Figured

“They betrayed me, dear cousin.”

“Well, of course.  What did you expect when you send armies to destroy their homes?”

“I bring them to me and I give them everything they have ever wanted and this is how they repay me!?  Missing food stuffs, chemicals that are fine by themselves, but when put together can cause massive damage?  Oh, cousin… How do I ever fix this?”

A jingle of credits rang out through the room.

“You strike them down.”

“And we strike from here,”  Charger said, pointing at a mock-up of Plastic Beach.

Sasha and Ree stared at it before Sasha raised a hand.

“So, yeah, underneath there… By the church… There’s a hole there with a monster in it.”

Charger stared at Sasha, eyes wide.

“How… Long have you known about that?”

Sasha and Ree glanced nervously at each other.

“Oh… A while now… Like when we first met a while now…”

Charger nodded.

“Interesting… How did you see it?”

“Oh, I spat in the water,” Ree said.

Charger squinted at them.

“Change of plans,” she said, pushing the mock-up of Plastic Beach away.

Ren was pacing, Horne was taking care of their gun, Bandshee was learning how to control her rage into screams with the help of Bean.  One night, right before bed, the triplets came into Ren’s room.  Ren stared at them.

“Oh, what’s good, lil bop bops?”

Nere, the one with the white eyes, stared at Ren, while the other two held onto her hands.

“She… Waits… Patiently…”  They all said in unison, in a voice that didn’t sound like their own.  “She… Tries… Now…”

Ren stood up.  Mere, whose left eye was white and right was black, stared at him along with Nere.

“The fires will burn her,” the said, the voice getting stronger and more coherent.

Tere stared deep into Ren’s soul, the black left eye and the right white eye boring into his being.

“Cast the man of white into the sea of red that his cousin started.”

When the teenagers (except Ron) returned back to their room, 3 men were waiting for them.

“Captain Raz would like to speak to you all,” one of them said.  Before they could protest, they were dragged off.

It took what felt like 20 minutes to get to Captain Raz’s penthouse.  The men tossed them onto the floor.  The penthouse had slick marble flooring and various bits of furniture scattered the room.  It was eerily empty.  Captain Raz had a glass of wine in one of his 4 hands, staring out over his resort.

“Do you know how long it’s taken me to build this place?”

Aya helped Sasha and Ree up.

“It’s taken me 300 years,” he said, not waiting for them to respond.  “300 years of tech and 300 years of research to make sure people like you are happy and safe here,” he said turning around and looking at the young women.

“And yet… You aren’t happy.  Why is that?”  he asked, taking a sip of his wine.

They said nothing, unsure if an answer would get them killed.

Without his captain’s uniform on, Raz was a very thin man.  His red skin looked like hot coals, his eyes were yellow like highlighter on printer paper.  He smiled at them, his lipless face showing off a row of crooked, brown teeth.  Aya glared, putting herself in front of her sisters. Raz cackled.

“Little girl, I am not here to fight you and your giantness,” he cooed.  Aya sneered, her fist clenching.

“I only brought you here to let you know that… I know what you are all doing, I cannot wait to see what you have in store.”

He snapped his fingers.  The men came back in and pulled them out the penthouse.

“WHAT THE FUCK!?”  Aya screamed, punching the bag a little harder than normal.

Sasha was going over what just happened with Charger.  Ree said to she had to go to the kitchen area to make dinner, to “cool out”.

Charger was re-doing her hair, half of it in a giant poof, the other half tightly braided cornrows.

“So, we don’t have much time,” Charger said, putting her arms down to get blood flow back to her hands.

“What!?  We’re still going to do this?!  Charger, we–”

“Might die, but dammit, I’ve been dead for the past 5-7 years, so who gives a fuck?  Y’all act like this is the worst thing because y’all are still new here.  I’ve lost friends…. I have… Waited here.  If me dying frees me from this place, then so fucking be it,”  Charger said, staring at Sasha.  “And don’t you want to go get your siblings?  You’ve been crying about those ugly little bastards for a year now and now  you wanna turn chicken because he threatened you? After killing your family, your home, your PLANET, you’re scared of this man?!  You have NOTHING, what are you afraid for?”

Ron was almost 21 now.  With this new sense of adulthood, he asked Charger to be the team lead for getting some of the ships off the ground.  He and his team of 8 others who also came to Plastic Beach on one of the pre-determined ships discussed how each ship looked on the inside with the help of Sasha’s information.

“If we can figure out how to turn off the courses, we can just get the fuck outta here,” he said, flipping through the manual he still had.  “But this shit doesn’t say anything about that.”  One of his teammates took the book and flipped through it as well.

“The last two chapters are in some language, I can’t read,” Ron said.

The person who took the book started to panic.

“I… I can…”  they said, tears running down their face.  “It’s my native language.  I never thought….”  The team comforted them, trying to calm them.  After a few minutes, they started working on a translation.

“So, pretty much, we need to reset the computer, but it’ll take 3 people to do so,” the translator said.

“Fuck… I was hoping we’d have one ship for each of us to fly,” Ron said, rubbing his temples.

“Well, it’s mostly just the pilot and two people in the engine room.  Those two don’t need to know how to fly the thing, they just have to pull a lever and press a button.”

Ron sat quietly for a moment.

“We’re gonna have to do practice runs.  Find two people for your team, we meet up at dawn.”

The dinner talk was quiet when Ron arrived.  Ree handed him his plate, then served someone else theirs.  Ron sat with his sisters.

“What’s going on? Why the long faces?”

Aya told him what happened.  Ron’s ears got hot with anger.

“I’m so sorry, I wasn’t there,” he whispered.

“Not your fault,” Sasha said.  Ree sat with them after a time, nibbling on a roll.

“Charger said we have a little over a month to be ready.”

Ron blinked.  “That soon?”

“Hey, if dude already knows, might as well just go for it, ya know?”

“Ren and Horne know as well.  They said they’ll be ready.  Ren also said something about casting the man in white into the red??”

They sat quietly before Ree’s eyes got wide.

“The pastor.”