroom doors and opened it. The light from the hallway silhouetted her figure in the room.

She entered and scanned the bedroom. Large, dark, unoccupied.

She spied the wardrobe. She approached it and slid the door open. Her hand brushed against the garments as she attempted to identify each one.

She snatched one from its coat hanger: a thick dark jacket with a hood.

She turned to the light to see if she had plucked the right one. It was black with red trimmings.

She smiled, electrified with spite. Alternating hands that held the jacket, she slipped her arms into the sleeves of her long white coat. She then draped the jacket over her shoulders while exiting the bedroom.

She reached to the side to pick up a black forked gun that was propped against the wall. It was the same one that she stole from the incapacitated S.T.O.R.M. soldier when she escaped the flying fortress. It still had a few shots left.

She closed the door and trotted down the corridors, keeping an eye out for anyone else. Vengeful electricity was building up deep inside her, like dark menacing clouds on an overcast day.

In her mind, she had escaped one prison just to end up in another. She wanted true freedom, not to be transferred from cage to cage.

She was soon to discharge herself from the ship, to bust out of there. And there was nothing anyone could do to stop her treacherous storm.

#monsuno #fanfic

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