Chapter 158: The Thing That Harms Souls
Shortly after the final battle with Wish...
"Yeah, there's no fixing this. Dude's brain dead." Doc shrugged.
"You didn't even take a look at him!" Red Ape argued.
"Yeah, 'cause I'm blind."
"Exactly! So how do you know you can't save him!"
"Because his head feels like a deflated balloon," Doc snorted. He rubbed his hand on his lab coat, smearing flakes of skull and brain matter across it.
"Why do you even care if he can save Green Wolf or not?" White Lamb questioned, letting out a sigh. "We should be more focused on what we're going to do next." The rest of Zoo was locked up. They no longer held an alliance with the Bad Timers either. It was just the three of them—four if you counted Doc, also known as Doctor Blue. They were back in Oleander, having escaped from the battlefield, while all the heroes were distracted by the return of the Emperor. Now they were back in one of Red Ape's dirty labs, discussing what to do next. "If you ask me, it serves Green Wolf right being in this state. He got what he wanted in the end, so I'm sure he doesn't mind."
Like all of his labs, Red Ape's base was a mess. Zoo operated off of colors and animals. If you held the color white, you were the role of support; black meant you were a field agent who would carry out team missions, and red was the color Green Wolf gave out when he either trusted you to handle things alone or just wanted you to get yourself killed. All red members of Zoo had their own base. This one was one he shared with his brother, Red Monkey.
It used to be an observatory near the middle part of Oleander city. It fell right on the border of a street that had been hit with toxic waste and was no longer in use; the rest of the city was simply building around it. The observatory had been horribly gutted and had most of its supplies taken out. It was also split in two, with one half of the building being filled with gym equipment and walls of weapons that Red Monkey owned. The other half was Red Ape's side and looked like a hospital straight out of a horror movie. Cages were filled with dead animals since he had forgotten to feed them, and all the beds were stained red. On one of the beds, the leader of Zoo, Green Wolf, was sprawled out.
The man's mask had been removed from his face, but it didn't really matter, as his head sort of looked like a crushed watermelon. The only reason the villain was still somehow alive was that his power was working even without his consciousness, forcing his heart and blood to keep pumping, though for how much longer something like this would last was unknown. Green Wolf was truly one foot into the grave already.
"And there's really nothing you can do?" Red Ape questioned as he pulled his ape mask off. He had shaved all of his hair off after receiving a bad haircut from his brother Red Monkey, so he was currently bald. He slipped on a pair of round glasses and also placed the damaged helmet that Cinder had worn on the table.