The group froze in shock as the dust began to settle.
"No… Please." Vida mumbled as her eyes began to water. Why was it always Hendrix at the blunt of every injury.
The silence stayed for a couple more seconds. The vanguard stayed fixated on the spot where Hendrix hit the wall.
"Oh my god, that hurts." Hendrix's calm voice rang from the cloud of debris. As the dust settled, the group could make out that Hendrix had wrapped his torso and head in his strings before he hit the wall, cushioning him during the collision. He stood up and rubbed his side, where the robot had kicked.
"No way…" Akilah thought to herself. Her and Vida's eyes widened as they looked at each other to see if they were seeing the same thing.
Vida's mind went into shock as she realized that the gap in strength between her and Hendrix had grown. Even after that miracle she pulled on the fourth floor, she felt inadequate compared to the pink-haired boy standing before her.
"You got any ideas, Akilah?" Hendrix's question snapped the group out of their dazed shock. Akilah had totally forgotten about planning a counterattack.
Akilah began to get into her thoughts, trying to figure out a plan to take the vanguard down. Kai noticed her expression grow into deep pondering.
"Buy her time again!" Kai yelled to the rest of the group. The three boys nodded to each other, while Vida tried to figure out how to recreate the apple tree wall.
Kai once again sped around, trying to catch the attention of the robot. Instead of following Kai, the vanguard followed Hendrix with no care for the other two boys, who were in closer proximity to the robot.
The robot took a step towards Hendrix. Taro got in front of the foot, using his Mode to try to stop the foot dead in its place. Taro was able to hold the foot in place for a couple seconds before he gave way, letting the robot step forward. Throughout the whole standstill, the vanguard did not lead its attention away from Hendrix once.
Hendrix took his try at the robot, wrapping one of its fists in his strings. The robot began to spin his fist around its torso when Hendrix let go, even though some of the momentum had still caught up to him.
"Not falling for that again." Hendrix thought as he slid across the carpet, falling just short of the unconscious Milo.
Akilah's lightbulb clicked. As she saw Hendrix call his strings back in, she noticed tiny sparks flying from the steel to steel interaction of Hendrix's strings on the metal armor of the vanguard. It reminded her of a memory from the Frewin's house.
The sharp tang of grinding steel hit her hears, and suddenly, she was twelve years old again, watching Hendrix and Vida crouched over a patch of mushrooms.
Four years ago:
Akilah was playing in the backyard of the Frewin's house, chasing Chase and Amora around while she imagined herself as a dragon. She looked over to the other corner of the yard, where she noticed Hendrix and Vida crouched over a spot of the yard with great interest.
"Hey, what are they doing?" Akilah asked Chase and Amora.
"Hmm. Maybe Vida found a bug!" Amora answered.
"A bug?! I wanna see!" Chase ran over to the two crouching kids with his cardboard sword in hand. Akilah and Amora followed after him.
"Where is the bug?!" Chase asked Hendrix and Vida.
"Bug? What bug?" Vida looked confused at Chase's excitement.
Chase looked down at the spot the two were crouched over to find the meadow mushrooms they had been staring at. Chase's excitement turned into boredom.
"You guys have just been looking at some stupid plants this whole time?" Chase pointed his sword at the mushrooms.
"They're kinda cool." Hendrix responded quietly.
"Yeah! Did you know that when their spores are close to a flame, the whole cloud can turn into sparks, like fireworks!" Vida excitedly read off of the page in her book about mushrooms. Chase's excitement returned.
"I've got an idea!" Chase put one finger into the air like a hacker from his favorite action movies. He ran into the house, returning quickly with something in his hand.
"What did you get?" Amora squinted at Chase's hand.
"It's from Mrs. Frewin's survival kit. She let me test it out once, she said it's called flint and steel." Chase held out the two tiny sticks, one made of flint and the other steel.
"What are you…" Vida's words trailed off as she came to the realization of what Chase was going to do.
"How do they release the thingies?" Chase jabbed the meadow mushroom with his cardboard sword, triggering a small cloud of spores to release from the cap.
"Oh, there it goes!" Akilah pointed at the cloud.
Chase started frantically striking the flint and steel together inside the cloud of spores. His face began to scrunch up as he tried to ignite the cloud before it dissipated. A lucky strike sparked the steel.
"Got it!" Chase shouted. The single spark started a chain reaction of popping noises. Small explosions of fire could be seen within the cloud. The kids looked on as the mini fireworks spread through every single spore.
Back to present day:
Akilah remembered that moment vividly now that Hendrix's strings reminded her.
"Vida!" Akilah shouted for Vida, who was still in her own world trying to recreate the apple tree.
"Oh. Do you have an idea?" Vida snapped out of her focus.
"Yeah. Are you able to change the properties of your spores too?" Akilah shouted over the banging of the boys holding off the vanguard.
Taro rode Hendrix's strings up to one of the vanguard's screens. He charged up a left hook and struck the front screen of the vanguard, doing no damage.
"Shit. The smaller screen won't be as easy to break." Taro thought.
"What do you mean?" Vida asked Akilah.
"Like… Can you make them dry?" Akilah tried to explain what she wanted Vida to do without spoiling the plan. She had a semi-irrational fear in the back of her mind that the vanguard was able to interpret language.
"I guess?" Vida's confusion grew exponentially.
"Let's do it!" Akilah pointed at the vanguard, Vida nodded.
The three mushrooms that Vida had already manifested grew a noticeable amount before the caps of the mushrooms burst with spores. The group of teens already knew what to do, they covered their noses and mouths with their t-shirts and sleeves.
As the cloud of spores grew, Akilah turned to Hendrix.
"Hendrix! Can you create a spark with your strings?" Akilah shouted through her jacket.
"Um. Yeah, I think so." Hendrix was confused, but his trust in Akilah's plan overrode that.
"Everybody move back!" Akilah shouted towards the group with the utmost urgency.
As Kai registered what Akilah was saying, she noticed that Milo was dangerously close to the vanguard.
"Quick, Kai." Kai thought. He sped through the battlefield, taking the still unconscious Milo over his shoulder and out of the cloud of spores as the rest of the group jumped out of the cloud as well.
Hendrix shot his strings towards the vanguard, grinding them together in opposite directions to create sparks. The sound of metal grinding together echoed through the floor.
After the second or third spark, a quiet hiss could be heard. The whole cloud lit up in a frenzy of orange and red flames, engulfing the vanguard in a roar of fire. The vanguard stomped its foot down as its movements began to slow.
"Heat warning, high temperatures." The robotic voice began to slow down, its cadence growing deeper.
The group watched on as explosions started to come from inside the robot. After the first explosion, the robot went limp, crashing onto the ground.
As the flames rose higher, the water sprinklers on the ceiling of the floor went off.
After a few more minutes of exhausted silence, the group looked at each other, dripping with water, and began to laugh.
Vida looked at Hendrix through the haze of sprinklers, realizing just how far they'd all come.
The water seemed to wake Milo out of his trance as Kai put him down.
"What the hell happened?" Milo looked around until he caught sight of his burnt prototype.
"My… My baby!" Milo began to wail and whine incoherently as he assessed the damage of his 'baby'.
"Jeez, my feet hurt." Chase climbed up the lip that ended the vertical drop as he helped up his girlfriend.
"And what the hell are you two doing here?!" Milo threw his arms up in disbelief.
The group of teens turned towards Amora and Chase and began to laugh even harder.
"What happened?" Amora looked at the scene of destruction before her.
The five exhausted teens drenched in water felt a sense of victory. They were now certain that they could handle whatever life threw at them as long as they were in it together.