MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT

Part III: Unholy Alliance

By Hunter Lambright

Previously in Runaways:

For the group of kids known as the Runaways, it had definitely been an eventful twenty-four hours. It had all started when they decided to take the fight back to their evil parents by destroying some of their sources of revenue. Their parents had struck back by sending a squad of paid villains to bring their children in. When that didn’t work, their parents retrieved the kids themselves, only to take them to an arcane trial in the underwater Vivarium, led by three giant biblical creatures, the Gibborim.

The children had then witnessed their parents being gunned down before their very eyes on a mysterious woman’s orders. The Gibborim were revealed to be robotic simulacrums of the real deal. One of their own—Gertrude Yorkes—revealed her betrayal to the team before transforming into a demonic giant and killing the woman who killed their parents. Then the real giant biblical creatures finally arrived, killing the traitor and demanding a soul in payment for the past year of wealth…

The Vivarium

“TELL US, CHILDREN,” demanded the lead Gibborim. “WHERE IS THE SOUL?”

The seven kids cowered beneath the presence of the Gibborim, much in the way that several of them had seen their parents do not much earlier. Alex Wilder took it upon himself to fill his father’s shoes. “Uh, they brought it, sir,” he said, his voice shaking. He pointed his finger to the spot where their parents had been slain by gunfire earlier that night. Despite the excitement in the Vivarium, the bodies were largely unmoved.

“RETRIEVE IT,” commanded the Gibborim. It didn’t need to say anything else after showing them what it could do to the gigantic beast that Gert had turned into.

Chase, with full knowledge that he did not want to die, was the first to volunteer himself to dig through the pile of bodies. He finally found the box containing the soul clutched to his own mother’s chest. Ignoring the pangs in his chest, Chase pulled the box from her grip and handed it to Alex, who bowed before the giants. “Here it is.”

Using its thumb and forefinger, the first Gibborim lifted it up between the three of them. “SILENCE WHILE THE RITE OF VORTEX IS PERFORMED!” None of the children so much as whimpered. Alex would have been afraid of Molly crying out, but she was conked out, having used up all of her power against Gert.

As the Gibborim uttered a string of unintelligible words, the soul in the box began to swirl into a tornado from the cube’s center. As soon as the vortex reached the peak of the Vivarium, it split into three separate cyclones. Each individual twisted then angled downward into the open mouths of the Gibborim. It could almost have been considered a beautiful sight if the kids had forgotten that it had been a real, live girl’s soul that their parents had taken to feed these monsters.

The Gibborim, now finished with its yearly meal, turned toward the children. Slowly, his two brothers did the same. “NOW,” it said, gesturing toward their fallen parents, “IT APPEARS WE HAVE OTHER MATTERS TO WHICH WE MUST ATTEND.”

“Y-yeah?” Alex stuttered. He looked at the rest of the group. The same fear was stitched across each and every one of their faces. It was laughable, in retrospect, that their parents had been intimidated by the robots. The real deal was so much more frightening.

“WE SEEM TO BE WITHOUT A PRIDE,” said the Gibborim. His hand moved slowly from their parents until it pointed toward them. “THOUGH IT IS AGAINST OUR NATURE TO BRING CHILDREN INTO OUR AFFAIRS, YOU ARE THE ONLY ONES PRESENT TO TAKE THAT PLACE.”

“You want us to be the new Pride?” asked Alex asked. He could feel Nico tense behind him at the suggestion. The others shifted uncomfortably; they knew all too well what that suggested.

“THAT IS WHAT I SAID,” replied the Gibborim. “YOU WILL TAKE YOUR PARENTS’ PLACES AND, ONE YEAR FROM NOW, PRESENT US WITH ANOTHER SOUL, LEST WE DESTROY YOUR WORLD.”

Chase spoke up. “Besides the whole ‘not destroying the world’ thing, what do we get out of it?” Karolina elbowed him in the side, but the Gibborim nodded, finding the question completely legit.

“YOU WOULD NO LONGER BE HINDERED BY THE EXPECTATIONS OF YOUTH. BY RUNNING THE CITY OF ANGELS, AUTHORITY FIGURES WOULD TURN A BLIND EYE TO YOU AS THEY TURNED A BLIND EYE TO YOUR PARENTS,” said the Gibborim. “HOWEVER, IF YOU DO NOT DO THIS, IF YOU RUN FOR HELP, WE WILL KNOW, AND WE WILL FIND YOU. YOU CAN RUN, BUT YOU CANNOT HIDE.”

“Can we have a few minutes to decide?” asked Alex. The Gibborim nodded, and the Runaways huddled together.

Chase started it off. “What choice do we really have?” he asked. “I mean, the world’s gonna end in two years no matter what we choose, so I say we live those two years out in paradise.”

Karolina shook her head. “It’s like making a deal with the devil. This whole thing doesn’t sit right with me.”

Nico shrugged. “It’s like Chase said. We don’t have a choice.”

“Besides,” added Alex, “we can always say yes and look for a way to back out, some kind of loophole maybe, once we get out of here.”

“I vote what Karolina votes,” said Molly, yawning. She had just awoken from her slumber at the arrival of the Gibborim. The fact that she hadn’t been reduced to hysterics was a testament to her strength even as the youngest Runaway.

Primo looked at Matti. “Not what you expected when you agreed to help me save my friends, is it?”

“Nope,” Matti said, shaking his head as if he hoped doing so would take the entire nightmare away. “What do you think?”

“I think we’re in it deep,” Primo responded. “Where else can we go but up? I say we take the deal.”

Matti looked at Alex. “I go where my brother goes.”

“Do we vote?” asked Alex, looking around the circle. Slowly, all the heads nodded yes. “All in favor of taking the deal and not ending up like Gert over there?” He raised his hand. Several shot up quickly, like Chase and Nico’s. Karolina put her hand up when she realized she had been defeated, and Molly quickly joined her. In the end, it was unanimous.

Looking up at the lead Gibborim, Alex said in a firm voice, “We’re in. What do we have to do?”

Suddenly, the scenery shifted. They were no longer in the Vivarium, but found themselves instead in a large, open space. To the right was an enormous table with twelve chairs—the table they had first seen their parents gathered at on the night they killed the girl that set off this series of events.

“THAT IS UP TO YOU. THE COORDINATES OF THE NEW VIVARIUM WILL BE SENT TO YOU IN A YEAR. HAVE THE SOUL READY,” echoed the Gibborim’s voice, though the creature was nowhere to be seen. Then, there was nothing.

After several moments of silence, Chase said, “Did you guys just have the same crack-induced dream that I did?”

The Vivarium

Barely alive. Gotta…get them off! Dead weight now, no use, nothing but meat.

Robert Minoru was barely conscious. He grappled his way to the surface of the pileup, soaked in the blood of the people who were his business partners, his friends, his wife…his life. He had already lost too much blood from the two bullets that caught him in the thigh. His leg had buckled immediately under the onslaught of bullets, taking him under the rest of the group as their bodies fell atop him like human shields. Then, he’d blacked out.

Now, he was the only one left. He managed to pull himself into a kneeling position before muttering a set of cursed occult magic words. “Uttra menkham asharrah!” Slowly, the bullet casings popped painfully from his thigh, and the muscle in his thigh mended together. Finally, two new patches of skin tightened over the freshly-healed muscle.

He had paid for the healing with a tiny portion of his soul, but over the years Robert had grown to realize that he had much more of his soul to give—or keep. Still, the soul was worth so much more when spent. What sane mortal honestly wanted that useless intangible piece of himself intact at death?

As his eyes slowly adjusted to the dimness inside the cavern, Robert saw that three new creatures stood alongside the robotic Gibborim. They stood without moving, as if they were hibernating as they waited for him to rear his head from his hiding place beneath the bodies of his dead comrades.

The lights suddenly snapped on, followed quickly by the lids of the Gibborim’s eyes snapping open. The one who had always spoken stepped forward. “WE ARE NOT DONE WITH YOU, ROBERT MINORU.”

“My Pride is dead, my wife is gone,” said Robert solemnly. “What more could you ask of me now?”

“YOU WILL LIVE FOR YOUR CHILDREN,” started the Gibborim, “BUT YOU WILL WORK FOR US.”

Robert sputtered. “Children?”

The Gibborim merely pointed at the ground. Between its legs was a book that, as Robert watched, glided through the air to land at his feet illuminated in an odd beam of light that seemed to have no source. “YOU WILL LEARN WHAT YOU MUST DO IN THERE, THE ONE TRUE ABSTRACT OF THE PRIDE.”

The Gibborim turned its back on Robert. As its brothers began to follow, it cocked its head backwards with one final warning. “KNOW NOW THAT, SHOULD THE CHILDREN BE TOO SOFT TO BRING US A SOUL, IT WILL FALL TO YOU TO COMPLETE THE SERVICE.”

Robert nodded, cradling the book as he knelt in the middle of the Vivarium. Just as it seemed the Gibborim were about to walk into the wall, there was a brilliant flash of blue-tinted light. When it faded, Robert was alone, but he was not without hope. He gave one last longing look at the remnants of the Pride before sparking the heap with a single magic word. The fire spread from a cinder to a small flame, until it slowly engulfed the entirety of the Pride. Once upon a time, they may have had their baptism of fire, and now they had their crucifixion.

He gazed longingly at the funeral pyre for several sad moments before scooping the True Abstract into his robe. Robert walked like a man on a mission toward the golem. “Philoprogenitiveness,” he snapped, and the golem’s eyes instantly crackled to life. Robert pulled open the doors to the inner compartment and sealed himself in.

“Take me up,” Robert commanded. The golem walked deliberately past the pyre one last time before stumbling through the whole that led to the antechamber. The Leapfrog was conspicuously missing, but Robert figured that the children had taken it in their escape. Little did he know that their long-time transportation aide was now in possession of Dr. Jonas Harrow, taken in his flight from the wrath of the true Gibborim.

The golem clambered down through the submarine portal into a tunnel that had been widened specifically for the golem to be able to stomp through. The sentry held enough oxygen to supply several users with breathable air on a six-hour walk on the sea floor, so Robert knew that he would be fine.

He kicked back in the driver’s seat. The golem knew where it was going, and was essentially on auto-pilot. It could get them to the surface with or without his aid. For now, instead, Robert had some very interesting reading to catch up on…

The Lair of the Pride

The Runaways sat gathered around the conference table, just as their parents had not many hours before. Silence had been the name of the game for the past twenty minutes as each and every one of them took the time to let the night’s events sink in. It took Nico to finally snap everyone out of their collective funk.

“I can’t believe Gert did that,” she said aloud. “I mean, I don’t want to speak ill of the dead and all, but…she just never seemed the type. Complain about it? Yeah. Get people killed just for the sake of moving our parents’ plans forward? That just doesn’t seem…Gert, you know?”

“What, you think she was brainwashed by one of our parents?” Chase asked. “Because that means one of them turned her into a killer, too, and it might just be the one who turned me into one, right, Alex?”

Alex reddened. “I’m not responsible for my father’s actions.”

“But don’t you think it’s…possible, at least? That your dad could have convinced Gert that my dad was a liability, someone to get rid of?” Chase asked sullenly. He wanted some way to redeem Gert from her actions, or to at least make them make some degree of sense to him. He still had difficulty seeing such bloodlust at the end out of the girl who had told him she didn’t want any more blood to be spilled that night.

“Stop blaming other people for everyone else’s actions!” Karolina exclaimed, burying her face in her hands. “It’s just…can’t we accept that the people who died tonight deserved it somehow? I don’t think I can live with myself if I keep remembering my parents as ‘the good guys’ like they used to be. They weren’t my parents at the end. They were murderers who happened to get the death penalty. That’s that. Anything more personal is going to drive me insane.”

“We’re all dealing with this in our own ways,” Alex said. Molly was in tears between him and Karolina. The older girl put a comforting arm around Molly, but that didn’t make the pain feel any better.

Matti finally spoke up. “Look…we’re here at a really, really bad time, but we left our dad passed out and alone in pretty much the worst part of L.A. there is, so if we could check on him…?” He looked down. “It seems inconsiderate, knowing what happened tonight, but…”

“Go. If you’re here and you have family left…you should go,” Alex said. He pointed to a series of six staircases. “I have a feeling each of these leads to one of our houses.” He studied the signs carefully before finally pointing to one labeled with an hourglass. “That staircase should take you to the Yorkes’ house. It’s not like anyone else plans on using it, anyway.”

The twins got up to go, but Primo held back for a moment, looking to the rest of the group. “We’re bound to you guys, you know, by the deal we took tonight. We’re going to be back, no matter what.”

Alex nodded, wearing a grim look of inevitability. He shook Primo’s hand. “Thanks.”

Primo was relieved at the reaction. He jogged after Matti and soon they had left the Runaways to their grief.

Nico looked up from the table once more after several more silent, dragging minutes. “We need to have a funeral.”

“When?” asked Alex, shaking his head. It wasn’t something he wanted to deal with right then.

Nico was adamant. “Tonight.”

The Little Shoppe of Horrors

Primo and Matti touched down in the alley behind the Little Shoppe of Horrors. After calling the falcon back to the tattoo on the small of his back, Primo looked to Matti. “After you.”

Matti peered inside the dusty building, expecting to find everything exactly as he’d left it. He couldn’t have expected anything more wrongly. The few dishes that they had were shattered across the floor of the kitchen, the cabinet doors hanging off busted hinges. The table and chairs had been smashed to so many pieces of busted wood.

“Dad?” asked Matti tentatively. “Are you okay?” He listened for footsteps, fearful that an intruder might still be inside the apartment.

took the less cautious approach. “Dad! Where are you?” he shouted. Matti ducked toward the small room in the back, where he’d left his father passed out drunk in front of the television.

The armchair remained where it had been before, its stuffing pulled from its inside like the innards pulled from a fish. The handle used for kicking out the recliner had been thrust through the old television set, guaranteeing that Letterman would never again play across its fuzzy screen. Their father was nowhere to be seen.

“Listen, Matti,” said Primo, holding up a hand to stop his brother from moving any further.

Matti was perplexed. “What is it?” he asked hurriedly. “Is someone here?”

“No,” Primo said, “but that’s the point. I don’t hear anything. The vermin…”

They left the back room for the display room of the shop, the one room accessible from the street. The tinted plate glass had been shattered, but bullet holes remained in what was left of the lower portion that hadn’t fallen out. Cracks formed a spider-web pattern from the center to the corners of what was left.

Inside the shop, the creatures their father spawned from his body were not moving. On first glance, it seemed that they had all been killed by stray bullets, but Matti saw that some were missing. The amphibious creature that Matti had taken from his father’s flesh that very night was no longer in its tank, nor were some of the more exotic varieties of creature. Someone had taken the care to take what they wanted and eliminate all the rest.

Matti was filled to the brim with a mix of anger and sadness. This was everything he had rebuilt after the fire, and someone had come and simply destroyed it! This was what he and Primo had worked their lives for and someone had deemed it all a waste! He turned his back on the store and left for his room. He found the same story inside. The old dresser had been shattered, and all his clothes had been ripped or shredded. The cot had been bent beyond recognition, and the mattress was torn in half.

Primo’s voice echoed weakly from outside. “M-Matti? You n-need to see…this.”

Matti jogged to the sound of his brother’s voice, but stopped behind him at the bathroom door, staring at the massacre inside. Their father lay in the bathtub, his throat sliced open. Only his head and shoulders emerged from a mixture of blood and water in the tub. It seemed that whoever had done this had sliced open his shoulders in search for any final burgeoning creatures before they left. It didn’t matter how or why they had done it, though. For Matti and Primo, the only thing that mattered was the fact that Arturo Falcone was dead.

Primo stepped forward, but Matti held him back, pointing to the message on the mirror, written in what was most likely red lipstick meant to simulate blood. The message was scrawled across the gnarled length of the mirror, reading ominously:

“This is for selling to the wrong person one time too many. If only you’d turned your sign to ‘CLOSED’ tonight…”

Harrington Cemetery

“Why’d you pick such an out-of-the-way place for this, Nico?” asked Chase, keeping up the talk so that he wouldn’t have to think about what had really happened less than an hour ago.

Nico shrugged. “In case anyone reads the headstones and checks the obituaries? I didn’t want anyone to check our stories out. I don’t want people to ask questions. We’ve just been given a hell of a lot of responsibility, and, well…I figured we’d want to be the only ones here when we come to…you know…visit them.” She shrugged. “And your dad’s buried here.”

Chase instantly shut up. He hadn’t realized where they were in the dark, and felt color rising to his cheeks in embarrassment.

She pointed at the headstones she had conjured with the Staff of One. “Do you guys want to start putting these away? If I’m right that I can only do a spell once, I don’t want to waste a levitation spell on a single headstone.”

Slowly, with Alex and Chase doing most of the heavy lifting, the headstones were set in a straight line along the back of the cemetery. They were lined by trees and hidden away in an area not usually accessed by the public, which was good for them in a way. It was more unlikely this way that no one would see the dates and wonder why there was no fresh mound of dirt sitting in front of the concrete markers.

They all stood in front of their parents’ headstones for a few moments before looking to the last remaining marker. The five Runaways—even Molly—lifted underneath the square stone, setting it firmly into the ground between the Yorkes’ headstones. It said simply, “Getrude Yorkes—Died Trying to Change the World—For Better or Worse.”

Alex was the first to leave his parents’ gravestones, followed quickly be Chase, who had already had to bury one parent. Karolina moved back and forth between her parents, as if she was torn in half over what she should do. As soon as she moved, though, Molly followed after her.

Nico looked up as the others began walking off. “Nico, are you coming?” asked Alex. By no means did he want to rush her, but he didn’t want to leave her behind either.

“Yeah, I’ll be a minute. Sorry,” she said, before feigning a look at the headstones once more. As soon as she was certain that they all had their backs to her, she whispered, “NO MORE SORROW,” to the Staff of One. It buzzed red, as if to ask a question. She spoke to it grimly. “Yeah, even me.” The Staff then unleashed a heavy flurry of red energy. Four spikes hit the departing Runaways in the back. One struck Nico in the chest, and the final two arced across the pitch-black sky until they struck Matti and Primo, also orphans, in the chest, though Nico had no way of knowing the far-reaching effects of her spell.

Then she smiled to herself knowingly and whispered to her staff. “This’ll be our little secret,” she said, just as the staff disappeared back into her body. “I’ll never tell.”

The Yorkes Residence

Primo and Matti sat in bitter reflection on the porch of the Yorkes’ homely ranch building, secluded away from the rest of the neighborhood. Alex looked at them questioningly as the rest of the Runaways showed up, but a quick glance told him that they’d found nothing good.

“Dad w-was murdered while we were gone,” explained Matti, his jaw quivering. “Some gang did it as revenge for us selling something that obviously did them harm.” There was a quiet exchange of sympathies before Alex led the way through the library down into the Pride’s lair.

“So, now what do we do?” asked Chase. He wanted action—something he could hit, if at all possible.

Alex shrugged. “I don’t know. I think…god, I don’t know…I think we should go to our houses, go to our rooms tonight, and sleep, and meet here in the morning. We’ve gone through a lot, and I think everyone needs a chance to let some of it sink in.”

“I’ll take Mols with me tonight,” Karolina said quickly, holding the bleary-eyed preteen to her side. Molly clutched Karolina like a teddy bear made out of a security blanket.

Looking at the Falcone twins, Alex said, “I think you guys should take the Yorkes house, since they obviously have no use for it.”

“Thanks,” Primo said. “It’s a lot to ask, but considering we have nothing right now…yeah. Thanks.”

“It’s fine,” Alex assured him. He looked around the table. “We meet here in the morning at ten o’clock, which gives everyone a good seven or eight hours, depending on whether we get to sleep or not.”

He shrugged, knowing that what he said next was the part no one wanted to get to. “Like it or not, we’re the Pride now, and that means we’re running this city for better or for worse. We knew our parents were the villains, but now…now we have the power to change that.

“Let’s make being the children of the pride something…something to be proud of.”

Chase stood up and clapped Alex on the back. “Right on, brother. We’ll have this city up and running in no time.”

Nico shuddered visibly, knowing that what was to come would be much more challenging than what had gone before. “Famous last words…”

The End…For Now

Author’s Note

For starters, apologies for the crazy use of caps lock in the future. Italics just didn’t seem to cut it for the Gibborim. Now, onto the reflection.

Wow. These twelve issues…they are nowhere near the original pitch I sent Dino. Through the natural progress of story, so many changes have been made—especially the introduction of the Falcone boys. I know that hasn’t made me extremely popular, but I will say one thing—the Runaways have always been the best at six members strong. Take that how you will.

Wow again. I’ve got a whole ‘nother year of surprises coming at you. Questions are going to be answered about Nico’s little brother. Questions are going to be answered about all twenty-four of the original six Runaways’ twenty-four grandparents. Questions are going to be asked about…well, everything you ever thought you knew.

Do I regret killing the Pride? A little, but that can be remedied. I would love to write some of the adventures the Pride has had in the past twenty-three years, if anyone would be interested in reading it. I mean, I’d write it for myself anyhow, but there’s no point in wasting valuable webspace for it if the stuff goes unread, so let me know if you’d like to read more about the Pride members themselves. I may or may not be cooking something to your liking.

So…next issue, eh? I’ll give you a hint—the Runaways team up with the one person you never thought they’d team up with. And he’s on my dibs list. My lips are otherwise sealed, boys and girls. Oh, and it’s an extra-lengthy annual to boot!

Thanks for reading this far, guys,

Hunter Lambright