Chapter Text
Rusted gears squeal against each-other as the doors to the hatch in the elevator floor pull open. Dandy, in all of his glory, is standing right behind the counter, his head rested in his palms. The pull of a grin stretches across his face, and his eyes ghost over the curves of the items he had put up for sale.
BARK! BARK!
"D'aw, hi Pebble." Dandy coos with a wave of his hand, seemingly losing his train of thought. He has to take a sweeping look around before his eyes widen with remembrance. "Well color me impressed! I don't think I've ever seen a team go this far in one go before!"
Dandy always says the exact same few things every few floors, and it's beginning to get on Vee's nerves. It isn't unordinary that Dandy gets on Vee's nerves, but there's just something about him today that rubs her the wrong way.
"...how far would we be, then?" Astro murmurs, pulling his blanket a little further against himself.
Twenty-five, thirty, thirty-five, forty, forty-five...
"This would be floor forty-eight." Vee calculates, curt and certain. Shelly looks up at her with a subtle admiration carved into her features, Astro steps ahead of her to swipe a jumper cable from the counter, and, oddly enough, Sprout doesn't move a muscle from his spot against the wall.
Now there's just some candy and a bandage left...
Hm.
Ugh.
Vee reluctantly grabs the bandage on display and chucks a good amount of tapes at him. He looks up at her with a wide smile.
Looks almost just like Keen, minus the glasses. Vee rolls her eyes at the thought. And the human proportions, I guess.
"Righty-o!" Dandy cheers, leaning forward against his shop's table. "Tell you what. Once you hit floor fifty, I've got a little treat in store for you guys, alright?" He doesn't wait for an answer, and he happily reaches for the lever to his side with a bubbly laugh. "I've got other places to be now, though; there's another run out the next elevator over. Ta-ta!"
The hatch shuts once again, and the elevator groans as it slowly makes its descent to the next floor below.
Vee unknowingly picks at the corners of her bowtie, mimicking a sound akin to someone clearing their throat with a brief shriek of metal. She stumbles over her word choice for a few seconds before groaning and blurting her original thought aloud. "I really don't think he actually has something for us."
"Who would?" Sprout scoffs, kicking himself off of the wall. He idly smooths out a bandage across one of his biceps and crosses one of his arms, the other raising to his temple. "It's Dandy, for Pete's sake. There's always gonna be strings attached."
"Hey, let's not give up faith just yet!" Shelly exclaims, worriedly gazing at Sprout. She seemed to be eyeing the scowl that'd seemed to have permanently etched itself onto his face at least fifteen floors ago. Vee can't blame him— she think even she may be developing a headache. "Dandy isn't the meanest guy, he could be genuine for all we know!"
Astro ignores any previous conversation with a sigh, the tension in his shoulders leaving with his breath. "...Let's just complete these last two floors and leave."
The elevator shudders for a few moments as it halts, its gears grinding in a cacophony of noise loud enough to make Vee wish she had ears to cover.
GGGRRRRrrrrr....
"Easy, boy," Sprout steps closer to Pebble and crouches without looking directly at him, nudging him with his wrist. If Pebble had been aware of the gesture, he didn't show it whatsoever.
After three long, painful seconds, the doors slide up and present the floor they'd have to be clearing this time around.
"Would you look at that," Vee mutters. "It's my own floor."
As soon as she steps out, however, the lights flicker off and completely shut down. There is no fucking way, Dandy. You can't be doing this right now.
Shelly nervously laughs and nudges Vee in the shoulder. There's a shaky smile on her face that completely betrays what she was trying to portray herself as. "Vee, Mike Check?"
"Oh, right. Thanks."
Her tail whips to the left as Vee grabs onto it, using both hands to tap at the surface. The short sound of cranking is all that's heard before lights, moving and unmoving, explode all throughout the floor.
Twenty Machines, eight Twisteds...
Astro gasps, concern written over his whole face. "Oh dear, did we... Did we just get all five of us?"
BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK!
"You handle the others, I'll handle your Twisted self." Sprout orders, and Pebble whines before racing right out from under his palm. Astro hurriedly follows him as fast as he could possibly do so. With a quiet sigh and a grumble of words Vee couldn't quite catch, he wordlessly steps out of the elevator to jog over to the general area of Twisted Pebble with his shoulders set.
His hand is clenched around that bracelet he's got, Vee notes. God, that thing is old. I'm surprised it hasn't torn that much.
"I don't know if I can go out there..." Shelly whispers, reminding Vee of where she was. Any enthusiasm she had before was completely stripped from her voice. She's drawn into herself further than looks very comfortable, her fingers locked between one another.
Vee thoughtlessly places a hand on her shoulder, giving what is her best impression of a placating squeeze. "We can stick together, the Machines aren't very far apart anymore. We just have to be fast."
Shelly looks up at her with a relieved exhale, gratitude shining with her expression. She wipes at the tears beginning to form in her eyes and straightens her posture. "...Alright. Thank you, Vee."
"Don't worry about it."
Because they had chosen to stay close together, the extraction process for that floor had been going surprisingly fast, and every few minutes or so Vee would pop another Mic Check to keep things in order. There hadn't been any real reason to go faster outside of sparing Sprout the heaps of wasted stamina, but she was sure he was fine— the guy had the endurance of more than a few dogs, Pebble included.
"—but I'm not very certain. There could've been dinosaurs so much older that we don't know about yet!"
With a hum, Vee takes her hands off of the valve for a near-completed Machine and taps at her screen. "I could probably run it through the World Wide Web."
Just a few left, I'm sure I could take a second or two to do that..
"Oh, okay," Shelly giggles, taking a few moments to turn around because she'd forgotten the Machine she'd been at was already done. Loose, anticipatory energy is brimming from her every pore, her arms fidgeting without a moment to rest.
Vee flips through a few sites before landing on one that talks about something called a Nyasasaurus.
"Let's see," Vee pounds at the side of her head, combatting a spike of lag she was sure was to come. "Says here that there's this recently discovered species. Nyasasaurus, meaning Lake Nyasa lizard. It's essentially an omnivorous theropod."
Ouch, twenty-thirteen was when it was discovered? It's been that long?
"Ooh!" Shelly perks up impossibly further, nodding her head thoughtfully. "You'll have to tell me about that later."
Vee chuckles and clears her screen, and with one strong push on the valve, the Machine rings complete. Her tail sways into her hands, and she does another quick check for the sake of it.
"The last four are near the elevator," She thinks aloud, swatting the microphone away. "I'm sure we can take our time. We left at least two of them half complete in our hurry to do Astro that favor."
"Alright!"
The walk all the way over to the elevator is leisure, a comfortable silence between the two of them. Climbing the stairs proves an easy task, and before Vee knows it, she's on the last Machine. Shelly wordlessly cheers her on, and extraction is a cinch before a loud crunch echoes throughout the whole floor. A disgruntled yell rips into the air, and someone's muffled voice yelps only a few seconds later.
Shelly hurriedly reached for her radio, urging Vee to let go of the valve. She's just about to speak when she's cut off by another voice entirely.
"It was Astro," Sprout delivers over the device, his tone tense and stern. "I had cut a corner too early as Astro had been walking away and Twisted Pebble latched onto him. I tossed him a heal as soon as I could."
"Are we good to pop?" Vee leans over into Shelly's radio, her fingers reaching toward the wheel with the anticipation of an agreement. Only heavy breathing is heard over the radio in reply.
Shelly anxiously tightens her hold on the gadget between her fingers. "Sprout?"
He tends to get lost in his head and forgets to reply to people talking to him sometimes, especially when he's concentrating, Vee impatiently drums her fingers against the metal in thought. He probably meant to agree.
Vee pops the machine with a hard swing, and the alarm blares louder than she remembers it ever could. Shelly lets out a gasp of pure shock, almost dropping her radio in the process, but Vee is quick to grab both her and her radio by the wrist and race to the elevator. The sprint isn't much of an exercise, and they're already there by the time Vee looks back up.
"Why did you—"
"—Quick thinking." Vee lands smoothly. "I'm sure they'll be fine."
Shelly, after a few tense moments pass, only nods in reply, unease etched into her features. Vee doesn't really understand why she's so worried, but to each their own, she supposes.
Astro is the third one to make it back to the elevator after taking a surprisingly long time, twisting to look behind him every few seconds before ramming directly into one of the metal walls.
He seems to feel their gazes on him and immediately explains, rubbing at his eyes. "I accidentally caught Scraps on the way here."
"Scraps?! SCRAPS is here?!" Vee feels one of her internal abdominal fans snap on.
"Yeah," Astro nods, "Pebble was almost caught off-guard by her, too. Sprout had to step in at some point, you know, take her off of him. She can get a bit much."
Shelly shoots Vee an uncertain look, and she shakes her head in reply. She rests her nearest hand on Shelly's further shoulder, turning away as she squeezed.
Pebble is the next to beeline for the elevator, making it in a staggering ten seconds after Astro. There's a disturbing lack of Twisteds following him as he crosses the line between the wood and iron flooring. He plops onto the floor with a pant.
Shelly raises her radio at the lack of Sprout anywhere in her peripheral, fretting for the worst. "Haha... Sprout? You still in there?"
It's not long before the alarms begin to chirp louder, and a frantic dinging noise starts to accompany every painful second. Right as the timer hits ten seconds, everybody's hearts are in their throats as Sprout turns the corner with ichor smeared across his face. His chest is heaving, and he loudly intakes each breath as he sprints for the elevator. The look on his face is austere, even through the thin sheen of blood.
"You can do it, Sprout..."
Sharpened plastic whips through the air, aimed directly for the heart in his chest. With a brusque snap, it punctures Sprout and pulls right back. He staggers, and he collapses directly onto his knees with all of his weight just as he reaches the elevator door.
"Oh, god..."
Ichor drips onto the floor, slipping through his shaking fingers. Astro pulls away with repulsion, and Shelly drops to her knees, too. Vee can't bear to look once he starts coughing.
"Sprout!?"
BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK!
"Oh, fuck, I'm startin' to feel funny," He curses through his own gore, slurring his every word.
"God, how are we gonna tell Cosmo about this?"
Vee feels like her nerves are tearing her apart. She can't tolerate listening to Shelly sob, choking on her own spit, Astro stress for the future with a cry barely brimming from his lips, nor Sprout swear through the pain of near-death and his erratic breathing. Vee definitely can't tolerate Pebble's desperate barking either. The lights seem to get too bright, and every sound fills the space between her and the other Main characters just too tightly.
There's one thing she thinks as she slams the button to go back to Gardenview, and there's one thing only.
"THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT DANDY!" She screams. She doesn't have lungs to scream with, but she screams. "YOU HEAR ME?! YOUR. FAULT!"