Chapter Text
“Careful, guys. More of these rifts have been detected just south of your position,” Robert’s voice came through on Flambae’s earpiece, tinny and slightly garbled with static. “Keep an eye out.”
“Will you relax, dad?” Prism scoffed, her words oddly echoed in Flambae’s ears since he could hear her both over the comms and standing ten feet away from him. “Quit nagging us, we’re fine!”
“I’m sure the woman who got her arm chopped off when one of these things closed on her thought she’d be fine, too,” Robert snarked back pointedly.
Prism winced, and then turned to Flambae to share a look with him, both grimacing at the reminder. The Z-Team had been forced to see the incident report before they were dispatched, and it had not been pretty.
“Just…please pay attention,” Robert said tiredly. “If anything new pops up in your area, be ready to monitor it as well.”
“Fine, we get it, we get it,” Flambae grumbled. “Go nag someone else. I bet you Sonar’s probably trying to see if he can lick one right now.”
He heard a heavy sigh over the comms, but Robert did drop the subject, allowing him and Prism to focus on their jobs.
Which was admittedly probably not necessary, because this was really boring work. Sure, there was an element of danger; somebody had lost a limb to these things, after all. But unless you were dumb enough to stick your arm into a giant glowing hole in reality that had suddenly appeared hanging in the air in front of you, they didn’t seem to be much of a threat.
The jury was still out on what had caused the strange rifts that were popping up all over town since earlier that morning. While they bore a passing resemblance to Malevola’s portals, there was nothing visible through the floating rips in the fabric of space other than murky blackness. Still, after the woman lost her arm to one, several SDN teams had quickly been dispatched to try and clean up the issue.
At this point, though, they were kind of just stuck playing bouncers for the fucking things. No one had figured out how to close them yet, so until someone found the root cause of the rifts, there was nothing anyone could do but stand around and keep idiots from accidentally wandering into one. It didn’t help that the rifts were opening and closing seemingly at random, which meant the teams tasked with guarding them were constantly scrambling from one place to the next to keep an eye on them.
“Ugh, this feels like a total waste of our time,” Prism grumbled to Flambae, pulling her earpiece out just far enough that her words wouldn’t be picked up by her mic. At the same time, with her free hand, she cast a large sparkling barrier in front of one of the rifts they’d been told to watch over, blocking a young kid’s ball from rolling into it. It bounced back towards the kid, who scooped it up and gave her a grateful wave before being herded away by what must have been his grandmother. “Like, damn, can’t we just put up some pylons or some shit?”
“Wetfartboy would probably just trip over a pylon and go head first into one of these things,” Flambae scoffed, jerking his thumb over his shoulder towards the second rift they’d been assigned. “Or some idiot would ignore them and drive right over them and into the fucking rift.”
“Point,” she accepted with a sigh. “Still. This is so fucking boring.”
“If you’re that bored, we can do your performance review while you’re waiting,” Robert said through the comms, making them both jump. They shared a guilty look, neither having realized that he could still hear them, even when they covered their mics. “I’ve been meaning to discuss that bank robbery with you.”
“No, no!” Prism quickly squeaked, wide eyes visible behind her visor. “T-that’s okay, we can talk about that later!”
Flambae heard Malevola say something on the comms, probably some joke at Prism’s expense, but he didn’t catch it. The air around him had suddenly…wobbled, for lack of a better term, and it had instantly put him on alert. He glanced over at Prism, seeing that she was cursing up a storm, glaring at the ground with her hand pressed to her earpiece.
“Hey. Prism. Did you see that?” he asked.
She glanced up, unperturbed. “See what? Oh!” She looked at something over his shoulder, her expression brightening. “Looks like one of the rifts here closed up!”
Flambae looked back. Sure enough, the rift he’d been standing guard over had vanished without a trace. But still, he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was…wrong. The air suddenly felt strangely charged, like the moment before a lightning strike. He glanced towards the other rift, seeing the way it was starting to sway and shift. That was new.
“Have any of them done that before?” Flambae asked with a frown.
“Done what?” Robert asked, while Prism turned to look as well.
“Huh, that’s fuckin’ weird,” she mused, watching the rift dancing in the air. “It’s, like. Moving.”
“Moving how? Give me some more details, here, guys.”
“It’s like…wiggling,” Prism told him. “I dunno how else to describe it.”
“What about the other rift in the area?” Robert prompted, which made Flambae and Prism look back to where the other rift had been. “Is it…wiggling as well?”
“Nah, man, like I said. It’s gone,” Prism replied. “Must have closed up.”
There was a pause where Flambae thought he could hear the clack of a keyboard in the background. “...the sensors are still picking up a rift there.”
Prism clicked her tongue. “Well, then they must be busted, because there’s nothing — ”
“Shit. It’s moving. Fast. Flambae, Prism, get out of there!”
Even though the Z-Team loved to mock and belittle and bully Robert at every opportunity they got, when he yelled in that tone, they had all learned to quickly obey without question. Before he even knew what he was doing, Flambae was already shooting up into the sky, Prism creating a staircase of light to follow.
“Where the fuck is it?” Flambae growled, his eyes darting through the air as he searched for any sign of the rogue rift. “I don’t see anything!”
“I’m trying to pinpoint it,” Robert told him, his voice tense and the sound of typing growing even louder. “Give me a sec.”
Flambae glanced down at the other rift that they’d left behind. It was still wiggling back and forth, but it also seemed to be blinking in and out of existence. As he watched, it shuddered, spasmed, and then suddenly vanished from view.
“The other one just disappeared,” Prism reported, crouched down on the edge of one of her light platforms so she could keep an eye on the city streets below. “Is it actually gone?”
“...I don’t know.”
“Fuck,” Flambae cursed under his breath. “So they’re fucking invisible now?”
“Sounds like it,” Prism agreed tersely, her body stiff with tension.
“Great. Just fucking great.”
The two of them hung suspended in the air, waiting with bated breath for either the rifts to reappear or for Robert to update them. Until then, all they could do was float there like sitting ducks. The seconds stretched, Flambae feeling his anxiety grow the longer they waited without something happening.
Then, just as the tapping of Robert’s keyboard started to slow, it happened again. The air around Flambae shifted, like he was standing in the middle of a heat mirage, and the charged atmosphere worsened. A sinking feeling grew in his gut, like the moment before the fall where you know what’s coming but can’t do anything to stop it.
He looked over at Prism, seeing the panic he was feeling reflected in her eyes. “Bob-bob. Robert…I think…”
“...Fuck. It’s right on top of you, Flambae, move!”
Flambae tried. He really did. He gathered his flames, trying to push himself higher, away from the electricity in the air that made him taste metal on the back of his tongue. But the energy was gathering faster than he could move. The world around him wavered, heat building up around him so quickly that even he felt the burn. The last thing he saw was Prism reaching towards him, her expression horrified and her mouth hanging open in a scream of denial.
And then the world tore open on top of him, and everything went dark.