Greg Vs Raid 9-8

“Like, actual cats and d-dogs.” The last syllable fought for dominance to be heard as Greg scarfed down the very last bite of his fifth chili dog of the afternoon, table manners his mom would probably ground him for another week for proudly on display. Jokes on you, ma, I’m not at a table.

Without another word, Greg pulled out another chili dog from his inventory because honestly, cheap glorious gas station street meat was a perfect anchor to reality after… well, after everything. The whole thing disappeared in one bite, which probably looked gross but eh, whatever.

Rolling his shoulders, Greg leaned up against the frame of the side door he’d just walked through, taking in the scene with the patience of the Buddha.

Sparky was halfway to the main doors, while Theo stood a few feet from him on the polished concrete floor; the both of them staring at him like they’d never heard of Greg Lucas Veder before in their lives. It was almost enough to make him forget they were at each other’s throats a minute ago, the tension still so thick you could’ve sawed at it with a dull spork and made progress.

Man, I’m gone for two weeks and they already try to kill each other. The thought came with a wide, easy grin spreading across his face. It felt good, though. Being back. Seeing them. He’d heard their bickering from halfway down the street and honestly… it felt more like home than home did lately.

“…I’d say Theo’s definitely one of those domestic shorthairs, with the weird noses and resting bitch faces… no offense.”

His cousin didn’t even blink back. “I’ll take it in the spirit it was meant.”

Greg nodded slowly, not really getting exactly what Theo meant by that. For all he knew, his godbrother could be swearing a life-altering grudge inside his head. Doubt it, though.

“And Sparky…” he pointed a finger his best friend’s way, golden eyes narrowed his way almost immediately losing their confusion. “You’re definitely a Schnauzer.”

Those same golden eyes went half-lidded, Sparky venting off steam with a sigh rather than the verbal back fist Greg expected. “… good to see you too, brah.”

Well, that’s no fun. 

“Seriously,” Greg swallowed down another hunk of meat, the thing going from inventory to gullet in the blink of an eye. “What’d I miss this time? Theo, did you make fun of Sparky’s taste in music again? Sparky, did you try to explain a meme to Theo? Where’s the beef this time?”

Sparky’s glare flickered back again almost immediately, mix of frustration and something else… relief? Aw, he missed me. Theo’s expression was, as always, unreadable, but his shoulders lost a fraction of their rigid posture.

Progress.

“Seriously, dude,” Sparky started, voice low and serious as he stomped over, each step a percussive thump of annoyance against the polished floor. “Where the hell have you been?”

“In traction.”

“You can’t just drop off the face of the planet, man!” he continued, jabbing a finger in Greg’s direction as he closed the distance. “Your phone’s been dead for a hot fucking minute. We thought you were… you know.”

“He means dead,” Theo clarified from behind, tone as dry as sandpaper. “The literal translation of ‘you know’ in this context is ‘a fine red mist distributed over a three-block radius.'”

Theo with the imagery. Always the imagery. Greg held up a finger. “First off, ouch. Bit graphic, T-Dog. Second, I was fine. Mostly. And third…” He took in a quiet breath for dramatic effect because timing was everything. “I had a good reason.”

“A good reason?” Sparky’s voice cracked, sound mixing disbelief and outrage in equal parts. “You solo a freaking Endbringer, turn into a sixty-foot… thing made of boats, and then ghost everyone for two weeks! What could possibly be a good enough reason?”

Oh, this is gonna be good. Greg took a final, triumphant bite of his chili dog, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, and looked his friend dead in the eye. The warehouse’s industrial hum seemed to get louder, like the building itself was holding its breath.

“I was grounded.”

There was a certain type of silence that just felt physical. Most of those came right before something violent happened. He was used to those, the little burst of time before the world devolved into blood and gore.

Another type of silence, much less physical, and much more stretched out, was the silence of pure confusion; his favorite.

Theo’s head tilted a single, curious degree as Sparky just… stared, his face a chaotic canvas of beautifully outraged emotions in a battle royale kumite for superiority. At some point, dawning comprehension was stabbed through the heart by anger as anger slit it’s throat at the same time, and finally his best buddy let out a strangled noise that was halfway between a laugh and a sob.

Nailed it.

“You… you were grounded?” Sparky finally choked out, one hand slowly dragging down his face like he was trying to physically process the information. “You help save the city from a goddamn kaiju and your mom… grounds you?”

“Yup,” the ‘p’ found itself popped with poise and power, Greg nodding his head in Sparky’s direction, “no phone, no computer, no leaving the house except for groceries. Let’s say, my mom was… displeased. Something about ‘lying for months’, ‘reckless endangerment of self’ and I think the last one was something like ‘giving your poor mother a heart attack.'”

Now, to be fair, she had a point. 

Like the biggest of points.

Hell, Greg wasn’t sure he didn’t actually die at some point. Did it count as death if his heart stopped? What was death, really? How would you define it? If you die and come back, is that actual death or near-death? But you do, in fact, do die. Just because you come back, doesn’t mean death didn’t happen, right? Or is death a state, and not something transient…

Not to get all philosophical about it, but it was a great question.

Pulling himself out of his head, Greg shrugged off the question and dived straight back into the context. “So yeah. Half of the first week, I was basically human soup in a bed at the Dallon’s place. Second week, I was a prisoner of war in my own home. It was brutal. My PC game backlog is a freaking tragedy.”

“Okay, back up, back it up, back all of this the heeeellll up,” Sparky waved his hands as he cut Greg off, motioning like he was trying to physically stop the flow of information, which honestly sounded about right. “Human soup? The Dallon’s place? And how the fuck did you pull a Super Kamehameha on a freaking k—”

“More of a wave motion cannon, really,” cut him off because this was important, technically speaking. He’d put a lot of thought into this while bedridden. “I’d argue the Kamehameha has more rotation to it. What I did was more of a high-density mega-stream of raw mana, really a shitty Full Power Energy Wave, if you get down to it. Totally different disciplines.”

“…Don’t do that shit.”

Greg blinked back innocently. “…what shit?”

Theo rolled his eyes, as Sparky half-hissed, half-sighed; both actions under his breath. “You know what shit.”

“The point,” Theo cut through the banter with more intensity in one syllable than Greg heard from him on a good day anymore, “I believe Sparky is attempting to make, is that the energy output was… substantial. How did you even manage to…”

“Pull it off?”

Theo’s head bobbed up and down.

“Well, that’s easy,” Greg answered back. “It was a perk.”

“A perk?” His godbrother’s eyebrows vanished beneath his bangs.

“A perk.” Greg’s best friend damn near hissed the word.

“A perk,” he parroted. “Pulling Out All The Stops. Gives you infinite mana for a few minutes, but the fine print is that your HP drops to zero when the timer runs out. Five-star perk, would not recommend for casual use.”

“That sounds like a… a suicide button,” the last three words half-stumbled their way out of Theo’s mouth, his calm cracking for a few seconds as he stared Greg down. “You… you have a suicide button.” 

“I prefer to think of it as a ‘dramatic final boss attack’ button,” Greg had to correct that naming,  because branding mattered. Still, nice to know the kid was still human under all that analytical armor. “It’s all about the marketing, my dude.”

“So you just… killed yourself to power up a giant robot?” Sparky’s eyes were still wide, all the emotion Theo was hiding clear on his face.

“Hey, it worked, didn’t it?” Greg shot back, shoulders rising and falling in a shrug. “The city’s still standing. Leviathan fucked off back to the bottom of the ocean. And I got to live out my ultimate Saturday Morning fantasy by getting in the giant robot when Shinji wouldn’t. I see this as an absolute win.”

He paused a half-second later, looking between their stunned faces. Tough crowd. “Also, it wasn’t a robot. It was a golem. Or a mobile suit. Or an extension of my own biological form via a mass-manipulation Shaker effect. Still workshopping the nomenclature.”

“You are unbelievable,” Sparky muttered, shaking his head like he was trying to physically dislodge the information. Sneakered feet started pacing around, skate shoes moving at jogger speed, as Sparky ran a hand through his already messy hair. “Just… unreal. So for a week, you were just… soup. At Glory Girl’s house.”

“Basically,” Greg only confirmed it, because why sugarcoat it at this point. “Vix found me after the shit I pulled and kinda did her best to make sure I didn’t die. Even was gonna get her sister to help patch me up, but she couldn’t exactly pull the last bit off. Amy was suuuuper busy.” Still busy having a mental breakdown about my body, but whatever. “But she would have helped if she could have. Super nice of her, considering she looks at me like I’m something she scraped off her shoe.”

“I wonder why,” Sparky muttered to himself.

“Anywaaaay, Vicky was cool and made sure my secret identity stayed secret. Then my mom found out where I was after I called her and instituted the Great Grounding Act of 2011. You ever been subjected to the silent treatment from a disappointed mother? Makes an Endbringer fight feel like a spa day.”

“…huh.”

Storytime finally over and done with, Greg clapped his hands together, the sound loud, sharp and final as it echoed through the warehouse. “Alright, that’s enough about my tragic, sequestered life of parental oppression. We’ve got bigger things to talk about. The fun stuff.”

He walked toward the center of the room, both friends falling into step beside him without hesitation. Greg couldn’t deny the real, genuine warmth spreading through his chest because honestly, it had been a long two weeks. Missed these idiots.

“Now that the fuckers who tried and succeeded in Operation: Ventilate My Skull are… no longer an ongoing concern,” he began again as he finally came to a stop at the opposite end of the building from the street-facing main doors, “it’s time to move on to phase two of my brilliant, multi-step plan for… well, for everything.”

Phase two was actually more like phase seven but who was counting.

Greg finally turned all the way around, and raised his voice just slightly, projecting toward the second bay doors like he was addressing balcony seats.

“You can come in now.”

On cue, the heavy insulated rolling door slid open with a smooth, near-silent hum. Perfect timing. Rehearsals paid off. 

Four men stepped inside, moving with quiet, disciplined confidence that instantly changed the atmosphere like someone had flipped a switch from casual to business mode. All four of them Asian, and dressed in practical work attire; dark slacks, button-down shirts each a different color, and sturdy boots to top it off as they flanked Greg with precision and poise. Professional as fuck. 

The blond Veder raised his chin as he stared back at Sparky and Theo with a grin on his face.

Greg just grinned, spreading arms wide in a grand presentation gesture because you had to sell the bit. “Boys,” the blonde clicked his tongue, “meet my other boys. Seo, Wesley, Joon, and Jonouchi. They’ll be handling our… day-to-day operations.”

The four men bowed their heads in a single, synchronized motion. 

Greg watched Sparky’s face, savoring the moment like it was a steaming-hot slice of supreme pizza. Confusion flashed across, followed quickly by suspicion, and then… then came the slow dawning of horrified realization as Sparky took in the theatricality of it all. 

The perfectly timed entrance. 

The dramatic reveal. 

The whole production.

Chef’s kiss. Absolutely beautiful.

Those gold eyes narrowed to slits as they pinned themselves to Greg, blazing hard enough that he was surprised they didn’t shoot lasers yet.”…You theatre kid fuck,” his voice came out a low disbelieving hiss. “You planned that.”