Permafrost: Thunderbird

Chapter 26: Tying Up Ends

⭐️Chapter 26: Tying Up Ends

The group was rather shaken from their encounters, though they'd been victorious. However, they DID notice the strange...lack of their leader and her friend. Considering the fact that there was one pathway none of them had gone down, they figured they were down there. However, they also couldn't risk losing each other here because nobody wanted to imagine what would happen if a scientist got ahold of one of them and used them as a test subject. Everyone checked themselves to see who had taken the most and least amount of damage.

Cosmo and Glade took the least amount, so one of them would go with someone who'd taken a little more damage to find Ryn and Silvia. The group would need another least damaged person to protect them in case something happened. In fact, they all needed a way to recover, and they couldn't just stand here and be sitting ducks for the scientists. Cosmo volunteered to go, but after Glade managed to locate a storage room, Ella and Jack agreed to hide in there while waiting for them to return. Cosmo and Glade then ran off to find Silvia and Ryn before it was too late for them.

Glade and Cosmo took a while to search the hallways everyone had been down. Mostly they just found a knocked out Crasher member, if anything at all. Eventually though, the sound of weapons being fired and sub weapons going off led them to another hallway that they hadn't gone down yet. There, the two found Ryn and Silvia still fighting Thrash in the halls...except he was clearly beating them both. Naturally, they were going to help.

"Hey, pick on someone your own size, hotshot!" Glade called out, grabbing the attention of all 3 inklings.

"You guys came!" Ryn huffed.

"Yeah, and we've come to get that meanie to stop beating you up!" Cosmo shouted.

"Hah, and NOT get my pay from the boss after all this hard work? No way!" Thrash laughed in response.

"Alrighty then, you're asking for it!" Glade shouted as he dashed forwards.

Cosmo took a back route as Ryn and Silvia assisted their new teammates. Silvia placed an ink mine on the ground, and Ryn was still trying to ink up Thrash's gear, despite the hot ink not really having an effect on it. Thrash managed to point sensor all of them in one go so that they couldn't hide from him, but he was very clearly outnumbered. Glade was firing at him from one side, Silvia's ink mine got him in the leg as he made a move to dodge, Ryn's burst bomb hit him as he tried to get away from that, and Cosmo's sloshes just made everything fall to pieces. The armor was still on, so he wasn't splatted, but all that enemy ink made his head spin.

Glade noticed his balance was off and dashed forward, aiming to ram him against the hall's walls. He didn't quite accomplish that because of Thrash's size, but he still managed to get the Colossal to stumble over and get knocked out from hitting his head against the wall. Ryn and Silvia watched it go down, and once they made sure Thrash was out for good, they took out all the dangerous tools he had on him and messed them up as best they could so he couldn't use them. Once they were done, Cosmo made sure they were okay before beckoning for them to follow him and Glade.

"Come on, let's get you guys back to the others."

-----

Ryn and Silvia were now running through the hallways, though their beat state had them lagging behind the two boys some.

"Silvia, are you okay? You looked like you got pretty riled up back there," Ryn asked.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Don't worry about it," Silvia replied between huffs.

"You're...sure?"

"Yes."

Ryn doubted it, but if Silvia didn't want to talk then she didn't want to talk. Glade and Cosmo caught up to the others in time, and Ryn and Silvia were right behind them. The group let the duo catch their breath before continuing at a slowed walking pace down the halls. It was back to being somewhat calm as they all looked around, though this peace was interrupted as Ryn suddenly spoke up.

"W-wait, guys."

Everyone halted and looked as Ryn pointed slightly off course but down another hallway. Standing there was the only other Wave Crasher the group hasn't encountered during their time in the lab.

"There's Fang!" Ella exclaimed.

"Carp, we'd better knock him out before he sees us and informs the other people here!" Glade muttered, though it was already too late as Fang heard them and turned to look at them.

Fang said nothing as he pulled out his brella. He would've told these guys he wasn't about to tell anyone because of the abuse here, but what was it worth? They probably wouldn't believe him, especially with his history of betrayals. Glade shot forward with his dualie squelchers in hand, and as expected, the brella's canopy was put up. Cosmo and Ella inked their way around him and Jack took the back area.

Fang actually put up a bit of a fight as he launched the canopy at Glade. It was so wide it took up the hallway, and Glade was forced to go down and wait in another intersecting hall for it to pass through. In the meantime, Fang was firing blasts at the others, which they did their best to dodge since one blast from those was like a dynamo. It would take you out in one go, and it was hard to dodge in such a small hallway.

Luckily, Ryn and Silvia caught up in time to turn the tides. Ryn threw a burst bomb at Fang, who hissed in pain as the boiling hot ink got on his face. He was distracted, so Jack ran up without his roller, intent on punching Fang or doing something to knock him out. Fang could see this, and made an attempt to save himself from further pain (though frankly it was probably better to be unconscious when your face was burning).

"W-wait! If you knock me out, you won't learn about the-"

Jack interrupted Fang by punching his head hard with his fist. Fang fell to the floor, unconscious, though he still twitched some.

"Jack!" Ryn exclaimed. "What if it was important?!"

"Meh. Probably just a tactic to get us to spare him. Not falling for betrayal like last time," he shrugged.

"Okay, so back on the topic of discussion. Did you guys see anything about Bird?" Silvia asked.

"No, but I heard from Thrash that there's a guy running the place, so if they're the head of this building, they're probably the overseer of all the experiments here," Glade explained.

"Aren't we here for Bird alone?" Cosmo asked.

"Well, we WERE, but seeing as this whole place seems to have experiments like her, we could probably take down the corrupt leader and get these guys to safer places," Ryn replied.

"But what if that guy knows all the information about the experiments? I doubt anyone outside of this place would know how to take proper care of these guys," Ella asked.

"Hmm...well in that case, we can beat him and make sure he gets trapped or something. Then we can have people watch him while the rest of us alert authorities and get him and the other guys arrested but not killed. Then they'd probably be forced via government to explain the ways of the experiments, and once that's all cleared up he might as well go to jail," Jack explained.

"Do you think he should die for being behind torture and inhumane conditioning of sentient humanoid individuals? Or creatures at all for that matter?" Silvia inquired.

"We'll just see how it rules out," Ryn sighed. "But for now..."

She turned towards a hallway that none of the group had gone down. Seemed like it led to a different path, and if anything, possibly more important rooms.

"Let's go confront the boss of this place!"