xp_logs | Something Slender (and Awful)

Renee and Nico's powers are creepy, but still nothing compared to Remy LeBeau.

Any predator reacts violently to an invasion of its home, and the Slendermen were no different. They abducted their prey and spirited it away to a place where they could eat at leisure, a place separate from the 'real' world, a place where their victims could never be found. To have that place invaded forcibly was wrong. And to make it worse, the invaders were stealing their prey away.

A pair of black-suited figures stalked after Renee, gangly arms stretching after her.

"NooooOOOOOOO!" This was like a never ending nightmare. The fire was gone but everything else was horrifically worse. This time when her friends rose up she wasn't controlling them--they were acting on her instinct, two of them, rushing forward and barreling into the figures chasing her, hoping to impede their progress however possible. Renee herself knew running was useless now, so she turned, ready to fight with everything she had.

"Hey, watch it with the screaming," Nico complained as she waved her Staff, channeling her magic through it, a mantle of black flames flowing from it and falling over some Slenders; they could move as fast as they wanted, she would simply cover space quicker than them.

Renee's 'friends' did succeed in their efforts to impede the Slendermen, but all too briefly. They were quick, unnaturally quick, and they managed to evade and continue their pursuit of Renee and Nico. The energy from the Staff of One, on the other hand, was much more of a threat, and the pursuit slowed, enough for Renee's projections to close the gap and engage the Slendermen again.

"Seems like dey bringing friends." Remy said with a mirthless smile. They'd already learned one thing, and that was the slendermen knew fear. It was time to remind them. "Nico, Renee, de way home is open." Cards flew past them, forcing the slendermen back and giving them a chance to fall back to where he was.

"They're not the only ones." Renee retreated immediately, closing the distance between herself and the more powerful mutant. As she turned again to focus on sending her own friends back to engage with the slenders, she felt a strange surge of energy and blinked as one that hadn't been there before joined the fray. Something weird was going on, but she wasn't about to question it. More hands meant a faster escape.

The knot of Slendermen was growing larger - more and more of the beings sensing the threat to their home and coming to defend it. Some tried to press the attack on Nico and Renee, and some peeled off to close with Remy. One managed to sidestep all the exploding cards and made it to within arm's reach. A tentacle whipped toward him, and a sharply-toothed maw opened. There was the briefest hint of a mental tendril much like its tentacles, as the phobophage searched for some emotional purchase within Remy, some lever to use against him.

And then that pressure was gone, and the Slenderman was scurrying hurriedly backwards on its tentacles.

"You learning yet?" Remy said, catching the next tendril and snapping it off with a vicious twist. His staff made an arc, forcing them back as he stepped forward again. "Nico, Renee - through de damn portal, now!"

Nico smacked a Slenderman that had somehow managed to get too close, the Staff of One apparently burning the white skin, turning the creature into a quickly deforming mass of...Nico didn't even want to know. "Well, it's been fun. Now let's get the hell out of here."

Renee nodded, turning away from the fight and dissolving her increasing number of friends. Remy could obviously take care of himself and she had a horrible feeling she knew why she could feel the presence of more friends now than before. She ran for the portal, trying to focus on nothing but getting out and home.

Gambit walked back, careful steps as they boiled and swarmed around him, edging closer and then falling away. He stopped at the very edge of the portal, as Renee and Nico cleared through. "Living on fear. Interesting. Limited but interesting. I wonder just how easily they can be brought to heel? Or more importantly, summoned at the wrong time by someone just scared enough? This broken world isn't the right avenue, yet. But perhaps a useless bridge one day." He gave them a sharp salute and stepped back through the portal and disappeared.

Doug tries to keep the Slendermen off of Tandy and Hope.

The rescue was starting to become chaotic - X-Force had kept the element of surprise for a few minutes, long enough to locate the abducted teens, but things were starting to unravel. More and more Slendermen were appearing in singletons and pairs, on top of the difficulty in maintaining order in a group of over a dozen under such stressful circumstances.

"Get behind me," Doug hissed to Tandy and Hope, trying to herd them with his forearms while keeping his guns at the ready.

Hope shook her head as she tried to follow his orders. She had been ghosting in and out more times then she had even done before and it was making her a little dizzy. Still, she didn't give in to the feeling and stepped back and to the side, attempting to get behind him. She saw Tandy trying to do the same and grabbed her arm. "Tandy? Are you alright?"

"No I am not Hope." No use sugar coating it, the blonde's skin was glowing brightly as the crescent moon around her right eye appeared. She gripped Doug's clothing firmly as she tried to calm herself down, "I feel like I am going to explode."

Doug had hoped that they could stay under the Slendermen's radar and quietly make their way to the portal, with all the other things going on, but emotion seemed to be what the things keyed on. On top of not wanting their prey to escape. He could feel Tandy's grip on his jacket, and he felt Hope as well, holding onto Tandy's arm. And he could feel both their grips tighten in panic when a pale head swiveled impossibly far around on the shoulders of one of the figures approaching.

"Please not again. Please not again." Hope softly muttered. She tried to stay as calm as possible, focusing on the picture of the rosebud and the sun in her mind. Still, as they came closer again the anger and fear started to boil again. "Not again!"

Tandy took a deep breath in and then out, "How far?" She whispered unable to take her eyes off the figures that were coming for them. She could still feel the tongue on the slendermen as they licked her cheeks earlier, "Should we run? What should we do?"

From what little Doug had seen, these things were fast. They'd probably be taken down quickly if they cut and ran. "Too far to run. But start heading that direction. Slowly." Not that he necessarily expected the girls to hold to the 'controlled' part of 'controlled retreat', but he would do his best to keep them calm. And safe.

Of course, those looked like less of an option when a second Slenderman turned to focus on them. Doug felt a brief touch in his mind, like a greasy tentacle probing tentatively at the man-thing that was taking their prey from them. Doug felt a surge of hopelessness wash over him, and the barest hint of a whisper. "Can't protect your..."

The last reaction the Slendermen were probably expecting was to have the metaphorical doors to Doug's mind slam shut in their faces. The corner of Doug's lip twitched. He wasn't scared, or depressed, or unbearably lonely now.

He was pissed.

"Go," he barked at the girls, pistols coming up smoothly. If the Slendermen had been telepaths, they might have caught the single vicious thought that came in their direction.

Come get some.

It took Hope a few seconds to get moving and as quickly as she could she made her way to where the portal was still open. "I will be glad when we get out of here!" She hissed softly to Tandy, still keeping a firm grip on her arm. It made sure that she was a little bit more stable with the lingering darkness and it gave a little bit of comfort.

Tandy also moved but she kept looking back to Doug making sure he was okay, "Should we leave him? What if those things get him?" She slowed down to a stop and looked back once more.

The loud report of gunshots echoed strangely in the Slendermen's world, muffled and extended as if being heard underwater. Doug alternated firing, in a slow, methodical rhythm, aiming center mass at one of the two Slendermen. But by the time the bullets were there, the Slenderman was not. It was like trying to shoot one of the Agents from The Matrix - it bent, twisted, and shifted position impossibly fast.

But as fast as it was, Doug's brain was even faster, calculating angles and the pattern of the dodging. And so, rather than aimed at where the Slenderman was, Doug fired his last few bullets at where it would be in the fraction of a second a dodge would take. A trio of bullets hit it in a perfect triangle on its torso...

And nothing happened. No ricochet, no bullet holes, the bullets just...vanished.

Doug cursed, and almost hurled the guns at the Slenderman in a futile gesture, but held back. He stutter-stepped backward, trying to keep both of them in front of him, but he'd been dismissed as a possible threat, and one simply darted around him before he could react, going after the girls.

The other one moved purposefully toward Doug, a whiplike barbed tentacle coiled back to strike. Doug continued to retreat, refusing to show fear, even in the face of death. He waited until the tentacle lashed forward, then twisted a forearm, aiming to catch it...

...around an elbow-length gauntlet that appeared from nowhere on his arm. Doug blinked, looking down at his other hand to see a matching gauntlet...and a very familiar sword.

If his thoughts of defiance had been coldly furious before, what came over Doug now was different, a hot, inarticulate rage - what Arnbjorn would have called berserkergang. He yanked hard on the tentacle and swept at it with his sword, a roar coming from his throat.

"Oh no!" Hope spotted the long fingered creature slithering up to her and Tandy. "Here is another one." She sighed and stepped back behind Tandy, hoping her body would be safe there. Closing her eyes, the rosebud unfolded in her mind and she slipped out of her body. ~Let's hope we can take him down.~ She projected to Tandy, sounding somewhat unsure.

~If you distract it, I might be able to get it off balance.~ She slipped past Tandy, trying to approach the Slenderman from the back. When she had the chance to slip behind him, she quickly kicked on of his feet, making it explode into an slimy substance that look like uncooked egg white, but with dirty black chunks in them.

"Distract it right..." Tandy lifted her hand up, she felt the build up inside of her."HEY UGLY!" The blonde yelled and focused on her fear, thinking of her dad - of D'Spayre- she let her emotions soar so it would focus on her. Tandy waited until the second its feet exploded before she unleashed her light daggers towards the Slenderman to finish him. They were living, so they would be effected by her daggers - she hoped.

Hope quickly ducked on of Tandy's daggers as she slipped to the other side of the Slenderman. She had never been hit by one in her astral form, but now was not a good time to find out. Once the coast was clear, she kicked at the other foot, making this one also dissolve into slimy stuff. The Slenderman windmilled with her arms for a few moments and then fell backwards, hitting the ground with a squishy sound.

Doug pressed the attack against the Slenderman in front of him with the sword that could have only come from Marie-Ange - she was the only one who knew it well enough and had the ability to create it in this place. The Slenderman was fast, but Doug was used to fighting things with enhanced reflexes. Get in close, and you can eliminate some of that advantage.

He closed inside the effective range of the whip tentacles and slashed a long diagonal that would have opened a regular person's torso up from hip to opposite shoulder, then turned his wrists over for a powerful cut that took the Slenderman's head off at the shoulders. His eyes widened as the cut began to seal up, and the head melted into the Slenderman's leg and regrew on its shoulders like the T-1000.

Well, time for Plan B - hack it into pieces. Vertical, horizontal, low, high, Doug scattered chunks of the Slenderman around him, looking to trade the time it would take it to reconstitute for distance as they fell back toward the portal.

'Their' Slenderman scrambling, trying to get up, Hope moved quickly to the side. ~Tandy...~ She projected. ~Do you think you can do something to end this? I rather have him no regrowing his feet or anything like that.~

"I do." Tandy ran up to the Slenderman and tackled him down, pinning down two of his arms with her legs. "Yippie-kai-yah motherfucker..." Placing both of her hands on its face, creepy as it looked, and unleashed her light daggers at point blank range. The head of the Slenderman exploded into the white slime substance and black chunks. "Ew....that went better in my head..." She stood up and look at her arms. "Don't think he'll regrow after that."

~I would hope not.~ She projected back. Hesitantly Hope approached the being, ready back off as soon as it moved, and examined it. ~It seems dead, but I am not going to touch it...~ More quickly she moved back in the direction of her body and 'said': ~I think we should try to get out of the portal now? I just need a moment to get back in my body...~

Tandy kicked one of the chunks, "Yea it isn't coming back." The blonde turned to look at the Hope's ghost. "Yeah lets get out of here. I think Doug can take care of the last one himself."

Doug's plan had been reasonably thought through. But it didn't work out that way, as the Slenderman didn't need to entirely reconstitute to hamper Doug's retreat. Fluid matte black pieces of the body flowed together and around Doug's ankles, tripping him up and bearing him to the ground. Other pieces crawled over and attached themselves to his arms where the gauntlets didn't cover, almost like...a swarm.

"BEES. Made of BEES!"

Panic surged up and battered against the closed door of Doug's emotions. He plucked frantically at the pieces, each one leaving torn fabric and bloody smears behind. For each one he managed, there was another trying to burrow under his skin, even as the rest of the Slenderman tangled higher on his legs.

Hope was already closing her eyes for the exercise that would allow her to return to her own body, but something made her check on Doug first. ~Tandy!~ She projected loudly, as she hurried over to the man. ~Look at this!~ She paused for a moment, thinking about what she could do, before 'crouching down'. ~Doug, can you pull your hands away?~

Doug forced discipline upon himself and put his hands down. Like Amanda had said, killing the Slendermen required a lot of energy, not just an edged weapon. At best, his efforts were a delaying action. And the girls had clearly handled the one that had gotten around him, so hopefully they could do the same again.

Tandy ran after her friend back towards Doug. "Shit it is going to eat him." She looked around the black chucky mess for the head, cut off the head the rest will fall right? "Hope, where is the head?" She had a dagger ready to drive into the Slenderman's skull.

~I don't know! It's almost like all of the pieces have gained a mind on their own.~ Hope had 'crouched down' and was almost stroking her hands over Doug's legs. Whenever her hand passed through a piece, it exploded in an small slimy blob. ~Maybe you should stab the largest bit?~

Doug tried to think through the panic, and the pain racking his body. Fluid or not, he doubted the Slendermen operated on some kind of distributed consciousness. Which meant that the creeping puddle attacking him had to be directed from somewhere. Find the pattern, Ramsey, he told himself. He cast about, spotting a hairsbreadth-thin tendril connecting to the blackness flowing around his legs. Following it back, he spotted a well-camouflaged pool of darkness hiding in a long bit of shadow. "Tandy, there!" he yelled, levering up on one elbow and pointing.

Tandy followed the point from Doug and turned slightly to see something in the shadows. She unleashed her daggers once more guiding them towards her target. Hearing a squish as one of the daggers hit its mark, "Bullseye."

"Hope, your body!" She turned over to Hope, "I left it alone."

At those words Hope twisted around and sure, black gunk was slowly creeping it's way towards her body. But if she was quick enough in returning. With a deep breath, she 'closed her eyes' and focused, trusting Tandy to make sure Doug was okay.

Within moments she felt herself starting to return to her body. As soon as she was able to she snapped her eyes open, but it was too late... A black, headless specter was looming over her body. "Aaahhh..." Hope cried out and kicked up one of her legs, aiming for something that would have been the groin area in a normal human being.

Tandy lowered a hand down to help Doug up, if he would take it. Her eyes looked up when she heard Hope's cries and watched as her solid leg hit the Slenderman, but she could she a blurr of her 'ghost' leg coming up and hitting the Slenderman a second after her solid leg hit. The Slenderman went down into a pile of goo after that one. "I think this is our chance to run."

Doug accepted the hand and staggered to his feet. He picked up his sword, which was surprisingly still there - he would have expected an imaged sword of Marie-Ange's to disappear when he had cast it aside in a panic, but there it was, solid as ever. "Let's move," he agreed as Tandy helped Hope to her feet. The trio made their best speed to Amanda's portal and through, all stumbling from the jolt of transition. Doug encouraged the girls to get out of the way, but he remained by the portal, to help others gain their balance quickly as they came through.

Topaz gets to see her mentor cut loose and kick ass, and Jubilee gets her snark on while blowing up Slendermen.

All hell had broken loose.

Not that it hadn't already basically been hell, the sarcastic part of Topaz's mind noted dimly. But the sudden entrance of Amanda and her friends, it seemed, had made everything about ten times worse as those...creatures...descended upon them. She had questions - so many questions - the most prominent being How the bloody hell did you lot get here? - but her mind didn't seem quite capable of putting anything in her head into words that actual people would understand.

All right, there was one thing she could say. "Do you know how to fight these things?"

"Bubblegum, ass kicking and a little thing I like to call 'exploding with extreme prejudice'," Jubilee replied, moving to put herself between Topaz and the four oncoming Slendermen.

She'd thought Limbo was weird, but it hadn't had faceless creepy people, only demons. Demons were much less disconcerting when you came right down to it, at least they made _noise_, growling, angry noise of the 'Imma kill you now, meatbag.' but it was understandable.

"Can I just say, whoever your tailor is, you totally need to get your money back," Jubilee quipped as she sent a wave of plasmoids at the head of the nearest of them. These things weren't human, and thus she felt absolutely no qualms about pulling out all the stops, even if she wouldn't be able to do this forever. "That suit with those shoes? Anna Wintour would be horrified."

"Less fashion crit, more blowing up, Firecracker," Amanda grunted. She had one hand sticking out through the hole between dimensions, partly to keep the portal open, but mostly because she needed a power up after blowing up several of the creatures previously. And with one hand tied up, that meant to cast a shielding spell, she needed to slap her other hand against her thigh. Stupid gesture crutches. A deformed-looking bubble encased one of the oncoming creatures and she clenched her fist, crushing it into goo. "C'mon kiddo, time to get you out of here."

Topaz didn't quite hear Amanda. She'd stayed off to the side, behind Jubilee, determined to stay out of the way and not cause any more trouble. And she watched, through the pounding headache and with wide eyes, as the women destroyed the attacking creatures. Despite everything, she wasn't quite as scared anymore - almost the opposite. And it probably should have worried her that she was getting a sick sort of satisfaction out of watching those things be reduced to puddles of goo.

"Ah, shite," Amanda muttered, realising that her apprentice was out of earshot. Another Slenderman was smooshed into the ground as it approached, her shielding spell for a moment looking like an absurdly large mallet - apparently Coney Island was getting involved. "Tinkerbell, big badda boom, time! Last bus out of here is leaving!"

"Way ahead of ya, Mandy," Jubilee quipped as she fished a small ball of C4 out of one of the pockets of her cargo pants and quickly set strings off plasma sparkles loose to coat the ball just above it's surface, timing it just right, she threw the resulting 'plasma bomb' at their remaining opponents. "Fire in the hole!"

Topaz cringed as the bomb exploded, covering her ears against the deafening sound and taking a step back. The remaining Slendermen were lost in a ball of flame and smoke, sending large pieces white goop flying in all directions - it hit the the cement with a strangely loud smack.

Amanda's ears were ringing - between keeping the portal open and using her spell to shield against the explosion, she hadn't had any free hands. "Topaz, front and centre!" she bellowed, gesturing at the younger witch. "Time to book it!" Especially since she could sense movement, lots of it. They might have fought of the initial attack, but now the Slendermen were coming in force.

That Topaz heard. Her head whipped around to look at Amanda, gritting her teeth together at the sudden sensation of bone-numbing cold that ran through her. There were more coming. A lot. Time to go. She ran towards her teacher without a second glance back.

"C'mon, New York, don't let me down now," Amanda muttered to herself - although it was more of a yell, since she couldn't hear a thing, including herself - as she stretched her hand further out of through the portal, trying to get more energy. A tingle in her fingers told her the city was responding, and she stretched out her other hand, focussing on the main group of the creatures approaching them. An arc of electricity leapt from her fingertips, wild and uncontrolled, sizzling uncomfortably close to Jubilee as it shot past to ground into the Slendermen. They jerked and spasmed, marionettes on a string, before abruptly exploding into meaty white chunks that rained down around them.

"Time for this little birdy to be flying away home," Jubilee muttered as she pulled several more packets of C4 from her pockets and threw them toward the approaching Slendermen before ducking back through the portal. "Time to go, Mandy, that's gonna be a freaking huge badda boom."

Amanda didn't need telling twice. Even as she shoved her way back through the portal herself, there was a muffled "crump" behind her and a flash of hear against her jacket and, more disgustingly, a splattering sensation over the arm and shoulder still inside. She yanked herself free, looking with distaste at the fragmented good of Slender-guts all over one side. "Ugh." She looked at her student. "You all right, kiddo?"

Topaz was staring at the portal as it closed, her expression decidedly passive, and she shoved her hands into her jacket pockets. It took a moment to register that Amanda was speaking to her. "What? Yeah." Her gaze swung to her teacher for a moment before she looked away again. "Brilliant."

Amanda sighed, not liking the way Topaz had shut down, but it wasn't the time for therapy. Not with a bunch of traumatised kids to get home. "C'mon then, let's get you lot back to the mansion," she said at last. "And I for one am never eating half-cooked scrambled eggs ever again."