MEDLEY OF MELEE: A ROCK OPERA FOR ROUTING MARAUDERS

By Quillon42

CHAPTER TWO

Through the flimsy yet firm fortifications all around her, the tremoring, Marauding murderess known as Arclight could still feel the vibrations of her shameless soulmate, as the latter worked here and there to blast his way out of his own recyclable cell. Try as the man might, though, Arc's love Scalphunter wasn't scoring any more points in the endeavor.

Hovering amidst all of this, the killers' captor considered going after that purple-haired peperpetratress of earthquakes…and for certain, said 'light would be extinguished, at least diminished, before this darkness yielded to dawn.

…But the would-be Massacre victim just couldn't wait to get to a certain, special someone, and test the tangible limits of her imprisoning abilities.

A few units of uniform torment down, a certain spiritling did all she could to shimmy her way through the slight yet sheerly impenetrable paper barriers surrounding her. The entity railed with abject rage at her failure to fly from here. She was incorporeal, damn it; nothing like this could contain her! Nothing could…possess her, like this!

It was supposed to be the case…that she was the one to possess others.

[DUM, DUM, DUMMM…DUM-DUM, DUM, DUMMM…]

But now, invasively, the paper chase started up once again…

[DUM, DUM, DUMMM…DUM-DUM, DUM, DUMMM…]

As the Marauder known as Malice would begin the taste the medicine of becoming the medium for another being within her.

The spirit felt stiff a bit…

…then, upon seizing up, inexplicably and entirely…

I'm your minxy Auntie Morlie…

…I'm glad you can't see or hear me!

As I fiddle ahhbout, fiddle ahhbout, fiddle-about!

Malice shot northward toward the seemly insubstantial ceiling, then down again to the floor, in a vain attempt to try and shake the intangible influence over her.

No dice.

You've gone and trapped yourself here, mind you,

Now I'm doing what I WANT to…

As I fiddle ahhbout, fiddle ahhbout, fiddle-about!

It was then that the Malice was herself for once molested, the imageless incubus smothered, felt herself occupied utterly, for the first time in her own menacing, overly possessive existence.

Down with the coll-ars

Up with the col-ors…

Fiddle ahhbout, fiddle ahhbout, fiddle-about!

Indeed, the days of taking over others in the form of a choker were now to be far behind Malice, as the tie-dye treatment of the one taking over her own soul would torture that tendency out of the Marauder.

While the spirit shot all around her cell, she going completely insane at the ideas of her ineffectiveness in escaping, as well as her own subjection to possession…

You won't slip out, as I fiddle ahhbout,

Fiddle ahhbout, fiddle ahhbout, fiddle-about!

Fiddle ahhbout, fiddle ahhbout, fiddle-about!

Fiddle ahhbout, fiddle ahhbout, fiddle-about!

Fiddle, fiddle…

Fiddle, fiddle…

…in the midst of all of said fiddling

Fiddle, fiddle…

Fiddle, fiddle…

the very essence, the very measure of Malice itself becoming whittled down to even less than the spirit that it started out as.

Fiddle, fiddle…

Fiddle, fiddle…

Fiddle, fiddle…

Fiddle, fiddle…

FIDDLE!

All until the smarmy Morlock had no phantom left to play with at all.

For John Greycrow, better known to many of his downed targets as Scalphunter…all this pernicious paper weighing down on his world could not hold the man back from looking upon the lavender-tressed lady he had loved. Indeed, he knew now that Philippa Sontag—who ordinarily misadventured under the moniker Arclight, and who with her seismic skills could cause these conduits to quake like no other—Greycrow knew that the one who won his heart was just as tough as he, and that she could break through all these firm fibers to join his side.

"Come on," he told that titaness of tectonic trouble, once she emerged through the papery partition between them, "we'll pool our power to break through and free the others."

Really, the couple looked so potent as they padded off, they with their draping mullets of orchid and onyx—

-and no subject of this stationery stockade was affected by this sight more than the prisoner who verily went by the name Philippa, and who was now scandalized at seeing the papier-mache duplicate of herself traipsing off with the man who made her existence sufferable.

As it was, the only company upon which the amethyst assassin was visited…well, we've already seen this versicolor vixen strike thrice…and the fourth time was no less terrifying.

Do you think it's Arc-liiight,

Who left the nook with Uncle Johhhhhnny,

This as the sheaves surrounding Philippa's kneecaps came shunting together, entrapping the earthquakeress all the more.

Do you think it's Arc-liiight,

That dunderheaded Hunnnnn-ter's not too bright!

Do you think it's Arclight,

Do you think it's Arclight,

No, I think it's not quite…

By the close of this carping chorus, Miss Sontag was up to her pupils in the punitive parchment, she of earthshattering aptitude ironically so swallowed up and ground down.

Without missing a beat now, the Morlock with momentum once more—again with Piper and the Dreamer backing her up while she set her sights upon a certain, untameable target:

Do you think it's alriiiiight,

To leave the 'lock with Cretin Viiiiicious,

Do you think it's alriiiiight,

There's something 'bout this I just real-ly like!

Do you think it's alright,

Do you think it's alright,

Yes I think it's allriiight…

A multitude of minutes was at present eaten away by frustratingly futile efforts on the part of said Vicious Cretin, that Victor Creed, to cut a swath viciously through the vellum all around. As with the others in his ensemble, the savvy slaughterer was used to being a pursuer and not a prisoner, a trapper and not a captive. This experience was something unheralded for him, and which fueled his fervor for violence all the more.

However, as much as the mutant mauled at the material all around him, the flimsy, papery gunk just would not give.

But those needling, unnerving notes—

[Do-DO-Do-DO-Do-DO-Do-DO-do-DO-do-DO-do-DO-do-DO]

[Do-DO-Do-DO-Do-DO-Do-DO-do-DO-do-DO-do-DO-do-DO]

not those uttered by a pen, but rather those issued from a piano—they did anything but soothe the savage breast of Sabretooth, who by now could not slash back the roaring ream that consumed him from all sides, and which was now funneling in sewage from the dankest drain in the entire underground.

[Do-DO-Do-DO-Do-DO-Do-DO-do-DO-do-DO-do-DO-do-DO]

[Do-DO-Do-DO-Do-DO-Do-DO-do-DO-do-DO-do-DO-do-DO]

We're on our owwwwwn, Cretin,

All allooonnne, Cretin!

Let's think of a game to play,

Now your goon-friends have all…gone away!

You won't be much fun,

Being bound up in dung,

But I've no one, to play with, today!

Just then the pied poltergeist breezed in front of the man, she getting up in Victor's grill in full and, freaking out in myriad hues, humbling the vermin dastard with visual darkness:

Do you know how to play blind man's bluff?

To find me would be ordeal enough,

But being stuffed up with stool makes you all more the fool,

There's a lot I can sling, in a SLOUGH!

Surrounding the twosome now, the cell's borders bucking abruptly as the bottom suddenly seceded and deposited the hapless Sabretooth into the depths of the most unsanitary insanity of the sewer…

HOW would you feel if I o-pened the sluice,

Filled up your sys-tem with septic-type juice,

WHAT would you do if I pushed your head down,

To in-hale the sleaze so you'd seize up and DROWWW…oww-oww-oww…oww-oww-OWWWWWNNN?!

I'm the SEWWWWWWER bully!

The CESSSSS-POOOOOLLL cheat!

The NASSSTIIEST prey-fiend,

You EVVV-ER could meet!

I'll make CUUUUUTTTS of pa-per,

That CLAWWW you to MEAT!

Glaring down upon the godforsaken gack that now served as a gaol for the cruel Creed, the mental Morlock stared and sang on with a tinge of pity, she seeing someone not so much up the river as down the drain:

We're on our owwwwwn, Cretin,

All allooonnne, Cretin!

Let's think of a game to play,

Now your goon-friends have all…gone away!

You won't be much fun,

Being bound up in dung,

But I've no one, to play with, today!

TO BE CONTINUED