Daybreak #7- Infinity Warfare

==Greendale Community College==

 

As Chuck rushed down the hallway, he passed an unconscious student dressed in a Superman costume ('He had clearly misunderstood the assignment,' he noted before moving on). He had to keep going; Mayo would have reached the Dean's office now. And with Blake gone and Flannegan missing, he was now the only person who could possibly talk Mitch down. Chuck understood Fearless; he had been infected with it himself, and he knew more than anyone the allure of it, and worse, how easy it was to lose yourself.

 

'Ok, c'mon, Chuck, think,' he pondered. 'You've been here two weeks now, what would the Study Group do? Make a reference? Make a speech? Hit him? All three? All three. God, that's no help... What would the Misfits do? Sharpe would probably get someone else to do it for him, Len would use live ammunition... Needham would hang from the ceiling and scare the crap out of him... Ten would probably struggle to aim, come to think of it. And Drury would make a speech himself, I guess... 'Hello, fellow Paintball enthusiasts! I know we're all having a lot of fun; me less so, nevermind, but we ought to consider dialling it back a bit! Instead, let's settle down, grab a cup of hot java and watch The Room: I've made scones just for the occasion! (though I guess you morons would call 'em cookies right? Because you're, urgh, Americans. P'tooh.) Who knows, maybe afterwards, we can rob the rest of the Justice League! I hear Metropolis is nice this time of year! Hey, you girl, anyone ever tell you you look like my wife? Cause you do! Let's fight ninjas!'

 

"Woah, that went to a dark place," he thought aloud. "Get a grip, Chuck, focus."

 

~-~

 

Flannegan rolled across the carpeted floor, smacking his head against a large brass instrument. Krill, hopped out after him, and knelt down by his side. "Don't you ever scare me like that again," he was saying. "I saw a kid dressed as Iron Man and thought I'd landed on the wrong Earth. *ahem* Again."

 

"Hey, you can't be in here," a student's voice complained. In response, Krill tossed a pastel-pink coloured disk at their face, splattering them in a thick liquid.

 

"That's right, my dots double as paintballs, I AM A GOD" he proclaimed triumphantly to the incapacitated Flannegan, chuckling as the student walked off the way they came, now a good deal wetter.

 

"You know you have to be enrolled here for it to count, right?" Flannegan grunted.

 

"Codswallop," Krill swore disappointedly, as he kicked Flannegan's side in a display of petty malice. "What a joke," he added, disappointed by Flannegan's lack of fighting spirit. "It's funny actually: I was given strict instructions to leave the Misfits unharmed," he lamented. "The usual 'Leave them alive, they're mine to torture/kill/sleep with... yadda yadda yadda...' Not the point, I know."

 

"What is the point?" Flannegan coughed.

 

Krill glanced down, and promptly kicked his rival in the face. "Well... you're not a Misfit, are you, Otis?" he asked, a wicked grin on his face as he peeled a purple, buzzsaw-like dot off of his suit, and brought it against Flannegan's throat.

 

Yet, despite being mere inches from death, Flannegan's gaze was instead drawn to a small, furry creature- watching as it climbed up onto the table behind them. "Annie's Boobs?" he gasped in recognition.

 

"Whose?" Krill spun around, his curiosity his undoing, as the monkey leapt off the table, and landed on his face. Caught off guard, he dropped the purple dot, giving Flannegan the opening he needed to kick his opponent in the shin and then shoulder barge him in rapid succession.

 

Pushing Flannegan away, Krill peeled the screeching monkey off of his face, tossing it to the floor. Almost tempted to kill the small animal, he instead relented, as he watched it retreat back into an exposed ventilation shaft.

 

"Guess I still got some venom in my veins after all..." Flannegan panted gratefully, as he retook a fighting stance.

 

"There you go," Krill grinned, as he charged towards him, and pushed him through a cyan-coloured portal

 

==The Dean's Office==

 

As the door handle turned, Rigger instinctively dove into the Dean's closet, cushioned by the mass of budget-draining outfits and shut the door behind him. Mayo strolled into the room, and walked towards the desk, installing the USB into the side of the computer. 'Success,' he thought.

As he took a note of Jeff's registration date, he smiled. "Thank you, Frankenstein," he chortled, as he pulled up the program.

 

"Frankenstein's the doctor!" Joe yelled out instinctively, causing Mayo to look up from the desk, in bewilderment.

 

"Who said that?" he replied suspiciously, as he slid the sheet of paper into his pocket, grabbed his gun and strutted towards the closet doors. He swung them aside, and recoiled at the contents within. "Dolly Parton?!" he cried out in shock. "You go to Greendale?"

 

Embarrassed, Rigger adjusted the Dean's wig and cleared his throat. "I sure do," he spoke in a high pitched voice, "I've been here all week, working 9-5. Boy, what a way to make a living!"

 

Mayo looked puzzled at first, but, after a moment's reflection, he seemed to have accepted the bizarre excuse.

 

"Mitch!" Chuck called out, as he entered the room. Mayo spun around to face Chuck and glowered, reloading his gun with a round capsule he had crudely attached to his waist with some sticky tape. With him otherwise distracted, Rigger kicked Mayo in the groin and ran to Chuck's side.

 

"Hey!" Mayo wheezed, struggling to compose himself. "This is a non contact game!" he complained, as he dove behind the Dean's desk for cover and shot at the two Misfits.

With Chuck returning fire at an alarming rate, Mayo slid the thumb drive out of the computer and dove through the window, making his escape.

 

"Shouldn't we be going after him?" Rigger asked, as his eyes followed Mayo's plump silhouette run off into the distance.

 

"We aren't going to be doing anything: I thought I told you to stay out of this?" Chuck chided Joey, as he walked over to the computer. 'Thank god, he didn't have time to activate the failsafes,' he thought, relieved.

 

"What can I say, I'm invested now," Rigger shrugged. "What's the plan?" he asked cheekily, as Chuck scrolled through the Dean's emails.

 

"He'll go to the library building. It's well fortified and it's got all the computers he needs," Chuck figured. "W- What are you wearing?" he paused, as he finally noticed Rigger's wig.

 

"Doesn't matter," Joey said dismissively. "I had to do some things I'm not proud of, Chuck."

 

"Is- Is that lipstick?" Chuck began, before returning to the computer monitor, finding an email with an enclosed link. 'These must be the cinema tickets,' he realised, before frowning.

 

"Wait a minute," he spoke, "These tickets aren't even for Black Widow. They're for Widows! A film, that came out two years ago! How on earth- What kinda incompetent crap is this-?"

 

"Good film though," Rigger noted. "Viola Davis was exquisite."

 

==The Truck==

 

"I don't like leaving them out there alone," Drury sighed, as he gazed through the window: the outside grounds still plagued by hundreds of rampant paintball players. He turned back to Gar and Reardon, both of them remarkably calm given the circumstances and shook his head. "Joey's not reported back in yet, who knows what's happening out there!" he continued to fret.

 

"You heard Chuck, Drury. We can't interfere," Reardon reminded him, two prosthetic fingers raised against his temple as he did his best to drown out the chaos outside.

 

"Can't interfere..." Drury scoffed. "What if he gets lead poisoning? What if his gun explodes? What if-"

 

"Drury, we're talking about Chuck and Joe here. They've survived Arkham City and Nanda Parbat," Reardon reassured him. "What could possibly be worse than that?"

 

His question was answered by a loud thud outside, as two figures landed directly opposite their truck. Rushing to the window, Drury watched as the first figure brushed himself off, grabbed the second, and then hurled them through a green portal, following closely after them.

 

"Was- Was that Krill?" Drury stammered, looking to the others for confirmation.

 

"I have absolutely no idea," Reardon replied blankly. "But if he was covered in brightly coloured polka dots, then that's probably a pretty good indicator."

 

Gar, clamped his lighter lid shut. "I take it we interfere now?" he muttered dryly.

 

~-~

 

Krill and Flannegan were both flung into the school's chemistry lab, each landing at opposite sides of the room and each now sporting brand new battle scars; Flannegan was nursing a broken arm and burst lip; Krill, a bloody nose. As Flannegan once again tried to regain his balance, he cried aloud as a yellow disk was thrown into his shoulder, his blood dribbling onto the linoleum floor.

Another of Krill's 'dots,' an orange fireball, singed Flannegan's right ear, as it narrowly missed his face. Before he could strike again, Flannegan reached for the Bunsen burner station and turned the gas on, letting it fill the room.

 

Krill coughed as he unintentionally breathed the fumes in, leaving him unable to counter Flannegan's next attack: he grabbed the rubber hose of one of the nearby Bunsens and wrapped the coil around Krill's throat in an attempt to choke him out. Krill elbowed Flannegan in the ribs and broke free of the hold, knocking his opponent across the other side of the table.

Next, Flannegan grabbed a nearby beaker, smashed it against the table and used the broken pieces as projectiles, flinging them one after another. Krill, put up a defensive shield against the shards, with just one single piece breaking through his defenses, and slashing him across his cheek. "Enough," he snarled, as he slid across the table top, picked Flannegan up by his collar and threw him through the south wall, into the adjacent biology classroom (taking note of the alarmingly weak walls as he followed him through).

Rising to his feet, and wiping the plaster from his hair, Flannegan opened the animal cages lined up along the desks, letting loose a sea of albino rats onto the ground. As they scurried about, now under Flannegan's metahuman influence, they tripped his opponent up. Regaining his balance, Krill grabbed a nearby stool to steady himself and then swung it at the hordes of rats with murderous intent. "Oi, dickhead. What happened to Mano a Mano?" he complained, as he brushed a rat off his shoulder.

 

"You never said it was Mano a Mano," Flannegan shot back.

 

"Yes, I- No, wait, that's on me. Good to know," he noted, as he hurled the stool at Flannegan instead, cracking his ribs.

 

Just as Flannegan regained his footing, Krill opened a portal overhead, and dropped a filing cabinet on his head. Flannegan slumped over, as blood trickled down his skull and onto the floor.

 

"You almost had me worried..." Krill said, wiping himself off, and kneeling atop Flannegan's chest. "With your roadkill and your tit monkeys... You gave me a decent runaround, I admit it, but here we are again." He opened another portal and retrieved the purple buzzsaw, pressing it once more against Flannegan's throat, breaking the skin just slightly, as thin stream of blood trickled down his neck. That sadistic smile broke across Krill's face and then- "Hold that thought," he winked, as he reached into his trunks and pulled out a pink mobile, the phone blasting 'London's Calling' loudly. Krill rolled his eyes. "Sorry, I have to take this- Barson. I'll be the death of him, honestly. Y'ello?"

 

"Krill!" Ted Carson's gruff, impatient voice echoed. "What the hell is going on? You disappear for a week, you don't answer your phone, Day's been here non-stop, building bombs or some crap and there's still no sign of Walker. I don't need babysitting, and I don't need to be kept in the dark by a couple of bald, effeminate, drugged up idiots!"

 

Krill inhaled through his nose, taking the phone off of speaker. "You know... I'm kinda in the middle of something here," he spoke, loosening his grip on Flannegan. "No, it can't wait. You shove off! No, no, don't put Hayden on, I don't want to talk to... him."

 

Krill's words trailed off, as a thin hand plunged a needle deep into his neck. He stumbled backwards in shock, clutching his throat, and then, he tripped backwards through his own portal, closing behind him with a loud crackle. Noah Kuttler examined the spot that Krill had been sitting just moments before, and then turned his attention to Flannegan.

 

"What'd you hit him with?" Flannegan panted, as he sat back up.

 

"Insulin," Kuttler explained. "I'm diabetic."

 

~-~

 

Drury, Gar and Reardon, arrived at the library building, having now armed themselves with paintball guns they'd scavenged off of fallen students. The objective was simple now: extract the Misfits, no matter what.

It was easier said than done: standing in their way were a good fifty students, all armed, all in low-budget cosplay. 'No way we can fight our way through all that,' Drury realised, a sentiment he knew he shared with Reardon, at least. The direct approach was suicide.

 

Gar, however, disagreed. "I know how to stop this," he growled, as he retreated back inside the trailer.

 

"How?!" Drury replied, as he ran after him, taking another fervent look at the so-called bloodbath behind them, as he raced to keep up.

 

Exasperated, Reardon put his head in his hands, and trailed after them. "I bet the Rogues never had this problem," he murmured, ruing the group's utter lack of communication. He paused in the doorway as he had a sudden, horrible realisation. 'He wouldn't...' he worried.

 

He would, it turned out. Ignoring their objections, Gar grabbed his flamethrower, stormed back across the grounds and stepped onto an upturned bench. "Gar, wait, you really shouldn't do that in a scho-" Drury began, but it was too late.

 

"Hey, nerds, virgins and one note supporting characters! This is a real fucking flamethrower, so unless you want me to fucking fry you all to fucking cinders and ashes, you'll do the sensible thing and shoot yourselves in the foot, and save yourselves eight years of painful skin grafts. Because, fuck, look at my fucking face. Believe me. It hurts."

 

"Do you even go to school here?" a bemused student inquired.

 

"No," Gar admitted. "But I have a flamethrower in one hand and a paintball gun in the other, so you might as well listen."

 

No one moved. Rather, they continued to stare at Gar and his associates in utter disbelief. Reardon, outwardly cringed.

 

"To be clear, that whole 'shoot yourself in the foot' thing? Not a metaphor, or figure of speech. Just fucking do it. Take your guns, aim them at your feet. And fire. Alright?" Gar pleaded, exasperated.

 

Gar sighed, and pulled out his final trump card. "Also, I'm the Ass Crack Bandit," he stated.

 

And just like that: Pandemonium. The Greendale students un-holstered their pistols, took themselves out of the game and walked begrudgingly back to their classes, closely minding their backsides as they departed.

 

"Not bad," even Reardon had to admit.

 

"Ach, it was the swearing mostly," Gar stated. "This is a pretty sheltered community."

 

"Hn. So, Ass Crack Bandit?" Drury inquired.

 

"Oh, yeah, read it in a flyer. It's more serious than it sounds," Gar explained.

 

"Oh. Well, it sounds kinky," Drury concluded.

 

 

===The Library Building==

 

Mayo turned away from the computer and tutted irritably, his work still unfinished. "Just can't keep away, can you? I see you even brought your sidekick. Doesn't that break a rule or two?"

 

"Easy Mitch," Chuck started, in an attempt to lure him away from the console. "Just think. They're all just civilians, remember? We don't hurt civilians."

 

"That's the biggest load of crap I've ever heard, and I've been bunkmates with Killer Croc," Mayo snorted. "I've seen Lynns burn down orphanages."

 

"One orphanage," Rigger corrected him. "And it was abandoned. We, uh, assume."

 

"Hypocrites!" Mayo decreed. "You make the rest of us follow these 'rules' and 'laws' to the letter, while you get to do whatever you want. I'm just using the assets on hand to win, you lot can't help but cheat and lie!"

 

Chuck swallowed. Mayo was worrying him now, he'd heard that same rhetoric before. From Julian. "I don't care about the tickets, I don't even care about paintball. I just don't want you to get hurt. And c'mon, look, there's no sport in this. That's not fair, that's not a victory."

 

"I'd listen to him, Kevin Smith," Jeff cocked his gun, as he entered the room. "Don't you have a convenience store you could be robbing right now?"

 

"Don't you have a tub of gel you could be slicking through your hair?" Mayo snapped.

 

"Hey, he's got you pegged," Chuck smiled slightly. "Sorry."

 

Jeff scowled, pointing the gun first at Mayo's chest, and then instead targeted the computer, spraying it in green paint.

 

"No!" Mayo cried, as he ran over to the monitor, watching as the paint dripped down into the keypad, making the device functionally useless. Mayo pulled the USB out of the computer and tried wiping the paint off, but it was no use. The drive was ruined, and his plans, like the computer, went up in smoke.

 

Before Jeff could respond, Mayo shot back: The first blast hit him in the shoulder. As he stumbled back, the next shot hit his knee, toppling him to the ground. "Screw this, I don't even like that Marvel crap!" he complained, throwing his gun aside in a strop.

 

"Woah, wow, cool it, Scorcese," Rigger warned. "Bet you two loved each other," he said to Chuck.

 

Chuck and Jeff paused to stare at Rigger, then at each other, in disgusted disapproval. "Look, Mitch," Chuck started. "C'mon, you can win some other way. Fairly."

 

Mayo considered this, for a brief moment he lowered his gun in consideration. But it was just that: Brief. "No," he shook his head.

 

Chuck took a cautious step forward. "Mitch?" he asked worriedly.

 

"No!" Mayo repeated. And raising his gun back up, he shot Chuck in the helmet with such a force that the visor shattered, knocking him to the ground.

 

"Jesus!" Rigger exclaimed. "Chuck was just trying to help!"

 

"He was lying!" Mayo tried to justify himself. "He was going to take my tickets!"

 

"For Widows, man! Christ!" Rigger yelled, as he knelt by Chuck's side. "Chuck, can you hear me?"

 

"Shut up, just let me think!" Mayo shrieked, putting his hands on his head.

 

Chuck opened a single eye, put his hand to his forehead and licked the red mark. 'Ketchup-?' he paused. 'But that means-'

 

"Oh, Mayo..." he said in a pitying tone. "You idiot."

 

"Chuck-?" Rigger interrupted him, as the doors swung open: All of Mayo's victims, the Study Group included, stood there united. The rules, flimsy though they were, clearly stated that the combatants had to use paint. In his quest to prove himself, Mayo had forgotten that one key detail, and just like that, forfeited the game.

He dropped his gun, and accepted his fate, as the loud hum of paint machinery drowned him out.

Done