Wish you were Sober || Boat Boys

23: The Storm

TW! Violence & Blood

angst 🎉

Joel woke up again to icicles poking his skin, threatening to pierce through the thinnest areas if he's not cautious. "What did you do?" Atlas asks, his voice is harsh as he grabs onto Joel's hair. "I know you did something—where the fuck is Jimmy?" He spat in Joel's face, disgusting.

"Lay off of him, he's just woken up—" Hades is cut off by Atlas once more, "Lay off? Jimmy's gone! Not just Jimmy; Bubbles and Martyn too!" Martyn? But there were only 6 other people with Joel at the house: Hades, Atlas, Orange, Bubbles, Jimmy, and... the Listener. Maybe it's a different Martyn, or a civilian that was over at the house at the time... Joel didn't know.

"Sc—Atlas, don't say his name." Hades grits their teeth, Atlas rolls his eyes. "Does it even matter anymore? We're gonna kill him, we have to." Joel winces at that, Atlas says it like it's as mundane as taking out the trash. "But what about the Listener?" Orange asks coming in as a human shield between Joel and Atlas.

Joel is honestly thankful for Orange (one of his fucking captors. What has this world come to?). "He's probably off pretending to be Lykos—hell, I don't see why I have to uphold my end of the deal if he isn't going to uphold his." Atlas scoffs, the icicles entrapping Joel aren't being released at all. They're just slowly melting as they're in the middle of a fucking forest.

"Give him time! It's only been like a day! He needs the info!" Orange reminds, however, judging by the large crash and the scream from Hades that followed, "Don't fucking ruin our shit, Scott!" Atlas—or as Joel presumes now, Scott, isn't convinced or calmed. Joel stays where he is laid, only just now noticing the additional clothes he's wearing: this hoodie seems awfully familiar.

"He's not dumb! If he truly believed in our cause, he'd be back by now! He's abandoned us for the heros—he's betrayed us!" Atlas's accusations are something for Joel to note. His pounding headache has decreased since he was last awake, so maybe they've forgotten to keep him high as shit. The post-high clarity is starting to hit Joel now.

Joel didn't know much about the villains, but a small group working together to commit crimes for over a decade should trust each other. Villain or not. So why is it that Atlas is this doubtful of their (unofficial) leader? The past villain groups were all funded by criminally run mega-corps or mafia organizations, their current group turned private over a decade ago. They should know each other.

But its seems that they don't.

If they don't maybe Joel can find a hole in their relationship—"He's pathetic, Cleo! You saw him trying to play hero, it's disgusting." From what he can gather, Atlas is insecure about the Listener's loyalty. That's curious, especially considering that the Listener is the main mastermind for their crimes in most of New York. Atlas & Hades had their boroughs, but there are always traces of the Listener's crimes even in their respective turfs.

Cleo (Hades?) sighs, "Look, if he is a traitor he's going to sell us out. We can just kill Joel and leave by then and it'll be fine." Joel realized that the ice around his left hand is melted, just water in his palms now. His hand is free and they're surrounded by the earth: his element. Before Atlas (or any of the other 2) can notice, he uses his left hand to manipulate the ground beneath his other hand to break the ice.

He has to be quick about this, otherwise the other 3 will have him captured and likely killed within the next 48 hours. Joel manipulates a sharp rock nearby to harshly break the ice in one hit, "This has been nice, but I really should get going—" He quickly jumped to evade Scott's ice attack. Wow, his head is dizzy. He hasn't been free in a while, he's out of practice it seems.