Where Is Your Rider (OFFICIAL WATTPAD UPLOAD)

Chapter 21

For a moment, everyone in the garden was too stunned to move.

They did it, Tubbo thought, staring in horror at the glow of fire on the horizon, and there was a painful knot in his throat, tears burning and threatening to slip down his cheeks.

They fucking did it.

On the stage across from them, Bad and Boomer were staring at what was left of Las Nevadas, slack-jawed with horror, and Charlie looked somewhere between terrified and fascinated. Quackity had fallen to his knees, his good eye wide with...

Well, it wasn't horror, really.

Quackity's gaze was shattered, full of grief and sickening guilt.

"You bastard," the man snarled raggedly after a moment, and there were furious tears in his good eye as he lurched to his feet, straining futilely against his bonds for a few moments before crumpling to the stage again, shuddering with grief. "YOU FUCKING BASTARD—"

The crowd erupted into cheers, drowning out his anguished sobs.

"HELL YEAH, MOTHERFUCKERS!" Schlatt roared, throwing up his fists with a wild grin on his face. "LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, AND EVERYONE IN BETWEEN, I HEREBY ANNOUNCE THIS WHOLE WEEK A CITY-WIDE HOLIDAY! GIVE IT UP FOR SUNBREAKER, EVERYBODY!"

The crowd roared. Tubbo felt like he was going to vomit.

Fundy, however, was visibly struggling not to cry as he stared at the burning line on the horizon that was once Las Nevadas, his breath coming in short, shallow gasps.

Purpled was as stone-faced as always.

All three of us are kids, Tubbo thought numbly as Schlatt raised his champagne glass in a toast, and knocked it back as the crowd kept cheering.

All three of us are kids. We shouldn't be up on this stage.

We shouldn't even be soldiers.

"Damn it," Purpled mumbled, glancing at the armored gauntlet hidden under his suit jacket's sleeve. "It knocked out my comns."

Tubbo blinked. "What?"

"The weapon sent out a huge pulse of energy," Purpled muttered, fiddling with it. "Looks like it knocked out most electronics in the city. Luckily for these self-righteous pricks, most of the city systems are too crude to be affected. I did some scans when they brought me here; they still haven't fucking paid me—"

"His cuffs," Tubbo blurted, glancing at Bad and suddenly noticing that the magnets had stopped glowing. "BAD! YOUR CUFFS ARE OFFLINE!"

Bad jolted, glancing down at his wrists, and his eyes went wide.

Then all hell broke loose.

Bad ripped the cuffs in half, lashing out and knocking half the guards aside without hesitation. The other half seemed too startled to do anything, especially when Bad grabbed a soldier by the legs and hurled them into the crowd, which seemed to scream collectively and scramble backwards.

Schlatt whirled around, his eyes flashing with panic. "SHIT! KILL THOSE FUCKERS ALREADY—"

—Tubbo kicked him hard in the back and bolted.

There was a collective gasp of horror from the crowd as he rushed across the stage to the others, and Schlatt went face-first to a buffet table.

Then bullets started flying.

Tubbo shrieked and dove behind a stone statue of a lion, yanking a pistol off the belt of a downed guard as he went. Quackity, Boomer, and Charlie—who were still all shackled together; Charlie seemed to be picking the locks on their cuffs—had managed to cram themselves behind an overturned table, and Bad was currently tearing a swath through the Manberg soldiers that Achilles would've envied, armed with nothing but his fists and the knives he'd apparently hidden in multiple spots inside his robes.