22. Goggles, Don’t Do It!
DeAndre came onto another main road and was immediately greeted with heavier foot traffic.
But the gang was still behind him.
He and Jamal looked around. To their left was a busy intersection, with hundreds of people waiting to cross.
“Let’s go,” DeAndre said, leading Jamal and Miss Pendrake.
In Goggles’ office, Rippa’s eyes were tracking multiple video feeds simultaneously. The two private feeds from Buttons and Miss Pendrake, DeAndre’s Twitch, Shanaqueen’s Instagram, and her own stream on YouTube, which, for now, was showing the Buttons-cam, largely obscured by DeAndre’s shoulder. She had practically abandoned her stream. The VTuber software was still tracking her expression and movements, but she left her chat alone. Viewers had by now resorted to splitting their screens to watch Jamal’s feed on DeAndre’s channel.
Goggles, once again, groaned. “They are here.”
Buttons and her friends were halfway across, but a group of youth rushed in and poured onto the crosswalk from the other side.
“Here! Over here!” Shanaqueen could be heard shouting. “She the Nazi kid! She the taco kid!”
“Fuck,” Rippa swore through gritted teeth. Her right hand hurt as her mom gripped it with ever-increasing force.
And then, Buttons, who had been silent up to this point, shouted. “Goggles! Don’t do it!”
The Hayasaka-cam showed a masked youth getting in Miss Pendrake’s face.
“You broke my bitch’s—”
Miss Pendrake punched the guy in the throat, and he collapsed like a sack. She then delivered a round kick to the jaw of another man, who was about to lunge at her.
The mobs rushed in from both sides.
As a flood of angry men and women pushed past him, Jamal was knocked to the ground. DeAndre let Buttons down on the ground and stood between the kid and the mobsters who had been following them ever since. Behind him, Miss Pendrake was holding off a relentless stream of thugs.
Goggles covered Rippa’s mic with a hand. “For now, nobody is thinking of using their guns. That’s good. For now.”
‘That doesn’t make it any better,’ Rippa thought. Through the Buttons-cam, she and her viewers witnessed the sheer brutality Miss Pendrake was capable of. But the girl was losing ground, retreating a step or two for every punch and kick she threw.
The group was being surrounded. The traffic lights had changed, and cars were honking, and passersby stopped and pulled out their phones and pushed in.
“She the racist taco girl!” Shanaqueen was still screaming. “The Nazi kid!” That made many people look at Buttons with murderous eyes. Shanaqueen was getting in DeAndre’s face, her phone still up, pushing in. She berated the man for being a race traitor. For being an Uncle Tom.
“The fuck you talking about, bitch!” DeAndre finally lost it. “She didn’t do nothing wrong! You are the racist here!”
Rippa watched the scuffle on the Instagram stream. Screaming. Yelling. The camera shaking. DeAndre being dragged out. And the camera, now unopposed, pointed down at Buttons.
“Goggles! Don’t do it!” Buttons screamed again.
Rippa shook Goggles’ elbow. “Goggles, do something!”
To Rippa’s horror, a shadow rushed past Shanaqueen and drop-kicked the small child… or, at least, that had been the plan, but Buttons whacked the man’s kneecap with her cane before he could even launch himself. He folded and skidded on the ground, screaming in pain.
Buttons took a few retreating steps and stood back-to-back with Miss Pendrake. The two young girls were now truly surrounded.
Jamal finally found his phone and picked it up.
“Oh my god, oh my god,” he kept repeating.
A mass of people had closed in around the girls and were throwing themselves forward with the full intention to hurt a one-legged child. Countless phones were raised, screaming incoherent sentences on a perpetual repeat. The sea of bodies pulsed as they pushed and elbowed each other.
“The fuck you doing!” DeAndre got in Jamal’s face. His nose was bleeding, and his upper lip, cracked open. “Get the motherfuckers’ faces on camera. Call the police!”
With that, DeAndre ran back. Shouting and grunting, he pulled and pushed, trying to force his way through. But for every person he managed to peel off, two more cameras squeezed into the space he created. From the deepest center of this dense forest of meat and bones, the kid’s voice rang out once again.
“Don’t do it, Goggles!”
***
Rippa was now looking back and forth between the Buttons-cam and the Hayasaka-cam. Mom held on to Rippa’s right hand, and she, in turn, held on to Goggles’ elbow.
The girls were brutal. They showed no reservation whatsoever in breaking bones and clawing eyeballs. Yet the ring closed in tighter and tighter regardless of whether the people on the front line wanted it or not. The crowd had become a mindless singularity and pushed in with cameras held up forward, squeezing into every square inch of available space.
Buttons smacked her cane on a particularly meaty thigh, and the solid cane head just… sank into the flesh. She paused and looked up. An immensely obese man was reaching for her hair. Buttons managed to wriggle her head away from the hand.
Rippa held her breath.
In that split second Buttons had paused, somebody grabbed the cane and snatched it out of her hand. It was tossed high and away, outside the writhing mass of bodies. The kid was now weaponless.
Miss Pendrake turned around immediately, as if she had an eye on her back. She threw a straight punch over Buttons’ head, landing her fist into the big man’s jaw. But the kinetics of body mass worked against her.
“Buttons!” Rippa screamed as she watched the kid fall to the ground. Somebody had kicked her shin.
Miss Pendrake also received a massive punch to the back of her head, but she swung her elbow and punished whoever struck her. She quickly took stock of the situation, then dropped on top of Buttons, smothering the child and shielding her.
By now, Buttons had lost her earbud, but the Buttons-cam was miraculously still in place and working. Through it, Rippa and her chat watched a flurry of Nike Air Jordans rain down on Miss Pendrake’s golden head. Someone was jumping up and down on the girl’s back.
“Goggles! Do something!” Rippa screamed.
“No!” Goggles gritted his teeth. “There will be no turning back!”
Rippa slammed her fist on the desk.
A particularly strong kick to the cheek threw Miss Pendrake off balance. Somebody grabbed her hair and, with the help of others, pried the girl off Buttons. She was then dragged off to the side, where the mob kicked her around like in a soccer practice. The Hayasaka-cam died.
Through all the noise, all that yelling and incoherent blabbering and cars honking incessantly, DeAndre’s desperate voice remained persistent. “She’s just a kid! She’s just a kid!”
On her back, Buttons curled up like a bug. As she had done so countless times for thousands of years, the most vulnerable of the vulnerable kept her eyes open, put up her guard, and blocked blow after blow as best as she could. The kid was still screaming, “Goggles! Don’t do it!”
Rippa was now crying. She was screaming as countless feet stomped on the child. “Buttons! Buttons!” Rippa cried. She then raged. “You animals, I’ll kill you all! I’ll fucking kill you all!” She shouted many ugly words.
The hallway door opened, and Dad rushed into the office. He latched onto Goggles’ lapels and shook him violently.
“Goggles! Do something, for fuck’s sake!”
After blocking God knows how many blows, Buttons’ right forearm snapped and dangled. Yet the kid still put up her guard. The left wrist soon followed suit.
And then, Rippa saw it on DeAndre’s stream. Jamal’s camera caught a hooded man picking up Buttons’ cane. He pushed into the ring of the mob, wading his way to the core.
“Goggles…” Rippa whimpered.
And there, on the Buttons-cam, the cane. Now raised.
“Goggles!”
Rippa grabbed Goggles’ elbow.
He wasn’t there.
***
Jamal was watching in despair. He didn’t know what to do but to continue filming this atrocity, hoping whoever saw it would rage as he did, so that justice would be served somehow someday. His buddy DeAndre, however, didn’t give up. He would never give up. He kept throwing himself at the crowd, trying to break through the dense wall of human bodies.
Then, all of a sudden, with a flash of blinding golden light, Miss Pendrake sprang back up on her feet, flinging everyone around her back.
She was now clad in armor. A silver chest plate, faulds around her waist, and gauntlets. Her fists, neatly stacked in front of her as if holding something invisible. A mad swirl of wind engulfed the invisible sword and made her golden hair dance like crazy.
At the same time, Madam J.D. spawned on top of Buttons. As soon as she appeared, everyone and everything within a twenty-foot radius was pushed back by an invisible force. Humans, cars, garbage, even dust, everything. The noise was deafening as people stumbled and tripped over and yelped, and cars scraped against each other.
Towering over the small child, Madam J.D. faced the crowd. Miss Pendrake took a position behind her, watching her back.
A cylinder flew out of the holster at the wooden doll nanny’s hip, into her right hand. And, with a sound that hundreds of millions of people would instantly recognize, a blade made of red light pushed out of the handle. The low electric hum was so menacing, it silenced everyone.
Madam J.D. extended her other hand, and from the ring of the stunned crowd, dozens of guns flew out toward her. The guns stopped, suspended midair, and were disassembled by invisible hands in a second before falling to the ground with loud clatters.
And, finally, a portal opened. Goggles stepped out.
“Goggles, I’m sorry!” Buttons wailed.
The butler did not say anything. He knelt down and scooped up the child.
“I’m sorry!” Buttons was crying.
With her in his arms, Goggles stood up. He looked around and found DeAndre and Jamal. He nodded, then, without saying anything or looking at the mob that had, up until a few seconds ago, been stomping on the child, Goggles stepped into the portal.
Miss Pendrake followed him in.
Madam J.D. deactivated her lightsaber, put it in her holster, and then stepped through the portal.
The portal closed.