LEGACY OF THE BLAZERS - CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE (THE END)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE – EPILOGUE

While Blowhole’s conquest was a miserable waste of life, leaving much of Panty’s Landing crumbled to ash and filled with bodies, nothing much had really changed. The day after his death was the same as any other day, just with fewer explosions and screams filling the air, because the people of the city were long accustomed to chaos. Whether someone new took charge or not didn’t particularly phase them—Blowhole was just another name, scarcely different from Bon, or Kern, or any of the schmucks who had reigned before them.

And for Lux, that was too much to cope with. The normalization of all the ruin she’d suffered first-hand, and the fact that losing the Blazers was just another average day to everyone…well, frankly, it pissed her off. It made her want to use what powers she had left to wrestle control of the city herself and set things right.

But she wouldn’t win, not without the wolves, and even if she did, would it really be a life worth living? Defending a place so depraved as this? A place where everyone wasn’t just expecting the craziness, but actually accepted it and, for some, relished in it? If she were in charge, every single day would be a bullet to dodge. There would always be another Panty Mafia looking to shake things up. Blowhole proved that.

And beating him, one man and his army of traitors, had been difficult enough.

She couldn’t do it, though this urge burned within her to try. Maybe it was Jess’ voice, nestled in the furthest corner of her mind, that reminded her of everyone she’d lost. Everyone they’d lost. If Bon and Kern just continued to rule, what did the destruction of the Blazers mean? All those lives, were they truly avenged? Lux didn’t know. God’s honest truth—she just didn’t.

But the fact that she lived shouldn’t have burdened her with the responsibility to do everything, without everyone, and fight another war that she wasn’t even passionate about. Admitting that to herself, admitting that she wasn’t Jess, and likely wasn’t ever going to be Jess, took time. Months, actually. No matter how far away from it all she got, everything that happened still felt like it was just behind her.

Like the voices of all those gone are still screaming for her to save them. Still reaching out to her, tugging at her, desperate for her to unwind time and bring them back.

She sat, cross-legged, in a graveyard with no bodies. No gravestones, either. Just wooden stakes with names carved into them. There were over three hundred of them, nestled together tightly behind a small patch of bushes just outside of where the Blazer’s territory had been. Here, they wouldn’t be seen. Here, they wouldn’t be desecrated.

One final stake sat in her palms. Scrawled across it was Jess’ name, and beneath that the quote: Born a leader, died a leader. Tears stained the words, and she was gripping it so hard that there were fingernail indentations in the wood. Holding it longer would just lead to more damage being done to it—she stabbed the stake into the ground in front of all the others before she could convince herself not to.

And then, that was it.

Her homage to the Blazers, hidden just outside of Blazers territory, out of sight from the world and forgotten, was a pitiful way to pay respect, and she knew it, but if it were to last, this was what needed to be done. Any more out in the open and some jerk off would find it and ruin it.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “That it took me so long to beat him, and that this is all there is to show for it.”

There was more to say, but none of it would ever be enough. And staying here too long was dangerous—Panty Mafia members would be roaming this place soon, setting up their own operation, and if Bon knew any shred of the Blazers survived…

He wouldn’t rest until you were dead, Kern had said.

And as conflicted as was about him, she trusted that he meant that. She touched her hand to her stomach, where just a month ago there had been a gaping wound. Month before that there had been another one, too. Both healed, both left scars. But while one was meant to kill her, the other was done to save her.

Save me…

She gritted her teeth as she dug her skin. Remembering what he’d done to the wolves, how he’d probably presented their crumbled bits to Bon like a trophy…

“Now why do I get the feeling that you’re thinking too much again, Lux?”

She lifted her head and watched as Cy came trudging toward her, hands in his pockets. Tiredness stained his face—gray bags dragged his eyes down onto his cheeks and his hair was a knotty mess. “And why do I get the feeling you haven’t been sleeping?” Lux said.

“Because I haven’t,” he said. “I’m thinking too much, too.”

“About Spike?”

“About everything,” he said, stopping in front of her. “But yeah, about Spike.”

In the aftermath of everything, they’d checked for survivors. There had been a few, but not many, and those who lived wanted to do nothing but run. The only remnant of Spike’s they found was his jacket. “I’m sorry.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” he said. “I just keep wondering about if he’s out there, and if he is, and we leave, how I’m never gonna see him again.”

She didn’t know what to say. She lowered her head, looking at the stakes in the ground. When they left this island, she’d never see them again, either. Cy looked down at them as well.

“Sometimes life just unravels in a shitty way. It’s not like we can stay here even if we really wanted to, and he’s probably better off here, anyway. He always fit in with Panty’s Landing’s way of living—I didn’t.”

Lux didn’t know what to say to that. She also knew that none of her words would change the facts of what had happened, so she just nodded. “Are you and Tegan finished?”

“Just about. Building a car out of the scraps the Blazers left behind wasn’t easy, but Tegan’s a genius.” Cy ruffled her hair, and somehow, here among dead friends, she found a way to smile. “You know, it would’ve been quicker to just steal a car.”

“If we’re gonna leave this place, we gotta start acting more civilized,” she said. “In the normal world, people don’t steal cars.”

“And how would you know about the normal world? This is the only world you’ve ever known.”

“Because Jess is from out there, in the normal world, and she created a little slice of it here, with the Blazers. I wanna see what she saw, experience what she experienced, and maybe do something good with my life that isn’t wearing someone else’s panties and fighting stuffed animals all day.”

“You’re so good at it, though. The wearing panties part, I mean.”

Lux chuckled. Being able to laugh was something she’d missed, especially before her wound had healed. Laughing with a gaping hole in your stomach? The definition of not fun.

“I’ve got something for you, by the way,” Cy said.

“Huh?”

Cy reached into his pocket and removed a small glass jar that was filled with a clump of dirt. Lux stared at it, confused, and when he offered it to her like he was offering a wedding ring, she was even more confused. “This is…”

“Dirt.”

“You’re giving me…dirt?”

Cy nodded. “That dirt comes from the Blazer fields. It’s prime soil, and though I know you don’t wanna even so much as get a whiff of pot these days, I thought it might be a good keepsake for you. Something to remember home by.”

Her smile grew wider. “You didn’t have to do this.”

“I didn’t, but I knew it’d make you happy, so I wanted to.”

“I’d pop this open, but I’d probably puke from the smell.” Lux continued staring at it and imagined still hauling this little piece of home around with her decades from now. “This... means a lot.”

She leaned forward, wrapped her arms around him, and gave him a long kiss. They’d spent so long talking about serious junk that romantic moments like this had gone to the wayside. But this…it might as well have been a wedding ring to her. She knew when they pulled apart that it would be back to serious business, and who knew how long it would be before they got another moment like this?

But all good things need to come to an end. And so when they pulled apart, she let her smile slide off her face. “Leaving this island is going to be damn dangerous, Cy,” she said. “The Panty Mafia’s got the docks on heavy lockdown and aren’t letting anyone in or out. We’re less likely to get a boat and more likely to get shot.”

“Yeah, and?”

“If you wanted to stay here, I wouldn’t blame you.”

“But I’d blame you if you left without me,” Cy said.

“And that’s why I love you.”

“I love you too,” he said. “And after all, I’m basically an honorary Blazer now, aren’t I? You leave me here and Bon’s gonna carve me to dust.”

“Welcome to the gang,” Lux said. “We have no territory, and there’s barely any of us. The road ahead is going to be long and shitty, and we don’t even have any of our signature weapons left.”

“Sounds like fun.”

They exchanged soft smiles, but their moment was ruined by a voice off in the distance. It was a nasally voice they’d grown too accustomed to yelling at them in the last month.

“Hey you twoooooo! Are you gonna start boooooning or can we get gooooooing!”

Tegan.

Being yelled at by her...made everything feel like old times.

Their eyes drifted back up the road leading into Blazers’ territory, where Tegan stood. She wore oil-stained clothes, clutched a wrench, and looked thoroughly annoyed by their delay.

“If we stand here any longer, you’ll get all the action you want ‘cuz the Panty Mafia will start bonin’ YOU! So do you wanna leave or get boned by the Panty Mafia?”

Cy chuckled. “We made her mad.”

Lux shook her head. “Sometimes I wish Bon would’ve kept her.”

“You don’t,” he said. “She’s also probably gonna be the only reason we survive the docks, if we do.”

She took his hand and squeezed it tight. “We will.”

The look on his face made it clear that he wasn’t so sure as she was, so she squeezed his hand even tighter. “You’re a Blazer now, right? Well Blazers don’t give up and you’ve seen that first-hand. We’ll fight ‘till the bitter goddamn end.”

“I know,” he said. “I just wanted to hear you say it.”

And with that, hand in hand, Lux and Cy walked away from the body-less graveyard, saying goodbye to all of the friends they’d lost and setting off for a brighter future. What awaited them at the docks, or even beyond it, was a mystery. But they knew that no matter where they went, they would be themselves. They would find a way to be happy, and a way to keep honoring all of the friends they’d lost.

They would, most importantly, carry on the legacy of the Blazers.

END OF LEGACY OF THE BLAZERS

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Well, that's it everyone. The end of the Legacy of the Blazers. I hope everyone enjoyed it. This was my first time writing something serialized and trying to "pants" it rather than fully plotting it, and though there are some part that I think could be better, I'm proud that I was able to be consistent with it. 

As someone who doesn't write prose as much, I learned a lot working on this story, and hope to do another serialized story at some point, whether it be in The Panty Bear universe or not. I also plan to sometime soon compile all of the chapters into one document for ease of reading.

I love y'all 💖