It sure took me long enough to update, huh? :/
Sorry about the wait with this one, it took me like thirty days or something, right? I dunno! Lolz.
But hey! I pumped out the longest chapter of the whole story! I hope anybody who reads finds the wait/written material ratio worth it, 'cause I got an 8,000 word chapter for you! Woo!
Alright, I'll give you a warning (NO DETAILS, YOU GOTTA READ, BROTHA! :P)- I think I made it a bit sad towards the end. Big plot shift, just putting it out there.
Tell me what ya think, peeps!
-Don
Chapter 25.
Mood Swings.
-0-0-0-0-0-
"When the video feed showed the back door of the warehouse ajar, it was at this minute that you realized-
-You f***'ed up."
-Writ 70 of Surveillance
All those times that Phillip had cast aside reality, and dozed off in the rear of the car when he was a kid, were memorable, probably just because the at-hand events made it so.
The differing, unique circumstances, certainly did not allow many other similar instances in his childhood to stand predominantly out, but the car rides resonated so heavily with him over the last two or three days.
It was strange- In a sense of putting that LIGHTLY, of course...
Putting aside, once more, the animatronic beasts, the tortured old man, some super-ex-cop he hadn't even met yet, and a evil demonic whackjob that had been causing horrors since people thought musket-rifles would solve the world's wars...
-Take all of that away, and note that Phillip had been living a sort of week, that had been so far from what his life had revolved around for several years now.
Friends, buddies, a woman, were something that Phil hadn't been able to bring himself to keep for longer than an initial event, or a few couplings of time. He'd been in a depression of sorts after his father died, had gotten over it, and found himself bathing in a ocean of negativity.
He started to feel alone, stuck in a rut only fixed by the small blend of artistic talents he had found drawing, and then, without need of any major employment, he came across this stupid, fate-felled advertisement in the paper.
A security guard.
What the hell, right? How did his life go from monotone grim, to DEADLY, mixed with the most exciting dares of his very existence, and sided by two creatures that had meshed with him near instantaneously, because their lives hadn't been much better than his recently, for LONGER.
Mangle may have been a freak-wad, and severely disruptive and... Mentally unstable... The list kind of expanded, but, no the point was, she was so much more happy around him, because she saw them as friends, buddies, partners-in-crime.
Which to that, Phil had no problem admitting, Mangle was a good friend, a little rusty with everyday logic, yet he wouldn't want any human like her watching his back in the few fights he'd had beside her...
Matthew, old Matt, the senior, the guy who threw him into the whole thing without meaning too. Matt had skeletons in his closet, he had A LOT of them... He was a good man that had been put in a horrible situation, and made some wrong choices...
Phillip could not hold him entirely at fault for his decisions. The Old Man was going to solve this problem. Phillip only wished he had helped that stopping earlier in this apparent span of TENS of years... He had only been in the shit a week.
There was this fight happening in and around a children's establishment, that no one, none at all, in the surrounding area, or the WORLD for that matter, knew about or understood.
It had been raging for so long... Before he was born.
His final companion, the third, had been stuck in it for around thirty years, THIRTY, older than him.
That point brought on the debate to his last friend... Foxy the hook-wielding, lightning fast, emotionally displaced, bipedal vulpine. A mouthful for a being unlike any other.
Foxy had the mind of someone who had been broken, or, was nearing that sort of status, and more evidently, someone several years younger than her immortal age granted. Foxy had to be around forty from the time she had been built, or created... Whatever the process was.
She had been fighting these monsters around her, a titanic Frankenstein bear, a killer poultry whale, and a murderous Trix-rabbit! Hold your tongue on saying that she was a whining wimp, because Phil understood she was a trooper.
There was so much physical damage inflicted on her unmaintained body, and those scars got there from WOUNDS, scratches from nails as sharp as pointed steel, fanged jaws that could snap bones, punches and kicks capable of shattering walls in a house...
All that time, the only person, the beings, she had to talk too, were a dysfunctional Mangle, an angry, confused Matthew, and a determined, uncaring Jensk. A mental patient, who was in the dark at that time, and two old men in young bodies.
It must have been hard.
Hell, that was an understatement.
Foxy went THROUGH hell, to the end and back, and BACK again.
It sounded so simple when you described it off the bat, but then, try magnifying that horrible life to thirty years or so.
THIRTY YEARS. It was longer than Phillip had been alive. Longer than he had physically seen and considered everything in the world his life had come near. Longer than he was an adult. Or a child. Or the two combined.
That was some scale, not easily respected by those less fortunate, or the ones who had not been the victims.
Foxy had been enamored with him, he was the first person, human or not, to talk to her in her entire life as another sentient creature.
So indeed, differing species or not, initial physical drawing or not, how the heck COULDN'T she start drooling over him? The reaction was almost involuntary. And if Phillip had been stuck in the same pit himself, he doubted his reaction would be any different to the knight in shining armor.
In a week his life shifted so dramatically.
He had been able to dodge most of this... FREDDY's, influence. The damn demon bear.
They had avoided him to give them all time to regroup, they fended off these endoskeleton apparitions he sent after them, they fended off the rabid chicken, AND the rabbit, even the bear himself on that misty roadway.
Despite the scars they all came out with, emotional or physical, their teamwork kept them all alive.
Teamwork against endoskeletons, animatronics, the demon bear, and the horrors of the past...
They'd surpassed it all.
What was saying they couldn't use that teamwork to surpass a ten foot tall killer transformer van?
"PHILLY! THE TANSHORMER HAS A WHEELY!"
-Scratch that, Mangle made it clear to remind him.
What was saying they couldn't use that teamwork to surpass a ten foot tall killer TANSHORMER, van?
It could've been the fact that this thing was tougher than anything they'd come up against prior.
"Oh shit!"
-Coupled with the fact it picked up a fifty pound scrap-heap that was the van's former rear wheel, and chucked it at him like an angry child flung a spit-ball at the teacher's chalkboard.
Those little brats were FAST with spit-balls.
Phil didn't even managed to react fast enough before someone ELSE reacted for him.
"PHILLIP!"
"-HOLY FU-OOAAAHHH!"
CLUNK
Phillip did not hear the horrible cracking sound the mashed wad of rubber and hub-cap made against the streetlamp he had been standing in front of, his vision was muffled under the tumble with a russet-furred savior.
Foxy flung her arms out, tackled him from the path of the flung debris where it gave off a upkick of dust and sparks, dented the center of the streetlamp with a metallic thrum, and bounced off into the darkness of the lot.
The killer van made a blaring, static-like rumble, angered at the miss, and jabbed the blackened end of its muffler-arm in their direction.
"Are you okay? Phillip? PHILLIP?!"
"I'm fine! Good lord already, I'm FINE!"
"-Get up!"
"Then get off of me!"
"-I TOLD YOU, YOU WERE A KNIT-PICKER!"
"WE'RE GONNA GET KILLED BY MEGATRON AND YOU'RE CONCERNED WITH MY TOUCHINESS?!"
"DAMN STRAIGHT!"
"WE NEED A TACTICAL SHIFT HERE, WOMAN! MOVE YOUR ASS!"
"I'LL MOVE MY ASS WHEN I FEEEEEELLLLL LIKE IT!"
Of course, neither party realized that as they had been screaming for the other to move, they had flipped themselves to full stands on the sidewalk, and were sprinting back to the front entrance of the pizzeria.
Subconsciously, perhaps, was the following action-set taken. Still, Matthew tried to call to them from where he and Mangle had scattered to hide behind the front hood of his van.
"MR. LINN! The muffler-!"
Foxy almost hollered back to shut the old geezer up, but then the towering mechanical monster made a terrible belching sound, the racket a beat-up muscle car made when someone throttled the gas from average speed to a hundred miles-per hour.
Phillip reached the top of the steps when he saw the beginnings of a black blotch of smog vomit from the muffler's pipe, disgorging a stinking cloud of disorienting soot.
The onyx vapor swallowed him and Foxy within a second, the van spewing it forth from its extended muffler-arm like a flamethrower onto the steps and front side of the pizzeria, the parking lot thudded as one of its heels advanced a single step.
Matthew grunted in panic, aimed the magnum he still held, and fired a third round, in total overall this night, that sparked to nothingness on the van's engine block.
If phased by the miniscule damage, the living vehicle did not show it, the muffler-arm relented briefly, the smog ceasing its waterfall from the pipe's mouth to drown the steps and the two on them. The monster peered into the dissipating black fog, like it was curious to the results.
Down on the steps, Phillip could not see the hunched over monster, he did not feel the ground quake again when it took another foot-fall towards him. In fact, Phil couldn't see, smell, or hear anything at all.
The toxic soot blinded him, burned his eyes and literally stripped them black, even when he knew they were open.
His hearing, his smell, were dumbed down to the point he felt like he was experiencing shell-shock. You know, when you saw the scenes in war movies. The best a non-veteran could sum up. Pity.
No matter the effectiveness of his later description, he was completely stunned, he fumbled with the entry to the door, lost it, and spiraled on top of the stone steps like a drunkard. His arms flailed, legs kicked, there was a falling sensation, and the feeling of pin-prickling overtook his back and shoulders.
Phillip did not recover from the mist for another good ten minutes. But by that time, Foxy was already frantically rolling off her collapse on the sidewalk, literally feet from him, to stand ready.
"Matty-kins! Why no policeman show up!"
"Yeah MATT! Where the hell are the other humans?! Kind of hard to-" Foxy's speech cut off, she threw herself with two graceful arcs of her legs.
A sidestep that carried her further than a human could leap, she shifted across the sidewalk, and a metal, rusty fist cracked the concrete she had moved away from, coming down in a directed slam, the knuckles kicked dust and pebbles from the impact.
CRUK
The van droned, ripped its knuckles from the concrete, and shook the appendage with whines of poorly oiled metal to dislodge clouds of airborne debris.
"-IT'S HARD TO MISS A GIANT TIN-MAN!" Foxy shouted in a finish for her prior words. "How does nobody see THIS?!"
"It's Freddy!" Matthew barked. "-That bastard is using his powers to keep the area concealed! I know it!"
"Smart man, Matthew, too smart, ya know?"
"-No!"
Matthew spiraled right as Freddy reached a grimy, encrusted paw in his direction, nails unsheathed, teeth bore, a wicked grin plastered on his aged face.
The magnum almost finished its direction, barrel inches from jabbing to the bear's head. Instead, it clattered onto the pavement when Freddy's other claw rammed out, and twisted it fiercely from the man's grip.
Matthew cried out in pain from the contact, the concrete beneath his shoes vanished, he felt weightless, the palm reaching for him before gripped his shirt and collar, the animatronic lifted him to face-to-face level with no issue.
"Matt, Matt, Matt... You just-You just didn't get it! Why didn't you get it? It was on the wall! Written! Painted! IT WAS EVERYWHERE!"
"-B-Because-!" Matthew grumbled out between struggles, his wrinkled hands tugging at the bear's wrist. "-Because I HAD to stop you!"
Freddy grinned heartily, and swept his paw around him.
"-Bad news," He grunted, smugly. "-You failed!"
The monster scoffed him.
"-You haven't tried for a decade! You come back! With a vigor! A new man with you! Ya revved up ole' Foxy! AND YOU STILL FAILED! Ha! It's laughable, Matthew! You, YOU, YOU YOU-Are a failure!"
Matthew stopped struggling when the animatronic jabbed a nail in his face for each raised pitch in his statement.
"How's the blood on your hands feel, Old Man? Slippery right? HA!"
The blood on his hands...
It felt- Nay, HE felt...
-He felt like failure itself.
Freddy was right.
His life was repeating itself. He couldn't overpower this demon.
It was over.
Freddy brought his other claw away, flicked the nails to a readied position.
"Jig's up, rodent."
He was right. The jig was up.
"-Y-You've gotten me..." Matthew grunted, finding it in himself to let a tear draw down his wrinkled cheek. "-I understand. I'm ready."
"-Too die? Don't worry, I hear it's the trip AFTER the tearing, that's quick."
"-Not this second, Fred'."
"You have no choice."
"I do-" Matthew reared his head back, and screamed. "-MANGLE! HELP!"
"MATTY-KIIINNNNSS!"
"Oh, my aching head..." Freddy rolled his eyes, and, right before the flinging mass of metal landed, he finished his intention. "Still late on the ball, Matt."
SCHK
"-AGGH! GOD-AGH!"
Freddy was unable to relish his final victory for long, Mangle clambered over his shoulders, his head and back. Fists and feet came down in every direction, pummeling the bear with precise, forceful hits.
A set of jaws tore off the remnants of his left ear, returned to clamp over his hat and scalp, something broke and flittered into his internals from his right shoulder-blade.
"-PEST!" He cursed, swinging his hand in a backwards, up-angled strike, he swatted Mangle's head like a punching bag, sent the animatronic hurtling into the hood of Matt's van.
She made several thuds and clangs, tumbled about the van's top. Mangle chattered in surprise, her limbs spread out, and carried her away like a spider when Freddy reared back, and brought both of his fists down on the van's face where she had been knocked too.
The vehicle shifted in its park, steel screamed, coolant hissed from the damaged engineblock, and the front tires popped from the force into the pavement.
Freddy cursed in defiance, pulled back from his lean to the automobile, and went to pursue the other animatronic.
CLACK
But then, Matt shot him.
The bullet entered his ribcage with a flash of sparks, bounced around his internals, and left his gut in the form of a ragged, golden stumped casing. Feddy made a gasping sound, doubled back, and grabbed at the hole in his body with shock.
He was damaged.
That was supposed to be impossible. He should have finished the Old Man off. Made sure of it.
Glancing down with a sneer, he saw Matthew grin in small victory where he curled in wounding on the ground, red gathering under his gut, the magnum was held aloft with a shivering, raised grip.
"-Ha ha..." The man weakly muttered. "-GOTCHYA."
"-You RAT!"
"-BANZAI!"
"-Sod off you damned freak!"
Freddy swung again, but Mangle pushed her head out of the brown arc, wrapped her pipes around the forearm, and used the finished swing to gain momentum, catapulted herself in a loop around the bear's flank, onto his back again.
Freddy hollered and grunted, stumbling away with the mess of fists and heels hitting him from all directions.
The fighting distanced its noise from Matthew's prone form on the pavement. He sighed, pained while he did so, and rested on the cold concrete, putting the magnum down on its side by his hip. He felt warm where Freddy's nails hit his stomach.
The warmth spread to all parts of his torso still pressed to the ground.
He waited.
For either Phillip, or Foxy.
It was them, or the last option which would find him before oblivion. He prayed Phillip got there before the one in black. And Matt knew that was on the way.
-0-0-0-0-0-
"-Phillip?! Phillip!" Foxy kept searching for her friend as she basically preoccupied the van by letting it take swings at her.
Her eyes darted faster than her arms and legs worked, her speed allowing her to stay ahead from the bulging fist the monster used as a club. Impacts riddled the concrete she sped across, several indents in the surface marked abound.
"-DAMN IT!" She cursed, finding herself in a frantic panic, she flung the weight of her legs back, leaping nearly a foot into the air, the blindingly fast blur of the monster's gripping fingers swung through the dark space she kicked away from.
The thing was too big for her to take head on, she probably would have to find a way to get on, or better yet, on TOP of the creature.
Foxy backpeddled a little, the van cast its engine-block midsection about, the red orbs glowering angrily, and frustrated blares leaving its body. The thing had lost her in the dark, and, too no surprise, because as she rechecked, it was obvious why.
The two lamps on either side of the door had been knocked out, a thick, healthy shadow obscured the steps and spaces around it.
This was cover.
It was just like her Cove... The dark would conceal her.
Foxy grinned inanely, putting aside the dread in her system for Phil's whereabouts for a moment.
The penny dropped for her answer to this conundrum, and by the time the van had an inkling of where she was around the blotchy steps, it experimentally swatted its fingers through the dark, and hit nothing.
The monster grumbled, leaned closer, completely oblivious to the animatronic it was trying too, but could NOT see, and its creator, who was tangled up with Mangle.
Freddy just grunting, barking and cursing, understanding well the only reason Mangle was still in one piece, was because she was slithering all over his form, like someone trying to rid themselves of a harassing horsefly, the culprit couldn't be pinpointed and destroyed.
Except, this HORSEFLY, if that, had fists and feet, and a set of jaws that tore at the bear's head.
From her crouch by a fern growing in the small amounts of grass around the building, dividing it from the lot's sidewalk, she feared now not only for Phillip, but for her friend as well. She felt horrible she couldn't help her.
Foxy rolled her jaw, toyed with her hook, and glared from the blackness at the hulking monstrosity Freddy had conjured up with his voodoo-nonsense.
If she was going to get to him, she had to get through THAT first.
Just like she had done to Bonnie and Chica when she had defended herself in the Cove, she sized the foe up, head to toe, and back again.
Of course the size difference made her glances much more wide and broad, but in the rundown, it was the same gist. The mechanics of the vehicle it had been born from jutted and junked all over the thing's legs and arms, Foxy could use them to climb.
If she could mess up the engine block... That just HAD to destroy it.
It was her best chance.
"-Time to go for it, huh...?" She muttered to herself sadly. She had wanted to try that 'Mouth Thing' as she had been dubbing it, with Phil again before she actually jumped into the final fight.
After all, this mechanical horror was capable of tearing her in half the second she made the slightest error.
She sighed and wrung her fist over the mounting of her hook.
Now or never, if Phillip were dead, the truth would come later. No matter how horrific that truth would be.
She had to assume he was trying something like her, hiding, relocating, maybe he got dazed and was recovering. Positivity.
This freak was going down, hard.
"Scrap-heap." She growled, slinking out from her hideaway, the animatronic bit her tongue, extended her hooked-arm, and leapt at the van's right leg.
Immediately, the beast saw her and swung with a reactive backhand of its bulky, metal fist.
Her eyes went wide, time almost slowed as this wall of mass just came from her flank straight towards her.
All the years of hit and run tactics had trained her, in a sense, though, the other animatronics had tried so many things to get the better of her...
Bonnie even tried bolting sheets of aluminum to himself one night when he sought her out for a fight.
If that didn't tell you anything about the desperation the others had when she was on the defensive in that damn Cove... She didn't know what would.
Foxy wasn't about to let some shithead who just happened to be BIG, swipe her away like an insect.
"HA!" Foxy grunted, tucking her arms and legs inwards, her frontal charge in mid-air was extended as her balled form hurtled inches ahead of the passing forearm.
She heard a rush of air behind her, her tail twitched mid-roll from the inch-close disturbance.
CLANG!
Her hook tugged, she felt resistance, and her feet were dangling below her.
Looking down, the parking lot was higher than usual, she was near the height of the pizzeria's roof, the monster was groaning angrily, and upon glancing back up, she saw her hook was imbedded in a slab of pipes wringing around the monster's plated hide.
She grinned toothily, brought her claw up, and clasped it next to the hook.
The monster jerked the face of the engine-block all over to view its torso and shoulders, it sighted her, the muffler-attachment brought its pipe to bare, and sprayed a viscous cloud of poison over its own waist-line.
Foxy gasped, pulled on her paw and hook, she catapulted in a parkour-styled, grip-thrown leap from one place on the monster's hip, to another grip on its rib-section, made from the outer hull of the van.
CLANG!
Her hook impaled the remnants of the car's lefthand mirror and door-hinge, shattering a small jagged plate of glass with a tiny shower of translucent crystals, that vanished below her.
The smog that the beast let off plumed away by its hip, it reaffirmed the aim, raised its underarm, and fired again.
Yet Foxy threw herself higher, and the toxins bathed its torso for nothing.
The automobile-spawned creature was livid, it grumbled and made droning shrieks, Foxy kept slashing into its hide with her hook, using it like a climbing-pick, she clambered up its spinal section, directly behind the engine.
Up close, the smell of coolant and gasoline mixed with... Rotting flesh, of all things.
Foxy gagged as the rumbling machinations of the block screamed in her face, oil leaked from rivets and crevices in the metal, steel creaked and groaned as the monster moved its arms and legs, stumbling in place to get the intruder off of itself.
Now that she was here, she didn't really have anything to destroy the block all at once...
"-W-WEELL-CrraaaaAAAAPPPP!" She cursed, swinging about roughly when the van shook itself like a dog, sending ragged debris bouncing all over the parking lot, making its body clank and clunk in all manners.
Holding herself steady with her hook, Foxy just held on, and she called out the first name she could think of.
"PHILLIP! PHILLIP HeeeeEEELLLLLppppp!"
-0-0-0-0-0-
When the toxins hit him, all his senses were blocked.
Sight, smell, hearing.
It was understandable he knew twice over how much he needed to avoid that stuff from the monster's muffler-arm.
However, the sensation of being poked by hundreds of pines didn't seem like such a side-effect to come with being hit by makeshift, demon-spawned mega-tear gas, if you know what he meant.
So, Phil's eyes jutted open, crossed and looked around when it was evident he COULD look around, he gasped, sputtered, and shook his arms in an attempt to stand up.
Phillip heard rustling all around him, a leaf fell on his face, and he screamed like a woman in one of those old 1940's horror films, thrashing about in whatever evil held him in place.
Of course, one would never admit they were that afraid of a fern, a bush.
And that was exactly what, you know, HELD him right now.
Growing still, looking at his dirtied shirt and hoody, he flicked a beetle that was crawling on his stomach with a disgruntled sigh.
He must have tumbled off the top of the steps into the bushes on each side of the walk to the door.
Seeing the shadow around him, it took a few seconds to discern the metallic hulk that rattled and threw-about behind the girth of the stone steps, and the metal railing he faced.
"PHIiiiiLLLLlliiiiipppPPP!"
...
His brow shot so high he thought it'd fall off his face.
Why did Foxy sound like she was on a ride at Six-Flags?
"-F-Foxy...? Where-"
His question was answered by the droning groan of the van monster that had put him here in the first place, as its body tumbled by in a panicked spin, and flopping around on the back of its neck, was none other than the same animatronic fox.
Phillip dropped every curse he'd heard in his life, kicked, and rolled, until he tumbled out of the bush with a tear of leaves and jerk of twigs.
He ran forwards, trailing a path of fluttered leaves and general plant-garbage.
"FOXY!" He shouted, immediately regretting doing so when a pillar of metal slammed in front of his face.
CRK!
Dust flew from the concrete of the side-walk, the panel cracked and a pebble flew off his forehead.
"-CRAP!" He belted, falling on his backside, and coming to see that this pillar, was actually the monster's left leg and foot.
The engine-block, centered by two burning orbs of red, angled down at him briefly, and then swung away again as the monster kept thrashing itself to get rid of Foxy.
Seeing the enemy gain distance from him, Phil cast his head around to find something, ANYTHING, that could hurt the ramshackle titan.
"-Oh no..." He muttered. "-Where do- Where the hell do I-?!"
"Mr. Phillip Linn!"
"Matt?"
"GET OUT OF THE WAY!"
"-Wait you're not-"
"MOOOVEE!"
Phil's shadowed vision, locked in the dark of the lamp-absent sidewalk, vanished in the brightest light he'd ever seen.
While the voice sounded a bit like Matthew, it was old and all, it was different, had an accent to it, and the man was shouting at the top of his lungs from behind the lights.
As it turned out, when Phillip threw himself back near the same bush he'd escaped from, those beams were from the front face of a car. A red, beat-up, run-down convertible that had a sticker underneath the outdated inspection sign, reading (THE LAW).
Phillip had no time to examine the vehicle further, because after it drew up a ragged trail of dirt across the grass, down the sidewalk, it kept going until it drove straight into the giant van-monster's right calf.
CRACK
WHIIIRRRRRRR
A horrible scream of metal, a thud of a dented trunk, breaking of glass and cry of burning tires, the red car had the appearance of an accordion hitting the metals of the van's leg, similarly mauling the material of the monster's body there.
The foot dented strangely, most of the calf blew off in the impact with a cloud of steam and soot, sparks showered the afterglow, and the van beast howled deeply, emitting another shrill report of iron as it fell to its opposite knee, the destroyed leg draping backwards into the mess of the red car.
"J-JENSK! NO!"
Phillip whipped away from his stare to the spectacle to follow the voice that hollered, and saw something that made his heart drop.
"Matt... Boss-BOSS!" He cried, seeing the laid-out mess that the Old Man made on the red-tinged pavement near the front wheel of his van.
Phil's shoes clacked on the pavement as he jolted to a sprint, running for his coworker's sprawl on the ground.
"-Matthew! W-What happened?!"
"-F-Freddy..." Matt wheezed from below.
Phil's lip twitched, he heard the bear cursing from here, looked over the top of Matthew's ruined van to see him unable to expunge a flailing mess of metal tumbling about his head and shoulders.
Mangle had gotten too him.
"That son of bitch."
"-P-Phillip... Come down here..."
"-Matt! Boss hold on, we'll call an ambulance! Where are you-" Phillip saw the pool of blood gathering beneath the senior's lay. "-Oh God..."
"Phillip listen... Listen to me, please. Phillip, I'm dead."
"You're not! Don't say that-"
"I'M DEAD!" Matthew wheezed harder, silencing the security guard.
The older one held a final spark in his eyes, he shakily passed another breath, and held his hand out. Phillip held it in both palms, squeezing, he blabbered out nonsense.
"-M-Matt, I'll help you-! I will!"
"Not like this... Mr. Linn."
"-W-What...?"
"Mr. Linn, I've been run through. I should be dead right now..."
"-W-Well you aren't! Matt, c'mon! Stay with me here!"
"-Phillip I accept that... That I will die... You-can't call help... Freddy... The others, the disaster it would cause..."
"Matthew, why hasn't anyone heard the fighting?! The giant Fighting-Robot over there?!"
"There are... Supernatural forces at work here, Mr. Linn... No one can here all this besides us..."
"I don't understand."
"Me neither!" He chuckled weakly. "-Never have!"
Phil clenched his hand tighter and smiled.
"-Phillip, you have the allies, the knowledge... The layout of the place... And-" Phil's hands parted, Matthew's trembling fingers depositing the freshly loaded, blood-stained magnum into his palms.
Phil turned the gun in his grip, held it in one hand and re-took Matt's.
"-No, no no, I can't-!"
"-You have too, you're the only one to stop this..."
"Matthew I can't-!"
"YOU CAN, you will... I involved you in this horror... I promised to see you live through it."
"How can you if YOU are dead?"
"-Wherever we go after."
"I... Matt, boss..."
"-Phillip. Save them. Where I couldn't."
"I..."
Matthew's grip wasn't there anymore.
Phil's face tightened, his brows jerked, eyes moistened.
"-I will." He choked.
"..."
"Matt?"
There was no response.
The hand slid from him, and Phillip stayed knelt.
A week had passed, there were two creatures that needed his help, and a trove of other super-powered beings trying to kill him.
All in a week, aided by the words of Matt's counsel.
And now his boss wasn't there anymore.
-0-0-0-0-0-
Foxy hadn't seen the car skidding towards her tumbling-top-mount on the back of the van creature, she'd been too busy avoiding planting her rapidly-jerking, swinging head into the metal before her.
The monster was thrashing particularly forcefully in the last moment before the impact, and all she heard was the screech of tortured steel, dragging tire rubber, and crunch of crushed chassis.
The ankle and calf of the monster blew apart and sulked away from the hit, sending the groaning hulk falling to its opposite knee with a thunderous impact of cracked pavement and thudding titanium. The engine-block coughed some soot in her face, and she coughed and sputtered.
Keeping her hook and claw dug into a flap of metal shielding the rear of the block, she spat out the contents of her dried mouth behind her, craning over the back of her assailant.
As she did so, she saw the smashed vehicle that had plowed into the rear of the beast.
Her eyes went wide, tongue still half-draped from her prior sputter.
"-Jensk?"
"FOXY!"
"Phil?"
They were the size of dinner plates when she saw the same guard running past Matt's damaged van, waving his arms up at her as he neared the kneeling monster.
She smiled broadly, almost leapt off from her perch to tackle the stupid human- But then she remembered that she atop a MONSTER, and this was the only vulnerable spot. Might as well stay a bit.
"PHILLIP!" She snapped. "-Where the hell were you?!"
"-Greasy here hit me with the-" Right as Phillip started to explain, the titan jerked the business end of the muffler in his direction once more with a whir of metallic movement.
Phil stopped mid-run, almost tumbled on his face, and stared into the blackened pipe with a set jaw.
"-Muffler... Yeah, he hit me w-with that... Thing, yeah-OHSHIT!"
"PHILLIP! GET OUT OF THE WAY!"
"Mr. Phillip Linn! Catch!"
Right as Phillip went to roll, most likely in vain, from the throwing smog that would soon belch forth, that same older voice, similar to Matt's, echoed out into the night.
Flinging his vision to the smashed, red convertible, an object flew straight from the window, cutting through the air with tiny howling loops, like someone tossed it.
He never knew what kind of hand of fate possessed him at that moment, because when Phillip was a child, he absolutely was ATROCIOUS, at softball, so catching, was never his strong-suit. But Phil's palm extended, and wrapped digits around the falling piece, no problem.
CLINK!
A cylindrical, cigar-shaped mass of rusty metal landed in his grasp, dead center.
Phil pulled the item for inspection, jerking in surprise when Foxy screamed out in utter anger, ripped her hook from the imbed she had in the van's hide, and dove the sharp end into a crook on the engine-block's top.
The monster reeled with a hissing groan, stumbled on its smashed ankle, twisted the cap of its scrap knee with a cloud of sparks on the pavement, the muffler-arm shot away from its point in his face, and spewed a cloud of smog into the air above the monster, harmlessly, away from him.
The soot shot out, dissipated into the night air, lost amid the black, and horrid thuds, rumbled of the anew flailing the van made.
Its hand grappled at the space above its engine-block, missing the vulpine by only inches when she compressed her chest and belly in an effective duck.
Phillip started to move closer again, obviously, apprehensive of his ability to help taking the metal-monster down, he looked back at the object he'd caught.
The red convertible shifted in its wrecked state when the beast's foot nudged the caved-in hood, it scraped on the lot's pavement, further confusing him as too how whatever occupant inside, was still alive after all that.
However, the guard was transfixed by the object tossed by this mystery man.
It was a pipe, something you'd see in a boiler-room or lining the walls of a network tunnel below a foundation, tied off on both ends with melted, adhered plastic caps, a fuse draped from the top cap, and when Phil shook the thing, it made a sloshing, hollow sound.
"What the... What is th-?"
"-That's a bomb, a pipe bomb, Mr. Phillip Linn."
"Who the heck?!" Phil's head looked back and forth, and the speaker was no evident. "-J-Jensk?"
"Mr. Phillip Linn, Matthew's firearm," The voice indicated. "-Get the beast's attention. Aim for the muffler."
The young man's eyes narrowed, he looked down to the pocket of his hoody where he had stuffed Matt's pistol and the extra rounds he hadn't chambered into the barrel.
"Aim for the mouth." The ghostly messenger confirmed. "-Go! Quickly!"
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Foxy kept tugging, and tearing, flailing the arm with her hook, shredding the metal at the rear of the engine-block asunder with flings of shrapnel and sparks, chunks of steel flung away until her hook came back dirtied with engine oil.
She held on to the beast with a disgusted look, examining the engine quickly, she saw where the breach had been made.
One of the pistons lining the mutated machine's sides were ripped off, exposing a mesh of wires and parts that still pumped without their proper parts and connections, black sludge seeped out of the ragged, shifting mess like a scabbed wound.
The van monster rumbled, she gasped in her shocked gawking, lowered her head as the thing's hand whizzed above where she had been leaned up too.
She wouldn't be able to stay atop the construct much longer.
"-DAMN IT!" She cursed, swinging her hook again, she tore off another piston next to the ruined one she ripped off, sending a spurt of oil into the air, and making the monster moan louder than it had so far.
The block was like its head. She was tearing its cranium up.
CLACK!
She heard a familiar popping sound.
The beast cried out again, and the thrashing, the throwing, the gripping hand, all of its efforts to get her off its head, ceased. There was a bursting crack of stressed metal, a hissing sound of dislodging gasses, her vision turned black when soot invaded the space around her.
-0-0-0-0-0-
"Mr. Phillip Linn, there is a lighter in your pocket."
"-No there isn't!"
"Yes there is, check for me."
"-I'm telling you there is not a-Holy-hell a lighter!"
As Phil went to argue with the invisible man more, his hand did indeed clench the opposite pocket of his hoody from where he had retrieved the gun, and came back with a freshly filled lighter.
The tiny device was painted drab red, had three letters written on its side in smudged sharpie marker, and when Phillip flicked the hammer, the cap clicked back, and a tiny pillar of brightness was born from the top nozzle.
He watched the flame like a godsend.
"How... How is this possible? Where did this come from?"
"Mr. Phillip! The muffler!"
His eyes jerked away from the ghostly lighter, seeing the thrashing form of the van monster angling in his direction.
From on the ground, he saw Foxy tearing something with her arms, her motions gave that much away, and she was doing it quickly and rapidly. It couldn't have been that pointless, because it driving the beast insane.
Yet without the opportunity to slake its pain on the one actually INFLICTING it, the monster saw a chance to take it out on an ally of its foe.
And that target was the little security guard near the pizzeria's front.
The ground quaked under a quick step towards the human, than it shook when the monster dragged the ragged blow-out that was its ankle across the pavement in a mess of sparks and kicked debris. At first, the metal hand grabbed in Phil's direction, and then, with a sweep of its arms, the van aimed the muffler at him for a third instance.
The blackened pipe jabbed towards him, smog trailed in a thin vein from its burned top.
Phillip didn't even blink, to give the monster a second more of opportunity.
He had never fired a gun in his life, much less HELD one.
Whatever entity was aiding him, obviously aided also, in this test of marksmanship.
Phil snatched up the .357 from his pocket, aimed the barrel ahead, and lined the silvery, polished aiming peg towards the muffler's pipe, which was close enough, that he could see the dark interior of the poisonous tank.
He blinked rapidly, exposed his teeth, and twitched his finger on the trigger, initially not realizing the amount you actually had to PULL on the device to get the weapon to fire.
It surely wasn't like the movies, he'd give it that.
"-I-I- I can't-!"
"PHILLIP! FIRE!"
"-Alright! ALRIGHT! I'LL DO IT-!"
CLACK!
His wrist felt the greatest thrust backwards than any force he had ever experienced in his life.
There was a flash, a bang, the .357's top faced his direction as the gun kicked back with such force, he saw the round fly briefly in the night air, in the form of a tiny comet, that ended its travel in the face of the muffler pointed at him.
When the round entered, a plethora of happenings occurred all at once.
Firstly, it looked like someone set off a clump of firecrackers inside the tank of the muffler. Pretty bright, but silent.
Then there was a clanging noise, a really big flash.
A millisecond later, the muffler split all down its sides and top and bottom, akin to a tin-can in the microwave.
BANG!
It burst in BLACK fire, smog poured out into the air, onyx flame licked about like a rampaging hydra, plates of rusty metal flew away in all directions, the monster SCREECHED, flung its stumped remains of an arm away, and fell on its knees.
The earth shook, metal crunched, dragging amber burned under the caps when it cracked the pavement.
Again, the beast knelt before the human, a black cloud of burning oil licking and curling over a ragged mess of debris on its ranged-weapon, the entire arm eviscerated in a explosion that nearly deafened Phillip.
The engine-block, the torso, keeled down to the pavement below, the other arm slapped onto the concrete to prevent the beast from falling on its face.
On its heaving back, Foxy waved her paw about her head to clear the smog that orbited the creature like a miniature hurricane. Phillip understood what the plan here was. Flicking the pistol's safety, he stowed it in the same pocket, reached into the opposite.
He glanced at the pipe, then the lighter, and flipped the head to light a new flame, ignoring the tiny bit of white-noise that emanated in his ears from the destroyed chain-reaction.
"You've got it, Mr. Phillip Linn," The voice nudged somewhere behind him. "-Toss it."
The fuse crackled, a tiny plume of steam following the traveling burn.
Phillip indented his brows, flipped closed the lighter, looked up at Foxy, and reared back.
"FOXXXYYY! CATCH!"
Foxy cast her vision through the haze to him, cocked her head in non-understanding though her exhausted effort, and saw the flinging sheen of dull metal flipping towards her through the air.
She clenched her teeth, reached up.
She caught the pipe with unnatural efficiency.
CLINK
"-GAH!" She snapped, nearly losing her balance on the back of the monster. She reclined, and gazed at the pipe.
Examining the surface, the plastic caps, the fuse, she breathed heavily, and called back.
"What the shit am I supposed to do with THIS?!"
Phil's jaw slackened, he reddened his face with a impacted palm.
"Oh dear..." The ghostly aid mumbled. "-I can't believe she forgot what those look like."
"-You AND me, pal," Phillip grunted. "-YOU SEE THE FUSE?"
"The fuse?! What fuse-Oh, that fuse. Oh... OH, OH! OH CRAP!"
"Plant it!"
Foxy darted her stare between the young man and the apparent explosive he'd tossed her, than she eyed the oil-gurgling remnants of the two piston-parts she'd torn off the engine's side.
The vulpine animatronic heaved bravely, reared back, and slammed the butt of the pipe into the seeping bubbling-mass of sludge.
CLUNG
It stuck out like an alabaster gull in a tsunami of black hell. The fuse got shorter, the pipe started to sink into the lubricant.
If the monster was aware of the impaling doom, it did not make any further efforts outside of the exhausted heaving. Foxy snarled, stepped onto the top of the block, ripped out her hook with a flash of ragged white.
Her legs bent, she kept her balance, and catapulted herself off of the van's highest point.
She sailed for a whole five seconds, arms extended, and ended her travel on a magnificently, ironically placed, makeshift cushion. And that poor cushion was Phillip Linn himself. All he saw was a russet blur fly towards him, and then his world devolved in a giant roll.
Several 'Oofs!' and 'Aghs!' came from the two parties, their limbs wrapped, shielding their faces and bodies from the rolling on the grass dividing the pizzeria from the pavement.
Foxy slid atop of the human in a final roll, she landed with her knees on either side of his hips, threw her palm out to steady herself, and dug her hook into the ground to stop the motion of their fall.
When it was all said and done, she shrugged off the aching discomfort from the physical impact, breathed heavily, her chest rising and indenting, to stare wordless at Phil's scrunched up face.
Still wincing from the fox-missile he'd been hit head-on with, the guard opened his eyes, unclenched his teeth, and blinked silently.
She lost cohesion with her mouth again.
But for once, so did he as well.
Then when they both got the words for the other set and ready to shout out...
-The fuse on the makeshift pipe-bomb finished burning.
And the mutated van, 'tanshormer' monster, burst into a controlled bloom of orange, yellow, white pedals ringed and laced with black. In an explosion that shook the entire forest, and, had there not been supernatural forces at work, would have been seen in every town in the area.
The air seemed to tug from the gravitational pull of the burst, flames and black shrapnel flew in all directions, the monster's limbs folded and melted onto the pavement where the torso imploded. Screams of metal, rips of steel, booms of ignition...
Foxy drowned most of it out when she buried her head in Phil's hoody, and he likewise, stuffing his face into her chest.
They clenched the other as the explosion kept going, howling into the night.
It dragged on and on, and Phil felt his body tense under the threat of being hit from flying debris.
It felt like a nuclear warhead had been dropped, all muffled by the fabric of Phillip's clothing, and the fur of Foxy's hide.
Hell on Earth right there.
Yet it all disappeared.
And it all disappeared in a sheer grouping of seconds.
HALF the time, it took to finish tearing itself apart.
The mini-earthquake subsided, the hot-air that blasted around them grew cool again, a small hiss of burned steel cooked in the ambience, bits of debris clacked and rung every now and again.
However the main show was over.
Phillip glanced from Foxy's fur to look at the parking lot.
All he saw was a junk-pile taller than his head, a half-melted, blown-up, ragged mess of scrap metal. Appearing as though a van, a NORMAL one, was hit by a missile salvo.
Smoke trailed lightly from the wreckage, the humanoid visage was utterly eviscerated in the heap.
That was it.
They got him.
"Ugh..." Phil sighed, unclenching his arms and legs in the balled-state he held them in, he draped on the grass tiredly, and when Foxy reared over her own shoulder, she deflated acutely, sat back with a heavy sigh.
The vulpine hung her right arm over her eyes, leaned her backwards, and rolled her shoulders, sitting across the human's lap, too tired to really move much besides that.
Her legs piled at his sides, her tail was still over his left ankle, she breathed slowly, and repeatedly.
Phillip examined the night-sky, still seeable above the entire scene, he didn't know whether to frown, or grin.
In the end he kept an expressionless stare to the few stars that stood brightly in the haze of darkness.
He was alive. And so was Foxy.
"-W-Wow..." He drawled. "...We did it, huh?"
"Mmhmm..." Foxy agreed between hummed breaths, keeping her vision blacked out with her fore.
"-Are you okay?"
"MMMmmm..."
"-T-That's good..."
"..."
"..."
"-Are you... Okay, Phillip?"
"Yep. I'm okay..."
"-That's good."
"Yeah."
"..."
"..."
"..."
"-Phillip...?"
"Hm?"
"-Do that... Puckering-thing, you told me."
"Yep."
He didn't resist when Foxy's arm fell away from her face, and her heaving form draped forwards. She held his shoulder with her paw, kept the hook on the ground above the other, and rammed her chops into his mouth.
She hummed tiredly, undulated her upper and lower mandibles, and spread out the human's lips to shove as much of her own oral cavity into his as physically possible.
Her belly felt hot, she narrowed her brows, and leaned down more, giving a muffled, silky tune, she put more effort into the actions, her eyes tightly remaining shut, she stroked her fingers into the fabric of Phil's hoody.
With a heavenly gasp she disconnected from him, and raised her chin when he pushed underneath and kissed her neck.
Foxy found herself giggling like a swoon child, she ran her waist on him in slow motions, kept as much of her frontal body flattened to him as she could. Eventually, her grin faded when the human dragged back from her neck-crook, and laid on the grass again.
She exhaled, and lowered her head until their mouths were still pressed together, the fatigue stopped any more exertion.
"-You... Threw a bomb at me...?" She chuckled, speech slurred by his lips.
"Did I do good?"
"What other girl... Could say their guy got them- a BOMB to stick in some asshole's skull?"
"Good question..."
"-Best aid EVER..."
Phillip laughed with her, and in doing so, he glanced back to the steaming mess in the lot, and subsequently, the ruined red convertible car that sat silently next to it, now scorched from the prior explosion in addition.
He didn't understand the apparition that had been helping him fight the monster, but he did not question it until this point, because with everything ELSE that had happened on this adventure, nothing was in the possibilities of being IMPOSSIBLE...
So when, from such a distance even, he saw what the real state of the driver was and HAD been, his quiet laughing faltered for a bleak silence.
Whether blessing, or reminded of the stakes, Phillip didn't know. Jensk played his part, so it must have been a really good thing.
Matt didn't need to watch alone.
The red convertible, the car that belonged to the former Police Officer had come and brought the savior.
But the car itself, was and always had been, empty.
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