Work Text:
“It’s going!” Ivy warns with one final spray of her emptying gun.
It certainly is. The walker they’ve been laying into for the last hour gives another ominous groan, its front-left leg bending at an angle it clearly was not made for. Any moment now, it’s going to topple, give way, fall to its knee and be open for the killing blow.
Lash, of course, is waiting in the rafters ready to deliver this swift kick of justice and add one more point to his score.
He’s leading Bebop by three points — of course he is — but no harm in padding it a bit, especially since walkers should count for at least double that of a guardian, the only things they’ve taken down so far. These things are fucking beefy, and it takes at least three guys mowing into them nonstop to put any sort of dent in them, let alone disable the canons or take out a leg. They’re such powerhouses, every previous time they’ve mounted an attack, the sheer timesink has drawn the Guided Hand like sharks.
…A fate they are running the risk of each passing second.
“C’mon!” Lash shouts, unloading a few distant rounds. “We got places to be! Get in there and drop a bomb in its asshole, and let’s get out of here.”
Bebop’s head snaps to Lash’s hiding location and shouts something that Lash can’t really hear. Probably telling him to get down there and help but, psh, no way, it took Lash three tries to get up here while avoiding all those electric spikes (the only true way to deter ghost pigeons and, apparently, pit champions). He’s not coming back down until his big moment. Lash exaggeratedly mimes ‘I can’t hear you’ along with a big mocking frowny face. Bebop flips him off.
There’s a highpitched, electric whir. Someone’s on the shadowline and fast approaching. They don’t have long before there’s a dozen enemy Ritualists up their asses. Bebop turns to the walker, arms a bomb in one hand, and darts under to slam it in the same place he crammed the last five.
Except, just then, the walker groans, buckling all on its own, falling forward on its damaged leg.
“Watch it!” Ivy warns.
“Shit,” Lash hisses.
Stupid robot is about to get himself killed, going in too deep and making everyone else save his sorry ass. Lash launches from his perch, latching to the fire escape and delivering the beautiful, glorious divekick that’s been building inside him for the past ten minutes. He crashes into the walker’s clocktower-body feet-first.
Unfortunately, one Lash, no matter how magnificent, isn’t enough to divert its course. It buckles, and Lash goes with it, bouncing off one of its branchlike limbs with a body-cracking thwack.
Metal groans. Fires flare up. It’s all darkness and concrete as Lash goes rolling, unsure when he stops since he still feels his mind going in circles long after he hears the construct’s final groan. Alright. Enough of that. Gotta get back on your feet Jacob, otherwise the other guy’s going to start delivering kicks right to your ribcage and you do not want to spend another night in one of the Pit’s emergency beds. Ass into gear.
Lash’s attempts to telepathically move any of his limbs are interrupted by six-inch stone claws sinking into his shoulder blades.
“¡Ya! ¡Me voy ahora!” Ivy shouts. “Stay awake now!”
Lash is going to tell her he’s plenty awake, the pain having dashed adrenaline back into his system, a little paprika of consciousness, but the lurch skyward shoots the words into his stomach. It applies the same downward trajectory to his lunch, thankfully; getting ripped from the ground by someone else’s propulsion is entirely different than flinging himself through the air. Like the uncanny experience of watching someone else pull your arms around on strings. Still, there are benefits. When he blinks his vision clear (a cut on his forehead is trailing a slow dribble into his eye) he gazes around a cityview he’d never reach on his own. The Maelstrom has left the city in a perpetual, hazy twilight; an impossible silence for The Cursed Apple, even as it’s punctuated the distant glow of Fairfax automatons toppling here and there. If he doesn’t move too much, stares at the skyline and breathes through his nose, he can let the soreness of his bruised limbs fade to a faint background hum.
Ivy sets him down a few blocks up Broadway, as far to the fountain as her wings will take her.
“Dammit,” she says. Wipes at her face. “Dammit.”
Lash bends over his knees to catch his breath, not to keep from hurling, which he proves by straightening a moment later and effortlessly transitioning into a tricep stretch.
“The Lash appreciates having reliable backup,” he says, grunting with the stretch. “Won’t even insult your intelligence by telling you you made the right choice since, duh, you already knew that.”
“Well uh… glad I’m not being…patronized? But what do you…” She, exhausted, blinks with those too-big eyes. “What choice?”
“Airlifting The Lash out first, of course.” He rolls his shoulders. “That hunk of junk would’ve taken you twice as long to go half as far. Now I can actually go get a few things done around here while you run and grab the dead weight.”
“First,” Ivy repeats. Her attention focuses. “Lash you… you were the only one I could take out.”
“Hm?” He moves to his lats.
“Bebop- It fell on him.” She sounds like she’s about to cry. He knows she’s got the whole hero complex thing going on but, seriously? Crying? Over Bebop? “There wasn’t- Lash. He’s dead.”
All post-fight maintenance ceases.
“…Come again?”
“I went to where I saw him last but it was… Mierda Lash, that thing was the size of a building. He-” She holds something back. “There was nothing to take home.”
“Well that’s- that’s… Booyah.”
“Excuse me?”
“Hell fucking yeah baby. Bebop’s dead? Next round a-drinks at Jezzy’s is on me, because hoo boy is it a good day for The Lash. Bebop. Dead! To his own stupidity and his own suicide bomber shtick. It’s almost too good!”
So good, Lash’s face is starting to hurt from smiling so wide. Despite the stakes, he’d never really imagined Bebop would end up getting himself killed over the course of the Ritual — mainly because he’d somehow wound up on the same side of the stupid astral dick measuring contest as Lash, and obviously Lash’s team would win. But it’s really happened. He won, not by kicking Bebop’s ass in the ring for the umpteenth time but by outliving the bastard.
He feels lighter than air. Lighter even than when he was a half-mile above the city.
The assholes at the stronghold try to put a damper on it, but he’s too high on cloud nine to let their ugly looks and ‘can’t believe she pulled him out’ get to him. He strolls around the fountain — his beautiful, robot-free fountain — with a new swagger, even cooler and more gutsy than his old swagger. It’s hard to tell because his old swagger was already pretty damn cool, but the difference is there. He’ll tell everyone who’ll listen the story of how Bebop went rushing in, absolutely desperate to get any kill at all, then about all his terrified running when he realized the depth of the shit he’d waded into. Lash is on a roll, doesn’t even let Paige bursting into tears undercut an awesome story (The Lash knows that it’s the intensity of an audience reaction that matters, and to ignore dumb things like ‘how’ they’re reacting). It’s Holliday’s much more forceful telling him to shut the fuck up that causes him to scoff and wander away. His teeth are actually a quite important part of maintaining peak Lash.
So gloomiest fucking base in the world, so what? Not breaking Lash’s stride. Still, after a while he’s restless again, and heads to the shadowline to rack up a few more guardians under his belt.
Only to stop with one hand raised to crackling neon.
He doesn’t need any more kills. Bebop’s score is never going to go up again. Not that Lash was ever worried about Bebop ultimately catching up to him, but having a little fire under his ass made every time he did nab a point all the more satisfying.
He wanders back to the storage area. There’s a chalkboard there, displaying two tallies both made in confident hands. Lash’s swooping, dazzling signature capstones nine marks, and as far away as possible, Bebop’s simple block name claims only six. It’ll stay like that. Forever. Until someone comes and wipes the board at the end of the Ritual, rolls it back to Columbia or wherever the hell the cultists nabbed it from. It doesn’t even have Bebop’s final kill.
The should-be-Lash’s point.
The bastard using his dying fucking breath (not breath, whatever, Lash doesn’t fucking care) to fucking killsteal, and then going out in a blaze of glory so pyrrhic it had everyone reimagining him as some big fucking hero.
In death Bebop’s still finding ways to piss him the fuck off.
That’s why he’s so angry. That’s this buzzing, aching thing that he’s been ignoring pretty damn well up until now. He grabs the nearest piece of chalk — some stupid little schnibblet but fuck, he’s not changing course now — and storms to the board, slicing one long, ferocious mark through four unclaimed stalks.
“Aw, crying about it?” Lash spits at Bebop’s name. “History’s written by the winners, Bebop. If you wanted it, you shouldn’t have exploded like a goddamn Studebaker with a stick of dynamite up its tailpipe.”
The schnibblet is still small enough to break into other, smaller schnibblets when it’s dashed against the ground.
Everyone needs to get the fuck over their stupid robot worship. God, it’s like a fucking funeral in here! Don’t they still have a Ritual to complete or is Lash the only one who remembers that? Every time he says chop chop people, time to go push down Broadway now that that walker’s out, he gets a bunch of half-hearted excuses about ‘needing to play defensive with a man down’ and ‘wah wah his poor mother’.
Stupid. Everybody’s got a fucking mother. Dying with one is like popping a boner during your first slowdance at your aunt's wedding. Everybody does it.
Hitting the training room helps him work off a little steam, at least. Getting to punch the shit out of something always puts him in a better mood, and even though Bluey won’t spar with him (despite loitering around and casting a grumpcloud over the place), he works up a good sweat tearing into the hanging bag. He gets into a rhythm, which is less stimulating than flying around and outplaying other Ritualists, but sinks him into a state of pleasant mechanicality. Thwap thwap thwap. Each punch devastates the bag, while feeding satisfaction into his own muslces.
“You seein’ me now, Bebop?” he mutters.
And freezes.
Fuck! The scrap golem’s fucking dead, this is fucking stupid. Lash isn’t doing anything for him anymore. He’s doing this for himself. Because he’s the champion. Because before Bebop, he was the king, the king who didn’t go stir crazy alone in his apartment or grumble inanely during training. He didn’t anticipate fights, specific fights, until Bebop came into his life and the pit bosses started coordinating his whole existence around drumming up excitement for their hot new moneymaker.
This sucks. It’s like there’s a place in his mind that he keeps running over, groping at it like it’s a missing tooth. It’s not fucking fair! Bebop’s dead! It’s not fair that it feels like he’s still here.
It’s because Lash never got to see the body. That’s it. All he has is Ivy’s little sob story; his mind hasn’t adjusted, hasn’t seen the proof that’ll finally expel the last dregs of Bebop from his psyche. He has to go to the wreck.
Unfortunately everyone at the stronghold is a goddamn pussy. It’s all dragging their feet, moaning about how that’s now all ‘deep in enemy territory’ and that the Guided Hand ‘reclaimed the area already’. What was the point of cracking their defenses if they were never going to make a goddamn push? Good luck summoning an Elder God sitting in base the whole storm, losers.
Whatever. Lash has more magic in his veins tonight than he’s ever had in his life, he feels like he could take on the whole enemy team and their stupid Patron one-handed. No one, not them, not the sadsacks around here, can stop him.
He hops on the shadowline, disappearing into the city like the sun sinking behind the buildings.
The square looks different in the grey-gloom of twilight. Desaturated, like when its protector fell it leeched all the life out of the area too. Here’s where he landed, here’s where Ivy struggled to claw him off the ground and into the sky. Other footprints linger in the dust where the aftermath was picked over by its too-late defenders.
Here’s where Lash saw Bebop. Running… his trajectory this way…. Lash had a better view than Ivy, and he’s spent a good goddamn portion of the last few years mentally calculating the way Bebop moves in a fight — if anyone can find him, it will be Lash.
If Bebop ran in a straight line, he would’ve made it to the other side of the wreck no problem, but he didn’t. Why? Lash brings it back into his mind’s eye, the walker’s placement at the time of collapse. There was a leg between him and the wall of the courtyard, massive and entirely eclipsing the staircase of egress. Bebop would swerve… not this way, this is where it was coming down before Lash tried to divert it. He would’ve tried to dodge between the legs here…
Lash clambers over the mounds of metal, sweat cooling on him quickly as night descends, his hands slippery as he winds his way through the graveyard. The body of the former monstrosity becomes indistinct shapes scraping sky as he slips into a gap between debris.
And sees an orange scrap golem, lying slouched against the section of walker that took him out. One electric eye is dangling out its socket. His right arm is a mess of shredded wires. There’s a huge dent where his chassis took the brunt of a building-sized impact and a piece of broken weathervane skewered through his midsection pinning him to the ground behind him.
But the sounds of Lash sliding down the slope of his shelter turns his head toward him.
“Oh, bloody great,” Bebop groans.
“Crap,” Lash also groans. “I was really hoping-”
“-I was dead, yeah Lash, I bleeding figured.” Bebop’s working eye fixates on him. Waits a second. “If you want that so bad, all you got to do is turn around.”
The expected hatred is there, but there’s something else too that doesn’t usually lace their interactions: trepidation. A fear that Lash will call that bluff, even with how flippantly Bebop delivers it. Turn around and walk away.
There’s fluid leaking from the wound in Bebop’s abdomen, oil or coolant, congealing around the puncture and dripping down his sides. It oozes black and ichorous into a dark puddle, so much of it that the walker’s fall does look like a murder scene in the gray night.
Lash could. He really could just walk out with no one the wiser. No one but him wants to touch this place anymore.
Lash could leave Bebop to bleed out and then he’d be in the exact same fucking situation as before. Turning his back, leaving him ambiguously dead-not-dead without getting the closure he’d been clawing for. Schrödingering the fuck out of him until Lash went crazy because he’d come out here to see a fucking body.
“Oh I bet you’d like that, wouldn’t you,” Lash says.
“What,” Bebop replies.
“High and mighty Bebop who everybody loves, gets to die on one last moral victory because The Lash left a teammate for dead. Well guess what Bebop? The Lash isn’t giving you the fucking satisfaction. He can take down a walker and save your sorry ass without breaking a sweat.”
Bebop stares at him. Like he thinks he’s joking, which just pisses Lash off even more.
“Just fucking,” Lash says. “Hold still.”
Moving before he can be talked out of it (by Bebop or himself) Lash grips the metal rod with both hands and pulls.
The robot makes a noise that Lash, in his many years of making sure Bebop got to experience every kind pain under the sun, has never heard him make before. Lash expects him to call him some uncreative insult, but he’s still frustratingly noncombative. It’s only when Lash readjusts, tries to twist the weathervane free from whatever’s snagged it, that he thinks shit that looks bad. It’d be a mortal wound on an organic even with some strong magical healing that Lash definitely doesn’t keep on him. Spellcraft like that’s for Professor or the bookworm, not the Hidden King’s shining star/playmaker/God’s gift to man. All that’s far away from the golem who, upon closer inspection, is bleeding out right in front of Lash’s eyes. Even with inorganic advantages, he looks seriously fucked by the stick of metal that’s basically turning him into a kebab.
Bebop’s not talking because he’s barely holding himself back from screaming.
More sweat springs on Lash’s neck, this time not from exertion. That’s stupid. Bebop’s not going to die after Lash decided to save his life. These things don’t work like that.
“Almost got it,” Lash lies. Doesn’t know why he does. He doesn’t care if Bebop’s wetting himself, so long as he gets back to the stronghold in one piece.
He presses one foot on the concrete behind Bebop. Pulls again. Bebop’s voicebox make a weird screech to go along with the screech of chest-metal holding on for dear life.
Once more. This time, he puts a boot on Bebop’s chestplate, forcing it to relinquish its prize, even if that elicits another deep grunt of pain from the golem. It works. With another exertion, Lash rips the skewer free, and Bebop falls slightly sideways without the support.
“The Lash does it again.” He stretches both arms above his head, strolling toward the shadowline without a glance back. “Going to be a great story when we get home: when no one would dare brave the loser-ass corner of the city, The Lash stepped up. Not for fame or glory or even for any tactical advantage — Ritual probably had better chances without you getting in the way, anyway — but because he was simply so damn good at everything he did. His charitable heart extends to losers, sucky babies, and the suckiest grownup-baby of them all.”
Since Bebop hasn’t interrupted his speech, he turns head to bask in the glare he knows is angled his way.
Bebop’s still slumped against the walker.
The gore has gone from a drizzle to a deluge. It’s now spread all along Bebop’s front, running rivulets in the divot where Lash put his shoe only a minute ago. Lash drops his arms, strides back over.
“Hey,” he says. “Bebop. Yoohoo. Anybody home in there?”
He gives him a light slap in the side of the head. The optics, a glassy green, flicker back on, fainter than before.
“Hey, c’mon,” Lash says. “Just because the idiots who camp this side of the city didn’t find you before doesn’t mean they’re not lurking around still. Up and at ‘em.”
Bebop stirs. Begins to push himself up. A gush of oil pumps from his heart and he slips, falling back into place.
Lash grimaces. He can see inside of the robot, see where the coolant line is severed, two bits of tubing dangling limply from the strut they’re meant to run along. Shit. He braces, promising himself it’s not gross, it’s just like tying any old sailor’s knot. He reaches in, and tries not to gag as his hands make fast work of the slime-covered inner-workings.
“There,” he says. “Now quit your bitching and let’s get a move on.”
Bebop raises his head. Looks at Lash. Still doesn’t say anything. Which is totally fine and is a sign Lash absolutely does not concern himself with.
Even with the patch job, Bebop’s struggling to get to his feet way more than necessary which has got to be just for pulling sympathy at this point, there’s no way Bebop would legitimately just not be able to stand. Or wouldn’t show that weakness in front of Lash. If he wasn’t able to stand? That logic makes perfect sense and is absolutely not circular, and to avoid thinking about it Lash inserts himself under Bebop’s arm and pulls him to his feet, vowing to do that and only that.
This commitment, immediately, falls through. As soon as he tries to move away Bebop teeters, off balance already by his mismatched form, and Lash has to keep helping him step by step through the up-and-downs of the walker-corpse and to their ticket out of here. They stop jerkily below the line.
“What are you waiting for?” he demands when the goddamn robots just stands there. “Get on.”
Bebop gurgles something. It’s static mostly, but still manages to sound wet. Lash thinks he hears the word ‘can’t’. Bebop waves one of his arms.
“Hey moron, didn’t you hear me when I said the bozo patrol could show up any minute? Chop chop.”
Another annoyed round of word-adjacent static, Bebop’s voice more robotic than it’s ever been. Lash finally pays attention to what he’s on about: the one arm that’s actually able to hold anything is completely shattered, which he noticed before but now gives him a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. It’s all just a bunch of… metal. Held together by wires. Staring at it now, realizing Bebop’s not going to be able to get on the line, gives him the same sensation of seeing a human hand that’s been rent of skin.
“Can’t,” Bebop repeats.
Can’t even get up there anyways, which isn’t a comforting thought. Useless bastard. You need at least a bit of height to reach the shadowline — kick off a wall, a running start, something to get you into its gravity.
“Goddammit Bebop,” Lash growls. “Really? So fucking easily bent out of shape you can’t even use the emergency exit?” A hot breath through his teeth. “Let me think.”
He stands there, screwing his eyes shut, ton of useless metal making his shoulders ache, trying to figure the way out of this. There’s got to be a way to affix Bebop to him in a way that doesn’t break his back while still letting him hold the line. He’s got his flog, he’s got some spare rope, it’s something, but suddenly the line shimmers. Bogeys incoming.
Bebop starts to move them to the side.
“Don’t rush me,” he snaps. “Everything works out for The Lash, so long as he’s given a chance to actually work his magic.”
“We’ve-” bzzt “-start moving,” Bebop says.
“I’m working on it, if you would kindly allow me five minutes-”
“Lash,” Bebop cuts in. “We don’t have the…”
His heart’s leaking black blood again.
The line pulses. Lash grits his teeth, mutters his millionth curse against the pain-in-the-ass scrap golem, and starts their shuffle into cover. It can’t even be described as a walk really, with four sets of unevenly-lengthed legs trying to keep Bebop’s weight from keeling them both over.
They don’t feel any less like sitting ducks once they make it out from under the shadowline’s glow. Gunfire sputters from somewhere in front of them. They swerve, moving from the highly trafficked Broadway into the back alleys of the city, no idea if the gunshots are friendly or not. Even if they are, they’re certainly not shooting at anyone friendly. This is the more direct route anyway.
Can they hope to run into anyone out here? No one came looking for Bebop the first time. And Jacob Lash is, bafflingly, not well loved among the worshipers of the Hidden King. There’s no rescue coming for them. The only course they have is plodding through the city — even though after an hour it’s clear Bebop’s functionality is worsening — and hope to God they stumble into some kind of help.
It’ll work out.
Bebop collapses.
He was at least offsetting his own weight before, even if he was letting Lash do most of the forward momentum, but now he slides away and crashes into the alley’s brick. Every motor in him whines dangerously as he curls into a sitting position. He wraps his crushing arm over the wound in his chest.
It’s going to happen. Lash is going to get his wish to see Bebop’s body.
“Dammit.” Lash drops to a knee, slaps Bebop in the side of the face. “Don’t do this, not after I did all this damn work.”
He reaches inside the cavity. His hasty knot has held — of course, he’s a damn professional — but there’s other severed lines he didn’t see the first time. Each of them drizzle a little extra fluid onto Bebop’s innards, each one more hole in the leaky vessel that is Bebop’s anatomy. He starts pulling, straightening them out, wondering if he could tie them all into one big knot and reduce the points of failure. He’s elbow deep in the robot, sweating chest-to-chest, not panicking, smelling every bit of oil in his joints and feeling more like a mechanic than a doctor. It’d make his stomach churn if it hadn’t already sunk so low he could feel it in his bowels.
“Lash, stop,” Bebop wheezes. When Lash fails to be bossed around by falling apart scrap pile, Bebop swats him away. “There’s no point.”
“The point,” he says, “is to stuff all your bits in the right place long enough to get you back to base.”
He rolls his shoulder. Getting ‘swatted’ with an arm the size of a bowling ball isn’t exactly horseplay. Stupid fucking golem, can’t go two minutes without some major malfunction-
“Lash, ‘m already dead.”
It’s delivered through an exhausted, sparking voice box that Lash immediately stops thinking about because thinking about it gives credence to a patently stupid statement.
“If you were dead, The Lash would be a lot less pissed than he is right now, and would be singing from the rooftops instead of down here in some shit-smelling alleyway with your sorry ass. Now quit the whining and let me tie that thing.”
Bebop shakes his head. “It’s too late. Problem’s not just-” bzzt “-leaking coolant. ‘S gotten into the other systems. I’m gummed in the part that-“ A sharp intake. There’s smoke coming from his left underarm vent. “That send signals from one part to another.”
“Psh.” Lash rolls his eyes. “Your legs don’t move when you tell ‘em to? Heard that one before.”
“Meaning,” Bebop says, “things that would tell me if something’s about to break… aren’t. ‘M not like you. I might still be talking long past the point I… can’t be repaired.”
“You’re fine,” Lash grouses. “Never saw a machine that couldn't be fixed.”
“Not… always.” Bebop lurches, brings his broken hand around like he’s going to grab Lash’s shirt, wincing when it actually connects with him and the degloved fingers can’t articulate. “Lash. I need you to- nnrg- You have to use your wish to cure Miss Shelly.”
“Who?”
“My creator, my,” electric static cuts the sentence, “my m-mother. She’s sick and you’re going to help her, because I know you’re not wishing for anything important.”
Lash had never considered what Bebop would be spending his wish on. He’d never really given a thought to what anyone would wish, even himself. Proving he could summon an Elder God had been enough.
“Uh, no,” Lash says.
“Yes,” Bebop says, like he has any power to make demands of the universe.
“Why me?”
“Because you’re here, because someone-” Bebop’s voice catches again. Lash no longer thinks these are all maintenance failures. “Because someone has to make sure she’s alright, and I’m-” A full body shudder. “Please Lash.”
Why doesn’t Bebop begging for his help vindicate like it should? Why doesn’t the prospect of displaying his magnanimity by heroically carrying out Bebop’s dying wish stroke his pride two-pronged?
All this. All these fucking years and the only person who ever gave Lash any challenge at all is going to die in an alleyway from a fucking papercut.
“No,” Lash says again. “You’re not dying because The Lash has decided you’re not, and unlike you, Bebop, The Lash does not give up. Now up and 'attem.”
“I can’t just get up when-”
“Yes you goddamn can.” Lash grips him by the collar, yanks his frame forward until they’re nose to nose. “You can’t tell if you’re breaking down or not. Your sensors are all busted. You’ve got no idea if you’re past the point of no return, so until then, We. Keep. Going. You’re getting out of here even if I have to drag you out myself!”
Bebop’s optics glow big and wide at him, the eerie silence from the city that never sleeps amplifying all the more the sounds of Bebop’s failing body.
“… Bloody stubborn bastard. I almost believe you.”
“Then hold on to me. We’re going.”
Hope needs to be infectious. It dies in isolation.
The break did not revitalize them, or making stumbling through the city avoiding ambushes any easier. If anything, they’re slowing down, the last leg of their journey seeming to take half a step for every one of the first. Plod, plod. A wheeze of pain from Bebop.
“Just keep going.”
Step. Scraaaape as Bebop drags his leg along. Lash’s muscles are starting to quiver from holding the robot’s incredible weight for so long.
“I got you. Just stay with me. We’re going to make it.”
“Alright,” Bebop says. “We’re…”
“Hey! Hey, stay with me.” Lash’s voice is thick with exhaustion, and that’s all. They’re going to make it. They just need-
There’s a cat staring at him.
Not some tufty feral, but a massive, spooky Sphinx cat, glaring at him with yellow eyes.
Ava. It takes his brain seconds after supplying this name to remember Calico after it. Calico is nearby. Their teammates are nearby.
“Uh…” he says. “Hi kitty. Go. Get help?”
Ava blinks. Her eyes glow from gold to purple. Then, she turns tail and disappears in the direction of the fountain.
Lash collapses on the ground.
He does it so poorly he nearly crushes himself with Bebop’s weight, and takes a full minute to get the golem off him and resting on another wall.
“They’re coming,” Lash wheezes. He grips the side of Bebop’s neck. “They’re coming. We’re fine.”
“I believe it,” Bebop says, and then says nothing when Lash slumps against his side, and stays there for the eternity they wait for help’s arrival.