Deanoru

The Rescue

No Xavin AU, with a few changes from canon to suit my own angsty needs...so don't yell at me about it.

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It took a long while for Nico to bring herself to re-emerge after the PRIDE had successfully split up her family. She was filled with utter rage that could only be overshadowed by how sad she was. Sore ribs reminded her of how well her parents had handed her own ass to her. Then the Staff had taken over and Nico didn't remember what had happened.

When she had come to, exhaustion and soreness tainting every inch of her, the glass wall had been shattered and was scattered all around the unconscious forms of her parents, the memory still haunting her. Nico leaned her full body weight upon the Staff of One as she shoved herself out of the bed she'd been sharing with Karolina Dean since they had found their hiding place. She never should have allowed them to separate but at the time she had felt more like a liability than anything else. The Staff of One didn't operate unless she could form a coherent word.

Nico knew she was going to have to push through her soreness and how she was feeling, and go hunt down whomever of the PRIDE had taken her girlfriend... ex-girlfriend (?) and give them hell, or maybe send them there. Karolina Dean was the moral compass of their group, the light to balance out Nico's darkness. Maybe the other girl had been right all along. It was time Nico embraced that darkness, and use it for the strength it had shown itself to be.

Though the consequences to herself afterward had wrecked Nico; she had definitely been at her strongest when the darkness of The Staff of One had taken over completely. Nico was confident that was a very bad thing for her as a person, even if it was a good thing for the team and the world. If darkness was going to help rescue Karolina, then Nico was willing to risk it all... no matter the peril for herself. The team, the world... they would all be better off with Karolina more than Nico. At least, that's how Nico felt.

"We have the three of us. What are we going to do next?" Nico asked when she arrived in the dining room of the hideout and met the inquiring eyes of her friends. "I am not in my best shape right now and Alex, for all your brains you don't have super-powers... Molly's just a kid... How are we going to do this?"

"How we do everything... together." Alex said with a heavy and tired sigh. "We're down by a few, but we'll make it. I believe in us."

"I don't know how much you should believe in me right now." Nico confessed, her lack of confidence obvious in her voice. "The Staff took over again, while I was fighting against my parents. Like physically fighting with fists and kicks. I fell unconscious and when I woke up everything around me had shattered and I had knocked them out."

"I'm going to believe in you no matter what." Molly interjected. "You haven't let me down while you've been leading our family... at least not in the leadership sense of it all."

Nico was surprised to hear such staunch support from the youngest member of the group, though, like all of the others, Molly had been forced to grow up much too quickly while they had been on the run. She heard a new sense of maturity in Molly's voice and Nico couldn't decide if she liked it or not. It was going to happen eventually, but Nico was a bit disappointed the growing up process had affected the girl so quickly. Molly met her eyes evenly. Nico was somewhat proud of the strength she saw there.

"We're going to get Karolina and Gert back. This will be hard without the full team, but I believe we can rescue them." Alex continued. "I'll come up with a plan. We'll make do." he did his best to come across as confidently as possible... for Nico's and Molly's sakes. He knew that both of them were putting on their bravest front too.

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"One last review, okay? We're going to do this thing tonight." Alex said insistently, even though they had gone over the plan eight times that day and who knew how many the day before. "After that I want everyone to get in a good nap before we go on the offensive. We're going to attack PRIDE for the first time with only three people. We had never tried that before even at full strength, so this needs to go as close to plan as possible."