Author's Notes: Not much to say right now. Read, Review, Favorite and Enjoy!
Chapter 4: Heroes 1
After hammering out the details of the Crescent Moon High and the Belfry Prep students Head Mistress Bloodghoul returned to the school. The airplanes should be arriving tomorrow, tonight had to be dedicated to strategy preparations. Thus Headmistress Bloodgood traveled down into the Dungeon's where Mr. Hackington should have been hosting one of his dinner parties. Assuming that Raven was doing as she was instructed then they should be coming up with a way of brokering peace between the factions.
"What is this?" What the head mistress was greeted by when she arrived in that dungeon was the group gathered in the computer lab. Mr. Hackington's group were compiling profiles on various different Belfry Prep and Crescent Moon High students. While not a bad idea at first, on which site said profiles were being compiled stunned her with awe. "Dating sites?" Mistress Bloodgood asked looking thoroughly puzzled.
"We're using these site algorithms to try and figure out the best werewolf/vampire couples."
"So in other words you're trying to trick them into getting along via socially sniping them?" The Headmistress asked disbelief plain on her features.
"Romeo and Juliet. Two clans that hate one another with a burning passion from the depth's of Tartarus, except for two people, one from each clan who over came that hate enough that they fell in love with each other and when their families found out they finally stopped their pointless idiotic violence." Raven stated as she turned back to face the screen in front of her. "Let's hope that no one has to die first." Raven stated as she let out a sigh.
Above the tower where Raven and her mother made their home, a heavily armored figure was repelling down a line onto the balcony that served as a exit to the penthouse apartment. Walking inside he removed his helmet to reveal a skull with metal plates melted into it for a head.
"Morgan! Raven!" Silence. "That's a bad sign." The armored skeleton commented as he looked over to the mirror that functioned as a television for the family, which was currently doing a pretty good impression of a spider's web. "That isn't good. BANE!" The Banshee actually seemed disappointed to see the Undead, though he suspected that one of the main reasons was the table full of food that she had prepared that he could not eat. "Do you know why Morgan took such strong offense to the TV?"
Bane, who only now just getting out of the kitchen, took one look at the piece of furniture in question and let out an exasperated sigh. Treating this situation as normal, Bane opened a panel mounted on the wall and activated a magic rune in it's top left corner, the broken mirror reassembled itself still paused on the news report that Morgan had been watching before she left. After watching the report from the beginning the Undead did some research into the so called Cocytus Slasher on Ghoulgle, obviously some details weren't released to the public, but what he did find concerned him greatly.
"Great. Bane..." The Banshee leaned over from the kitchen with a plate of tinfoil wrapped food. "Morgan's flying off the handle again, get the health potions ready."
Whatever had knocked Professor Hood out was tearing apart the forest trying to get to the school. Apple watched what was happening from the balcony in her room, calling out to various animals to evacuate the forest to safety. Currently several students stood against it, Professor Hood's students in the heroics class, and several of the students from the magic class.
"Rosie. Any time you wanna get angry." Sparrow stated turning his attention to a brown skinned lady wearing a set of pink heart shaped sun glasses and a flowery bath robe.
"I know I know." Rosabella Beast was rather unique among her family, in that she a lady had inherited her family's curse which transformed her into a beast, more specifically something known as a Fiend, a huge three eyed cross between a Gorilla and a Moose that preferred to use what magic it could conjure to paralyze it's victims with vertigo. All facts that Rosabella had come to demonstrate when she transformed into one such monster and sparred with the boys on numerous different occasions.
"Wow I think she got bigger sense last time." Hunter commented struck with awe.
"Did you do something weird to her?" Darling asked glaring accusingly at a witch wearing candy cane colored glasses.
"I deal in food, not fiends." Ginger Breadhouse was top tier buffing type expert, she would write buffing type magics into food and have the heroics class eat them as a regular part of their training. In a emergency Ginger could even 'cook' buffs directly onto a person using her magic, as shown by the numerous burn marks she had left on the group's arms and other examples of exposed skin. Using that same methodology she could burn debuff's directly into a opponent using fire type magic and for this reason brought along a magic staff that closely resembled a giant wooden ladle with a small jewel on the bottom. "Talk to the crazy fairy giggling in the rear."
"Now now, don't down play our resident monster's progress on her own." Said giggling fairy, Faybelle Thorn who was one of the school's strongest spell casters and who just loved to live up to her name sake. "Besides as long as it's in the weight class of something that can one shot the Professor then we want as many heavy weights around as possible to beat the miserable butt pain down."
Saying that whatever it was broke through the trees and what they were greeted by was... another tree.
"What the...?" Sparrow was confused by the sight of several trees having knitted themselves together into a roughly humanoid form. It was like part of the forest just got up and decided to rampage. "Faybelle, did you do this?" Sparrow stated as he shot the fairy a nasty glare.
"I wish I did, I would get a A if I could hand this in for homework." The fairy seemed legitimately surprised at the wood monster that had appeared.
"Enough." The teacher for the magics class, Mrs. Baba Yaga, was currently taking on the role of commander for their forces. "Get the fire magic ready. If it's wood it'll burn."
"Looks like we got all dressed up for nothing." Saying that Faybelle led the magic casters in producing a series of fire balls that transformed into lances of flame and fired them at the wooden monster. Said Fire disappeared before it could reach it's target, extinguished with a blizzard so cold that it froze the flame in mid air and dropped them to the ground as ruffled chunks of ice. "Well that was unexpected." Faybelle commented as her brow twitched at being so thoroughly sealed. "Let's see how you like it then!" Faybelle reached out to that mass of wood, seeking whatever intelligence was behind this thing.
To her surprise it was not some out of control treant that woke up on the wrong side of the bed, but something that definitely did not belong inside of that tree. Now where inside of that tree was the million dollar question.
"Something you'd like to share with the class?" Mrs. Yaga asked looking suspicious.
"It ain't a Treant, something's controlling it." Faybelle stated as she rubbed her headache formed of trying to take control over this thing.
"Like a druid or a witch?" Mrs. Yaga asked attempting to decipher more information.
"Witch!?" It could talk but not in any way they understood, like air rushing past the trees in the forest making noises like whispers. "WWWIIIIIIITTTTCCCHHHH!" Also it was pissed.
The wooden beast began wildly swinging around the large log that made up it's right arm at the group only to find it's blow deflected by Daring's shield as the group's ears rung like a church bell went off at point blank range.
"Rosie!" But there was someone else there in his weight class, as Rosabella grabbed hold of the wooden beast in a grapple, and soon had the frost from whatever was controlling it coating her fur on her arms.
"Ginger!" The candy witch aimed her soup spoon at Rosabella and let out the familiar white hot glow of heat based magic, thereby defrosting the accumulation on Rosabella's body.
"If heat ain't doing anything lets beat him into submission then!" Darling leaped off of Rosabella's back, her sword screamed as she stabbed it into the thing's neck at a two O'Clock Angle, followed shortly there after by hanging off of the blade and trying to use her weight to split it's head from it's body, luckily for her Rosabella was holding it's arms so that it couldn't swat at her.
"Hold him there Rosie!" Hunter jump to arm length and started to go to town on the thing's left arm using his ax to carve a grove into the limb in question.
Rosabella took one look at both them before slamming her head antlers first into the opponent breaking off the arm that Hunter had been working on. Both of the heroes in question jumped off as Rosabelle started to beat the thing into submission through the use of it's own arm. After several blows Rosabella was able to free her other arm and stumbled backwards several feet before falling on her rear end with a loud thunk.
"Eh. I'll take it."
Darling slid behind her enemy and climbed onto it's back. The enemy tried to club her with it's other arm but and explosive burst immediately followed Sparrow busting a explosive potion arrow on it's arm. Positioning herself feet first Darling kicked her blade as hard as she could and with a cloud crack and several blows the head finally came off of it's shoulders and Darling slid down to safety. Is what she thought, but while trying to get her sword back the headless monster tried to swat her with it's remaining arm. Daring's shield made it's signature church bell sound as Daring blocked the swing.
"Darling remind me: things normally die when you take the head off yes?" Daring asked as the monster they were fighting showed no sign of going down.
"Not unless it's a cockroach." Darling stated in a way that illustrated her opinion of the creature they were fighting. "Either way I'm not waiting two weeks for this thing to die on it's own." Saying that Darling pulled her sword out of the tree stump that was this thing's face a few minuets ago. "I say we start chopping bits off until something..." Darling ducked out of the way of the blinded creature that had resorted to swinging around randomly to try and hit it's enemies.
"I got this!" Sparrow fired off three arrows at once that were tied together at the end of a rope and lodged them where it's head use to be. "Rosie, if you don't mind." Sparrow held the other end of the rope to the Fiend. Rosabella took hold of the rope and gave it a hard tug pulling it over and causing it to stumble. Sparrow followed up that lost of footing with lost of foot, firing a explosive arrow at one of the feet and blowing it off. "Using this is a lot easier when you don't have to worry about catching your allies up in it." Rosabella picked Sparrow up and moved him out of the way as the single footed creature stumbled passed them. Right into the school. "The Headmaster is gonna kill us." Sparrow stated as he legitimately cringed. The entire wall was destroyed, what's worst is that it was still moving, flailing around trying to get back up causing even more damage to the school.
"Be grateful no one was..." Then 'it' started moving. Not the creature, rather the wall it had stumbled into, in place of the foot a mangled desk, in place of the arm the stone and rebar from the wall, and the mirror screen melted down and remade into a skull, all of it was glued together with ice frozen over from leaking pipes.
"Definitely not a Treant." Sparrow stated gulping audibly.
"It's freeze everything we throw at it dead!" Faybelle and Ginger waved their magic staffs around and took control of the water coming out of the school and shot it at the now composite monster with enough force to carve through steel. "Then we'll use that against you!" The monster was pushed back as the water tore off stone, metal and wood, seeped into the cracks, froze solid, pushed apart the monster at it's seams, at least it looked like that at first. Instead with the mass being thrown at it the creature was growing in size, rapidly in fact. "Bad idea! Bad idea!" With that massive increase in size the now largely ice monster that had over doubled in size something else had happened, it had slowed down: dramatically in fact.
"Quadratic cube law..." Sparrow muttered before he ran off.
"We might have just made things worst!" Daring shouted before Sparrow ran back over, carrying such items as a garden hose, a bottle, Duct tape and a pipe wrench. "You've lost me on this one Sparrow buddy."
"Just keep him busy you meat head! The rest of you with me!" Darling and Hunter both followed Sparrow as he ran over to a hydrant and began the process of screwing one of the lids on the side off. Sparrow cut the top of the bottle off and screwed in the hose before tearing his shirt into strips and using that with the tape to create a air tight steal around the hole in the hydrant. "When something gets bigger it needs more energy to move. If something doubles in size it's mass increases eight times over and needs eight times more energy to move. It's sluggish movements is proof of that."
"So you wanna squirt it with water until it falls over?" Darling asked with a look of disbelief.
"I wanna piss it off." Using a focused stream of water strong enough to dissolve concrete Sparrow and the others squirted at the beast, carving comparatively small pieces off of it but overall doing very little damage to it.
But it noticed Sparrow and it turned around to face him, or rather charge at him to be more precise. The others, ignorant to Sparrow's plans, seized the situation. Rosabella delivered a lariat pushing it over, it's foot came down on Daring who pushed it off and delivered another light slash at the leg of the monster causing it to fall backwards and shatter on the ground.
"Idiot!" Sparrow watched the latest form of the beast taking form, a human size composite of wood, ice and concrete, wielding a length of rebar the size of a long sword.
Sparrow also saw a explanation as to what this... thing was. The most malleable of the materials, the ice, looked like bone, not just because it was bone white either, rib, skull, femur, he could see clear evidence that this thing favored the form of a undead with the wood and stone being mere set dressing. But different from everything else was it's right hand: a Hand. A actual proper human hand, albeit one that was completely mummified and covered in frost. Now that he thought about it Sparrow remembered that thing in all it's forms favored striking with it's right side.
"A weakness at last." Sparrow let out a relieved sigh. "Daring! Holy power that thing's right hand!"
"Why it's right!?" Daring asked as he deflected the latest blow from the composite creature that was trying to beat them to death with a metal stick.
"It's the only real part of this thing, everything else is just replacement parts!" Nodding his head Daring grabbed hold of that freezing cold length of rebar, charged up the holy power in his sword, and slashed chopping that arm off. True to Sparrow's predictions the rest of the amalgamate collapsed under it's own weight.
"Huh he was right." Assuming that this thing had any real intelligence then it would bury it's weak point under layers of the materials that it made it's body out of, at the bare minimum it wouldn't be mounted on the piece of this thing that was closest to it's enemies by constantly aggressively attacking. "It really was just a-MM!?" That stubborn hand leaped off of the rebar chunk and grabbed Daring by his face, Daring burned it off using holy power and threw it to the ground. "How stubborn is this thing!?"
"That's a common question when it comes to naturally occurring undead." Mrs. Yaga stated as she produced a magic barrier to contain the offending appendage. "Individuals who have suffered a particularly brutal death and die wanting to seek vengeance on those who have wronged them can come back as a undead provided their will to escape the afterlife is strong enough."
"Rather than how or why this murderous hand has crawled out of the grave to kill us isn't important." Sparrow stated as he attempted to glare the witch teacher into submission. "But what I wanna know is why the hell didn't you help us!?"
"Your teacher is educating you on how to fight in a war. I wanted to know if he's been wasting his time or not." Saying that Mrs. Yaga knelled down to examine the hand, and immediately took note of the fact that the hand aggressively started to try and leap through the barrier to attack her.
"It may not like us, but it definitely hates you." Hunter commented taking a look at the hand before turning suspiciously to Mrs. Yaga. "Did you do something to someone and dump their body in the woods?"
"How about instead of pointing fingers we get to the bottom of who or what this thing belongs to." Saying that, the magic dome was turned into a magic sphere and was put into a iron vault, a group of Ever After Authorities came by later that day and took the 'evidence' into custody.
Review Section:
rmarcano321: That he is. That it is. Thank you for saying so.
Zwei Eis: That they didn't. Good to know.