Something Slender || Slender Showdown

[xp_topaz]

The final fight in Askew World begins.

TW: Body Horror



Long arms kept trying to grab Topaz as she ducked in and out, stopping in places to kneel down and scribble on the ground. It wasn't perfect by any means, but it would do.

And if she wasn't mistaken, that was the sound of every reinforcement arriving behind her. Hopefully the kids could find them in this chaos.

***************

Marie-Ange rarely came to any situation armed with more than a knife or two. She made her own, why weigh herself down? But she remembered- how could she forget? the last time. It was a whole universe ago, and of all the fragile little bubbles that had popped in the merge, this one, this corrupt oil-slick place that left a taste in her mouth like tea that had steeped for hours, this was the one that stayed. It offended her, and she remembered trying to make a knife and getting swords and staves and bows, and her powers fighting her the whole time.

She had her cards in the same jacket pocket as always, and tucked up her sleeves and in her shirt and all the secret places she always had them. She also had knives in her jacket pocket and up her sleeves and inside the secret pocket in her shirt and tucked into a sock, and a flare gun, distasteful but not as much as an actual pistol, and she had borrowed plated gloves from a box still labeled WWW. "Portal in 10 seconds." She gave a glance to her teammates, waiting for the same signal she was.

Doug and guns were...not friends, but long term companions at this point. Underarm holster for main gun, spare magazines in easy reach on his vest, telescoping baton in a thigh pocket, and a few knives of his own here and there for emergencies. The nanites of his arm rippled slightly, picking up on the tense anticipation in his body. He caught Marie-Ange's glance and met it, then his eyes flicked to Emma, a few paces to his right, just like a knight to his queen on the chessboard.

Emma gave a quick nod to Doug, allowing herself to inventory the weapons she'd chosen. She didn't normally use weapons; why would she need to when she was a living one? But she'd heard enough about this wretched place they were going to that she'd taken Doug's advice and gathered her own inventory, rather than risk that her powers might turn her into something other than what she was used to. Long range mostly, which suited her style of fighting more. A sabre, a telescoping baton, two small pistols holstered in the small of her back. And, she grinned, a truly satisfying pair of diamond knuckle dusters. She glanced sideways at North, checking everyone was ready to go.

"Down the rabbit hole," North muttered in response, tone bland and just loud enough for his companions to hear. His own arsenal was neatly hidden beneath his coat, none surprising to those familiar with his preferred method of fighting, save for the taser strapped to his ankle that he may or may not have swiped from Felicia.

Marie-Ange's phone chimed off, and a moment later, the portal that their magicians had cooked up ripped itself open in front of them with an uncanny silence that seemed to devour background noises. "Stay within visual range of each other, as best you can. The physics of this place are nonsense." They had already gone over this in the briefing, but the warning felt apt as she stepped into the portal to a cityscape that defied logic and Euclid. Buildings twisted and grew into each other, the street became water became dirt paths became a street again, and the ground shifted slightly under her feet.

"Well, that's unpleasant," Emma murmured as the world twisted and changed under her feet. Cautiously she reached out with her telepathy and then shuddered. "And that's worse," she said, pulling her power back inside her shields. The feel of this place coated her mind like the residue on a truly unpleasant nightclub carpet; despair and unrequited desire and a kind of lecherous cruelty.

***************

Murderous Maniacal Mutants, our speciality. Reckless Robots Rampaging, all in a day's work. Scott and the X-men had seen most everything that could be imagined under the world, had fought it and triumphed. He was confident about pitting his team against just about anything out there, but there was just something about magic that didn't seem to play by the same rules as everyone else. It was a part of their lives, had been for a very very long time, but these Slenders had shown again and again that they had the ability to just pop up when they were least expected, least wanted.

Today though, today the shoe would be on the other foot.

A red energy blast was like a beacon, a lighthouse as Scott tilted his head to the side, rolling his shoulders. "I've been needing to take it out on someone and people don't approve of bar fights anymore so...this couldn't come at a better time."

“You would think they would have learned after... what is it, three times now?” Kurt cracked his knuckles and announced to anyone who might be listening, “These children are off limits.”

"Maybe fourth time's the charm, and if not, then we can burn it all down, leave them a message that even they can understand." Enough was enough, there was no more give.

***************

Amanda slapped another sticker on a distorted version of a tree, trunk and limbs twisted like something in pain. The sheet of stickers had segments of the spell drawn onto them ahead of time and as she ran, she was peeling them off and pasting them at various points. After this one, she paused to catch her breath, wincing at the stitch in her side. Damn, she was getting old.

***************

It was official: Alison hated the Askew World.

(Whoever named it deserved a freakin' medal. Just being there had the same sensation as all the times she'd gotten a twist in her sock on stage and had to dance through it, but in her brain. Haaaaaaaaaaaaate!)

Alison felt like she'd walked into the backrooms, but like... the outdoor part of the backrooms. The backside? Backwoods? It was as if the architect had decided to jam all of the liminal spaces they could think of into one place. Primarily, it looked as though someone had taken a modern city block, illuminated only by the street light that illuminates a perfect circle at its base and nowhere else, and smashed it together with a misty forest full of ancient and gnarled trees, the two concepts cohabitating together yet distinctly independent. Trees grew out of the sunroofs of parked cars, their roots nowhere to be seen below. Office buildings seemed to be built into the stone of cliff walls. Sidewalks turned to well-tread animal paths and back to roads .

And everything was covered with ankle-deep water that tinted an unnatural cyan color as far as she could see. It failed to pool in the low areas and run away from the high points, instead coating everything in an even, four inch deep layer. She could feel it starting to soak into her boots.

Depending on which direction she looked, or how she turned her head, or if she held her breath, she was able able to make out other landscapes [ExistingHabitatingCominglingMerging] as well: a wheat field overlooked by an old wooden windmill, a parking lot for some kind of neon dipped bowling alley, the sign clinging desperate to the building by a single bolt as it twisted in no wind, and a glass room large enough to hold a basketball court filled only with a wooden desk and six empty bookshelves with faded yellow walls and shadows that weren't quite right.

Alison stopped looking for them after that.

There wasn't another living thing in sight, nor sign that anything living had passed recently. Alison squatted down and pulled a handful of dirt out of the water. The ripples splashed and swirled within the water a deep and dark orange. Her hand, and the earth within it, came back dry, of course. There wasn't an ant or worm to be found in the soft and loamy soil. Alison dropped it, and noticed that she heard the splash before she saw it hit the water with an orange swirl.

"...I hate this place." The words left her mouth with a light silver mist. Her words echoed against nothing where they were spoken.

"Yep," Molly said, scratching her arm awkwardly as she eyed the area. "Just don't get scared. They like that." The last time she ran into Slendermen Kyle tried to eat her. Well, not Kyle, but it wanted her to think so. It got a desk sandwich for the trouble.

"No sign of the kids that I can see from above." Sooraya spiraled down, shuddering a little as she reformed carefully balancing on what seemed to be a tree stump in the water. It immediately started crumbling beneath her feet and she quickly hopped into the water... which weirdly enough just pooled back around her feet again, no splashing at all. "But this is one of the most eerie places I've ever been... so I wouldn't be surprised if it's hiding them somewhere."

"If it is, we may never find them without the magic team," Alison muttered, fighting as her eyes slid out of focus on their own to look into a [betweenacrossliminial] that Alison couldn't even register before her vision snapped back. Unfortunately, it happened at exactly the wrong moment, as before Alison knew it she had walked into and then bounced off the light from one of the streetlights, which shook like thunder and rained electric blue into the water below. She reached out, placing her hands flat on the border of the light and pushing. It flexed, lightly, under her palm, but ultimately nothing really moved.

"Oh what on earth kind of nonsense is this now?"

"More weirdness..." Sooraya muttered to herself before shaking her head. "Alright, we best try to accept it as much as possible, no matter how weird or different it is... very effective at making us uneasy and keeping us distracted." She finally quietly advised Alison, though taking her own advice was not that easy and added. "I know you studied the Slendermen in the database, review for me what we have to keep in mind once we engage."

A purple tree suddenly split apart as three seven feet beings suddenly stalked towards them. "Scratch that!" Sooraya called out, already shifting flesh to sand. "Molly, watch out!" echoed over the comms as a tendril of razorsharp sand lashed out at the nearest Slenderman.


***************

Clea stopped at a corner and took out the magic induced spray paint and quickly painted the sigil. "Perfect." She turned just as a Slender reached for her, scratching her cheek in the process. She summoned a mystic bolt to send it flying as she turned towards her next destination.

***************

Some distance away Sharon's ears pricked. The sound here was muffled, as if the very atmosphere wrapped itself around every word and footfall. Other times unintelligible whispers hung at the very edge of hearing. It was difficult to shake the feeling that the sounds generated by this place were only what it wished to exist. What she detected now, though, felt different.

The great cat turned to Shatterstar and Jessie, tail lashing with excitement.

"This way. I hear fighting. Life, maybe." Sharon paused. An ear flicked, as if seeking confirmation.

"And profanity also," she amended.

The profanity was Doug, Sharon's excellent hearing picking up the muttered and clipped off curse words spilling from Doug's mouth. He remembered the last time he had been in this distorted reflection of reality. Just like before, the insidious despair of the place had tried to take hold of his psyche, only to find the metaphorical doors to his mind slammed shut in their faces, reinforced by cold rage. If ten years ago he had been far enough removed from the kid who had been scared of might-have-beens and the like, now he was even older, and understood fear much better. The imprecations that had started in English, then shifted to French, then German and Russian, until he settled into Asgardian, an easy measure of his leashed anger.

The fighting was a blend of gunfire, grunts of effort in close combat, and the like. For Doug's part, he remembered the way the twisted physics of this place had messed with his ability to aim, so his brain had started in high gear looking for the patterns out of the gate. Which was valuable, because there were definitely more of the Slenders than there were of X-Force.

He cast his mind back again to memories of the previous encounter, considering tactics, searching for something that might turn the tide this time. He remembered one of the Slendermen writhing in Remy's grip, more afraid of Gambit than its fellows, scurrying away.

"Let's remind these assholes who ought to be afraid of whom," he declared.

A squirming knot of Slendermen resolved into a group of the creatures, all spindly limbs and facelessly leering. All identical in color and attaire, blank white skin covering their skills, black suits, long horrible white fingers at the end of too long arms. Marie-Ange caught gunfire out of the corner of her eye as one Slendermen went down in a flurry of North's precision firing.

She bared teeth, and gestured with one arm, and a hail of knives fell, each identical to the one in her hand. Most of the imaged weapons dissolved like tears in rain, but a spare few were solid as reality and pierced one of the monsters in it's back, legs, head, arms, everywhere the creature had been under the rain of sharp blades, and she leapt to grab it by the suit.

Before she could grab the Slenderman, there was a body in the way. Doug may have officially been Emma's Knight, and he and Angie weren't dating these days, but that didn't mean he didn't still think of himself as her knight occasionally as well. He wasn't the fool throwing himself in front of a bullet, though - he just knew that Marie-Ange worked better when she had a clear field to use her powers, as evidenced by the creature currently doing its best impression of the Ten of Swords.

He still had his guns out, and he fired a shot from each at the suited figure as it closed to arm's reach. Impossibly long white fingers reached out to grab his left arm as he pushed the gun toward its face, only to have it click on an empty magazine. A sensation brushed against Doug's mind, manifesting, as things often did in his mind full of memes and references, in a twisted version of a movie clip. Agent Smith, grinning at Neo and smugly announcing "You're empty." But instead of the counterbalance of Neo's heroism, just a deepening void of...inevitability, as Smith would say.

But then the tight bastion of Doug's mind, already closed down like rows of doors locked against entry, tightened further, the doors suddenly reinforced with bars. Bars with a copper sheen on them, if the phages could have seen the imagery.

Doug cocked his head minutely and dropped the empty pistol from his hand. ::Friendos. Rakshasa.::

Ever since he'd taken on the nanites, Doug had spent a lot of time thinking and planning for eventualities, ways to utilize his arm in ways that were impossible for a regular one, and that anyone seeing it as just a prosthetic would never expect. This was probably one of the first he'd ever come up with, and the nanites moved smoothly. Rather than twisting in the Slenderman's grip, they instead moved -through- each other, as if the back of his hand was passing through his bones and palm on the way to reversing its orientation. And now, like the infamous D&D monster, his hand was oriented in the other direction, which enabled his fingers to close around the wrist of the hand holding him like a manacle, trapping the thing who thought it had him trapped.

Doug yanked the Slenderman forward, off-balance and disoriented for the barest moment that allowed him to pull the arm around behind its back, hauling the hand upward toward the back of its neck until its shoulder gave way with a wet cracking noise. Skeletons could only move so far, even in this place that twisted the laws of physics. Doug bore it to the ground, his knee pinioning the thrashing figure as he continued to pull upward and keep the pain from letting the creature have a moment to gather itself.

"I've been here before," he told it in a flat, almost conversational tone. "I know how this place works."

"Dis whole place is a big hunting blind. Camoflague for dem to disorient dey targets, split dem up, and den take dem down." Remy's grip on the throat of the slenderman tightened, as he pulled it closer. "'cept when dis one ambushed Gambit, seems dat he didn't like what he found. Been trying to get away ever since." He hoisted it face to face with him, and terror rolled off the slenderman like a palpable force.

"And I know the thing you hate more than anything is finding a bigger shark is in the tank with you." There was no vicious satisfaction in Doug's words, though, just the matter-of-fact, almost mechanical recitation of facts. "And I brought something new with me this time." His hand began to sprout thin filaments, pressing against the back of the Slenderman's neck. "I don't control it. Not really. And it's always looking for new...friends."

Just when he could see the panic spike in the thing he had immobilized, his grip loosened infinitesimally and he leaned down even closer to it.

"-Run-."

And the animal cunning of the Slenderman wouldn't know that Doug was -letting- it escape to lead them where they needed to go. As it squirmed free, it just ran.

“I do so love seeing innovation in action,” said Emma, an admiring glance at Doug’s hand as it resumed a more usual shape and orientation. “Almost as much as I love hunting down things that hurt my children,” she added in a snarl, twisting the sabre that she had skewered through the shoulder of the Slenderman in front of her. “Little creature of nightmares,” she hissed at its face. “Do you really think you have a chance against me?”

For a moment Emma’s diamond form slipped away and her telepathy lashed out. She felt the vile residue of this place coat her probe as it moved, but she let it, using it to bolster her rage, let it rip into the mind of the Slenderman, ripping it open, stuffing it with its own nightmare slurry magnified.

The diamond slipped back on and Emma leaned forward. “Run, little nightmare, run,” she said and pulled the sabre out.

The Slenderman howled and turned and ran after its fleeing compatriot.

In this place, with their ability to camouflage and disorient, one fleeing Slenderman could run the potential for them to lose sight of it before it led them where they needed to go. -Two- Slendermen both fleeing in panic, on the other hand... ~Si creabis, fit redunda.~ Doug didn't remember where he'd seen the flippant bit of Latin, but it always seemed appropriate at times like these. If it is worth doing, it's worth overdoing. He took off at an easy lope that would enable him to keep rough pace with their targets, directing the rest of his teammates with hand signals.

Ambush predators don't generally outrun persistence hunters over the long term, after all.

***************

Alison ducked, and a branch few overhead and crashed into the light of the streetlamp, knocking it over. "Oh you have made a big mistake," Alison said, pulling herself back up.

Above her, the ochre soundshine rushed into her hands, glimmering as it turned opalescent and began to swirl like a vast field of stars. Then they started to glow.

It felt... different. Not bad different, though. Alison shoved a hand out, and an electric swirl of purple rust rushed out to meet an attacker.

"Because I am mad as hell, so thank you for volunteering to let me take it out on you!"

"Hey, free lamppost! Thanks!" Molly said, eyes glowing purple as she grabbed the lamppost and held it like an oversized baseball bat, swinging it at the slenders. "Fore!" She paused.

"Mixed sports stuff but you get the idea!"

Emily ducked around the nightmare creatures, her hair flaring bright against the shadowy nature of the world. She had no interest in fighting, no interest at all in doing anything but getting out. The appearance of adults, especially Sooraya had her almost sagging to the ground in relief but she knew she needed to get past these things and over to her.

“Sooraya!” She cried out as she started darting toward her through the melee. “Sooraya!”

The arrival of the rescue. Rescues, plural, had shaken Madin out of their funk for a few minutes but the trip back to the portal? Nah. There was no point trying to get out. Madin knew, bone deep that there was no point to this. They were here and that was that. This wasn't the time. This wasn't the time. Madin broke into a run after Emily even though there was no point. They were staying here. Everything they touched was fucked up - the Brotherhood, the Underground, Haven, detention, Sharon. Couldn't even rescue themself. Nothing but a stupid, stupid fuck up. Rescuing them was going to get someone else killed for certain.

If Ashley hadn't been exhausted, aching, terrified and fighting back tsunami waves of what she hoped wasn't appropriative by calling dysmorphia, she'd have probably had a nervous breakdown that she was being rescued by Alison Blaire.

As it was, she was all those things, and furious besides, and took two overlarge steps towards Emily, and grabbed one of the black-clad creatures - they really had better not be a meme thing, but she thought they were by it's stupid face and tugged. It stretched like taffy and wet noodles and she kind of wanted to throw up but kept pulling anyway. "Run, Emily. Go!" She gave the the girl a little shove with her free hand and then used it to punch the creature. Her hand was enveloped briefly, and then the thing crumpled, but not to her. The glitter shine of one of Dazzler's lasers had taken it apart into pieces.

Sooraya's sandform dove between Emily and an approaching Slenderman and she lashed out, shearing off its hands, then the rest of its arms and legs. The legs and arms immediately sank into the weirdly colored mire, but hands shifted on fingers tips as they skittered over the ground. One tendril lashed out, grabbing one of the hands and throwing it far away.

***************

“Hey!” was the call from the sky, and a moment later one Melody Guthrie floated down to check out the pair, hoping they weren’t another figment of her imagination. “Y’all are X-Men, right? Thank the Lord. My groups jus’ behind but we got separated from some of them and I ain’t sure where everyone else is and we’re definitely being followed by these things and what even is this place?!!”

Indeed, the figures of two others could be seen coming from the direction Mel came. She took a breath, still hovering, and waved them over. “Guys!! I found people!”

Paige, already husked into a rock form, came running over to Mel. “Finally! There’s all these creepy figures everywhere and I don’t know what’s going on.” She pulled up just behind Mel, keeping an eye out behind them.

Jono mentally sighed and stepped forward next to Paige, tugging anxiously at the bandages around his face, flames poking out around his finger. He hoped he wouldn't need to pull them down, but he was ready to make sure his friends were behind him if he did.

Rictor brought up the rear, slowly, cautiously, arms crossed, gaze cast down. "I want to go home. Get us out of here, please."

"Now you are all here, we will take you home", Kurt promised him. "And when you are safe, we will return to teach these creatures their lesson."


***************

North watched in distaste, both in real time and in shifting futures, as the creatures moved, fleeing from his companions and closer to where he had positioned himself outside of melee range. His pulse quickened, adrenaline fueling precognition in a way that it had not in months now. A skeletal hand reached for him as he slid a fresh magazine into his handgun, grasping digits mere inches and seconds from milky eyes. Teeth bared in a snarl, North grabbed the Slenderman by the wrist and yanked, channeling power into the motion that propelled his ghastly opponent off-kilter and groundward.

Three shots, close-ranged.

The Slenderman exploded into a disgusting splatter of gooey chunks that smelt strangely of sulphur and eggs.

"Fuck," North said emphatically, unsuccessfully leaping out of range. His attention was swiftly diverted as a fresh commotion arose, outside of the expanding range of their group. Glancing backwards at Marie-Ange, North indicated his intention to move into her line of fire with a sharp jerk of his chin as he took off in a run, bearing gunfire into any creature that stood in his way.

Jessie, who had been holding onto Shatterstar as they approached, depending on him to lead her as her eyesight failed, diverted to the only adult she recognized in the group - Doug. She was such a burden - all she could do was collapse into him, making muffled noises. Her ears had shriveled back into her head completely, along with her hair, and skin was growing over her eyes now, threatening to block them out. She had no idea what she was going to do if her nose disappeared.

Shatterstar had been depending on Jessie to steady as much as she had been depending on him to see. He still had his penknife gripped in his hand. Where Jessie fell onto Doug, he went to Marie-Ange, remembering the weapons she created from her body. He had always felt steadier with a weapon in his hand. He had always felt like he could do anything.

"Can I have a weapon?" He asked her. "Anything," he added, eyes wide. "Please.."

One teenager whose face was in retreat, one who was half cat and one who was making sensible requests for weapons. At least one point five of them was making sense, assuming, as Marie-Ange had, that Sharon was fully capable of turning into a fight capable puma or bobcat. Something with teeth.

She grinned - almost gleefully - at Shatterstar, and plucked a bit of nothing out of the air that turned into an elegant modern looking katana. It matched a card that had absolutely not been in her other hand just a moment before, and she offered it to the young man, hilt forward, and then snorted a laugh as another clattered to the ground, and another, and a fourth. "Apologies, this place does nonsense to my..."

She whirled, and a fifth sword that appeared in her hands cut through the torso of one of the Slendermen. It went still, and then toppled, sliced in two, and then erupted into egg-smelling goo. "I hate it here."

Automatically Shatterstar felt steadier with a sword in his hands, even one he didn't properly know how to use. But this, this is what he was meant for. He had a sharp kind of smile as he let his body move on memory alone to cut a Slenderman down in one sweeping motion, adding to the rotten egg smell in the air, white goo falling all over the ground. Yes, this is how he was meant to be. He didn't feel powerless or weak anymore.

It was the easiest thing in the world to bite and claw. These were things Sharon had done all her life. Never before, though, had she worried about collateral damage. Friends and others were in the mass around her, adding to the confusion, and confusion was already everywhere. Light flashing from blades and diamond skin. The crack of gunfire and bone. That stench of eggs and mildew that clung to everything, so viscerally offensive it was all she could do not to claw away her own skin. Too loud, too close, too much, and no matter how many she slashed there were always, always more hands to reach for her.

Something cold and slick tightened around her neck. The tentacle strangled her snarl of rage as it pulled taut, more questing around her torso as it sought to draw her in.

There was an electric hum and Sharon's bonds convulsed. As the tentacles slacked her nostrils pricked with a familiar scent: earthy leather and the bright sweetness of a familiar lip stain. It was a scent she would recognize anywhere. Heart leaping, the cat spun to face her savior.

Felicia?!

An unfamiliar male -- most definitely not Felicia -- stood before her, a discharged taser grasped loosely in his hand as looked down at her and the foul remains of her captor, a singular brow arched in silent question.

Like all cats Sharon contained multitudes, and right now every one was filled with a mixture of offense, disappointment, and confusion. Still dripping with the gore of her assailant the great cat stared up at her rescuer, and for the first time realized that beloved scent was muted by the odor of gunpowder and oil.

"Why is not Felicia?" she blurted.

"That is an excellent question," North said, lids blinking rapidly over milky irises before he abruptly turned to fire off shots into a slinking figure creeping up on Jessie. It hardly was the time and place to demystify the purple feline's affrontement, so he filed it away in a mental folder meant for his next conversation with Felicia. "You can thank her for the taser though," he added belatedly, since gunshots likely would not have been the best option for unwrapping the Slenderman's suffocating hold on Sharon.

"Head toward the light," he instructed, interrupting any further outrage at him being unacceptably not-Felicia. Discarding the used taser cartridge at his feet, North jerked his chin in the direction of the portal Arthur was holding open and produced a pair of fresh handguns from somewhere about his person.

The man raised his voice and repeated his instructions for the rest of the mutants to hear. It was way past time to get out of this unholy place.

***************

Liam wanted out of this place, the feeling of badwrongno wouldn't go away and it was disturbing and distracting. He kept his claws out unsure what to do as the adults took care of it all, but absolutely willing to slice anything that got too close.

There was a flicker, and all the soundsparks that the battle had spawned collapsed to a single point. Alison, who had gotten herself into the middle of a 1-vs-1 with a slenderman, threw a hand forward. A beam of light shot out, directly in line with the... face? ...face area ish spot on her target.

...for all of about three feet, before it abruptly stopped and fell out of her hand, splashing into the water at her ankles.

She and the Slenderman both stopped. Alison could feel her eye twitch. Despite the flurry of action around them, Alison and the Slenderman looked from the slowly dissolving beam of light towards each other.

Something in Alison snapped.

Slowly, painfully slowly, another rod of light grew out of each of Alison's hands. This time, however, instead of letting them fall, she grasped them, and they lit up in a brilliant glow that cycled between the orange ambient sound, the silverwhite speech, and the vivid purple of combat. Good weight (somehow), well balanced... these would do.

"I'm going to start beating you now," Alison said, placid. "I don't know when I'll stop."

Ashley had taken rapid steps backwards as soon as the light show had started, and her eyes kept darting from her empty hands to the batons of impossibly solid light that Alison was using to treat the monster like it was the slab of beef in that old boxing movie she'd seen once. Except unlike the frozen beef, slices of monster were peeling off. She would never eat mortadella again. She never had, it was pork but would never again either.

Orange - and a slice fell. Brilliant blinding white, another slab of monster to the ground. Lavender, and it started to crumble and out of her mouth, in the quietest voice she expected no one would hear, unable to stop herself. "rule one of lesbian fight club..."

And then she turned, and ran, pulling a stunned and near paralyzed Emily along in her wake to a portal that beamed so white that it burned the grey and black of the landscape into aching brilliant light.

Madin watched it all, dull, stunned. Plasma flickered around their fingers for a moment but there was no point. It died again, purple energy fading into nothing. They knew they were supposed to run, to follow Ashley and Emily but fuck it. Everything they touched was fucked. Couldn't even rescue themself. They didn't bother to run any further and just stumbled to a stop, staring blankly at the fight.

Emily had been mutely following Ashley to the portal, towed along in her wake when she noticed Madin just standing there.

“Madin! Come on!” she yelled out to them, finally seeming to shake out of the numbness that had taken hold. “We have to run!”

Madin didn't move. There was no point to running. They were a stupid fucking idiot. A fuck up. Why the hell was Emily trying to get them to run? Couldn't she see that they were a fucking disaster? It was the hand on Madin's upper arm, dragging them into motion that set them moving in the end.

“You don’t get to give up,” Emily yelled as she grabbed onto their hand now that they were moving and headed back toward Ashley and the portal. “I don’t care what this place does, you don’t get to give up.”

"Oy, no, we're not doing this." Ashley spun, took two over-large steps and bodily picked Madin up, tossing them over her shoulders. "Ain't nobody got time for this, we can be sad later." She'd apologize later, suspecting Madin was not the kind of person who would appreciate the unwanted grab, but nobody. was dying in weird meme land today. "You can call me a bitch later, I'm not doing this today."

Sooraya dove forward, slicing and dicing two of the Slendermen into tiny bits as the first of the Gen X kids dove through the portal, which flared brightly with each person passing through. "Liam, time to go... don't wait for us. Dazzler, Bruiser, make sure they cannot come after us, but if you can, go!" Dust ordered, instinctively slipping into the role of senior X-men as another group of Slenderman emerged from a tree next to the portal. A long razorsharp tendril of sand lashed out, literally taking them out at the knees, even though the first one already started clawing its way forward.

Liam's eyes automatically adjusted to the dark, but they couldn't handle light like this and by the time they adjusted, everything was over and he was stumbling towards the portal with everyone else, "Woohoo!" he cheered, because they were getting out of there!

The good thing about a lamp post was that it was super long. That meant plenty of space to whack people--er...creatures. Whatever those things were. Molly wielded it with precision, powered by her super strength to knock down Slendermen like bowling pins. "Stay down!"

"Okay, that is everyone.... Dazzler, Bruiser, go go go!" One last time Dust lashed out, driving back the few Slendermen still approaching, before pulling a one eighty and diving back in the portal herself. It flared brightly one more time before fading away, all living creatures outside the Slenderman gone...