15. Thank You for the Venom
Thank You for the Venom
Thankfully Chris wasn’t hurt too badly, so Dustin could at least breathe easier about that. He wasn’t conscious just yet, but the doctor said he just had a concussion and a few fractures, so he didn’t need to be transferred to Seattle for more intensive care.
While that was good news, Dustin still had to deal with the firestorm that was his parents’ wrath.
The group had come up with a story about sliding off the road during a late night Burger Belle run because of the thunderstorm and earthquake (that local news was chalking up to a freak occurrence instead of Bailey’s magic…
obviously) and James added a detail about Chris hitting his head on the steering wheel, and them having to drive him to the ER since the storm was interfering with their cell service.
It was a hastily crafted lie, but thankfully plausible enough to be believed.
It wasn’t enough to spare Dustin completely though.
“Have you completely lost your goddamn mind?!” his father growled through clenched teeth; his voice echoing through the deserted ER waiting room despite his “hushed” tone, “your brother could’ve been killed!”
Dustin could’ve been killed too… but he supposed that wasn’t as important.
“I wasn’t even the one driving…” Dustin mumbled in response. His father’s face flushed red with barely concealed rage.
“DON’T YOU DARE GET SMART WITH ME YOU LITTLE…”
“Elliot, please,” Charlotte interrupted, “we’re in public.
What your father is trying to say, is that you two shouldn’t have been on the road in that weather in the first place, but if you absolutely needed to go somewhere, you should’ve been driving.
You’ve always been more reliable in that regard,”
Of course; even when they made up a lie to explain the situation without revealing their powers, Dustin somehow still ended up getting blamed for Chris’s recklessness.
He wanted to defend himself, to question how they could twist the situation into being his fault…
but he’d played these games before. It would be as pointless as trying to explain the complexities of color theory to a jellyfish.
So instead, he took a deep breath, pushed down all the emotions dredging themselves up from the depths, and simply said his most enduring catchphrase…
“I understand. I’ll do better next time,”
“From here on,” Charlotte continued, Dustin’s well-worn accountability sliding off her like water off a duck’s back, “your car privileges are revoked. If you thought letting your brother drive like a maniac in the pouring rain was a good idea, we clearly can’t trust you to be responsible with it.
We were already lenient with you after the accident,”
Of fucking course they’d bring that up.
Dustin remembered Chris holding his bleeding lip as the paramedics loaded James onto an ambulance, pleading with him to take the blame so the potential DUI wouldn’t ruin his entire life…
Dustin agreed, and in turn it ruined his.
Even though the driver’s side of the windshield was shattered, and Chris was the one sporting a cut across his upper lip from the broken glass, his parents didn’t hesitate to believe that Dustin was the one who caused the accident.
They believed it was because he’d spent the weeks leading up to the performance practicing his ass off and barely sleeping.
That was when they decided that Colorful Trauma was nothing more than a distraction, and a dangerous one at that.
For a while they micromanaged every moment of his life until he’d entirely packed up that version of himself and stashed it away in his closet.
Until he became quiet, respectable, reliable. Everything that Chris was never expected to be.
“For how long?” he muttered, barely able to pretend like he was shocked or upset. It was difficult keeping up the act when the whole ordeal just left him feeling so hollow.
“Until we decide to change our minds,” Elliot snapped, his glare hot enough to melt steel, “now, we’re going to step outside for a moment so we can talk about the further details of your grounding,”
As his parents disappeared through the automatic doors leading out into the parking lot, Dustin rolled his eyes.
He couldn’t bring himself to care about whatever bullshit punishment they cooked up for him; he’d been through this with them a thousand times before.
The important thing was that Chris was safe, and that Leo was finally free of Qin Shi Huang’s influence.
Before he could ruminate on it much more, Bailey and James came in from outside, shaking off their umbrellas and slipping their cell phones back into their pockets.
“Just talked to my parents and let them know about the ‘accident’,” James said as the group took their seats among the empty waiting room chairs, “they offered to pay to fix your car, and I couldn’t explain that it wasn’t actually damaged so…
they’re gonna be writing you a big ass check. Use it for whatever you want, I guess,”
Dustin chuckled.
“I probably won’t have a chance to spend it. My parents are probably gonna ground me for life,”
“But… I thought our cover story made it very clear that this wasn’t your fault?”
Bailey and Dustin scoffed in unison.
“Never stopped them from blaming him anyway,” Bailey replied, sensing Dustin’s frustration, “speaking of parents, I talked to my dad. He was one of the firemen that went to handle the fallout from the um, earthquake. I discreetly asked him if there were any bodies on the scene, trying to find out what happened with Leo. But apparently, they didn’t find anything,”
“Do you think he like, walked away or something? That it’s not really over?
” Dustin choked out. For the first time since they’d arrived at the hospital, his heartbeat kicked into overdrive; the sheer idea that Qin Shi Huang might still be puppeteering Leo’s corpse after everything they’d done was almost enough to send him into cardiac arrest.
“I don’t think so,” Bailey assured him, placing a hand on his shoulder to hopefully calm him down, “my dad mentioned something about finding a huge pile of ashes in a hole in the ground, with absolutely no explanation. I’m guessing his body just like, disintegrated or something,”
“Maybe all that extra power just kind of burned his body out… literally,” James thought aloud.
Dustin cringed at the thought, but he still felt a deep sense of relief at the knowledge that Qin Shi Huang’s grip on Leo had truly been severed. Before he could ask any follow up questions, Chloe came through the ER doors; her arms bandaged up and stitches across her left eyebrow.
“I’m so glad you’re okay,” Dustin said as she approached, “how do you feel?”
“Like the world’s most gorgeous Swiss cheese,” Chloe deadpanned, though she still winced when the bandage on her arm shifted slightly, “any word on Chris?”
“He’s okay, but still unconscious. But the doctor said they’d let us see him as soon as he’s awake,” Dustin replied.
Chloe nodded, taking her seat alongside the group and casually brushing dried blood off her eyebrow.
“Well, in the meantime we need to figure out how we’re gonna move forward,”
“What do you mean?” James quirked an eyebrow.
“We just went up against a fraction of Qin Shi Huang’s power, and got our asses handed to us,” Chloe lowered her voice, and looked around the room just to make sure no one was within earshot, “if we’re gonna stand any chance against him at his full strength, we need to train our asses off,”
“Don’t be so negative!” James brushed her off, “that was our first major battle as The Elemasters, and we survived it. That’s gotta count for something,”
“Hold on,” Bailey giggled, “’The Elemasters’? Is that what you wanna call us?”
"Yeah, I mean, why not?" James shrugged, "it's like Animorphs! Elements, masters… boom! Elemasters!"
“It’s kinda catchy,” Dustin affirmed, kissing James’s cheek, “but Chloe isn’t wrong. We only made it because Bailey’s powers saved us. It’s only gonna get harder from here,”
“I guess you’re right… wait, what about the Palace of Radiant Clouds? It doesn’t seem like time passes normally whenever we’re there, so we could train there for a few hours after school every day without missing much. And we wouldn’t have to worry about people seeing us,” James suggested.
“Hold on now, is that an actual smart idea from our resident airhead?” Chloe teased, “don’t let me find out you’ve been holding out on me Zhang,”
“I’m more than a pretty face and a huge… bank account,” James winked, “but the question is, how do we make sure Sima Yao lets us in?”
“I can answer that, Master Zhang,”
The sudden voice in their heads made everyone jump, and elicited a surprised shriek from Bailey.
“Jesus CHRIST Sima! You can’t just do that!” she hissed.
“Apologies Lady Yu,” Sima Yao’s pillow soft voice continued, though it came without the slight head-pain that normally accompanied it, “now that all five of you have awakened your power, my tether to this plane is more powerful than ever. I can now maintain my corporeal form, and allow your rings to transport you here at will. All you must do, is attune your minds to one another, and concentrate on this location,”
“Well, it looks like we have a plan then,” Dustin said, resolute. Now all they needed was to wait for…
“Ah, you all must be here for Christian Ying,” the nurse’s voice got everyone’s attention as he came into the waiting room, “usually we only allow two visitors at a time, but he’s shaken up and I think seeing his friends will do him some good now that he’s awake,”
Within minutes, the group was standing around Chris’s hospital bed, with Bailey clinging to him like she was simultaneously trying to commit the feeling to memory and choke him to death.
“You scared us to death you fucking idiot!” she screeched, “I thought you were gonna die!”
“Alright, easy! You can’t kill me right after I just survived!” Chris protested, but he didn’t push her away, “what the hell happened back there? Last thing I remember is that thing slamming me into a wall before I was out cold,”
“Sima Yao told us you were in danger, and we managed to… I stopped him,” Dustin explained, “we’ll talk about the details later, right now I’m just glad you’re safe,”
Dustin noticed the subtle shift in Chris’s eyes; the same shift that happened when he used to lose in Mortal Kombat. He wouldn’t admit it, but the fact that Dustin stopped Leo when he couldn’t? That clearly got under his skin.
“Well, I’m glad you guys were able to take care of it without me,” Chris replied through clenched teeth, “so here’s what we should do next. First, we need to…”
“We’ve already settled on a plan,” James cut in, “we’re going to use the Palace of Radiant Clouds as a place to train,”
“Ah, perfect,” Chris grimaced, letting his head rest against his pillow, “well, good job you guys,”
“Don’t feel left out,” Bailey leaned over and adjusted the wrappings on his head, “we’re absolutely gonna need you if we’re gonna survive the next fight. But don’t you dare almost die again,”
Chris’s cheeks reddened and he sheepishly nodded.
“R-right, yeah,”
Chris was safe, and that should’ve been enough to truly put Dustin at ease… but as the rain continued to pelt the window across the room, there was only one thought in his mind.
They were really in the shit now. And it was just the beginning.