Cyborg was sure he saw a dark shape descend from the ceiling, but by the time his light had coverage on the spot, there was nothing there but the bunch of boxes. Something had to have broken the window, though.
He readied his sonic cannon and set it for a low power burst mode, which he hoped would be less likely to accidentally rupture a wall. All those kids were still outside, and on top of not wanting to hurt them, he didn't want to give them the opening they'd so loudly tried to create half a minute ago.
Slowly, he stalked his way towards the boxes, setting his X-ray vision mode to scan past them. His shoulder lamp was still on, as it had been when whatever it was crashed through the roof, so actual surprise wasn't in the cards; but if it made a move he'd see it before it saw him, and the forewarning would keep him from being surprised.
As he carefully approached, he eventually detected something on the other side of the boxes, about fifteen feet behind them from his direction. But it wasn't a kid. It didn't even appear to be animate. Its shape resembled nothing more than a round ball.
There was no movement from it for the few seconds it took to close distance with the pile of boxes. He paused, momentarily ratcheting up his audio sensitivity in expectation of some zombie kids climbing or on the roof after throwing an inanimate object through the window. But the only sounds were the heartbeats and breathing of the legion outside the walls. Knowing that they weren't actually walking dead didn't give him as much relief as he would have liked.
Arbitrarily choosing to approach from the left, Cyborg walked around the stack of boxes, keeping his distance. As he cleared the obstruction, the vague round shape detected by his X-ray mode matched the roundish orange shape he could see.
He quickly recognized the ribbed shape as being that of a pumpkin, about three feet wide and just as tall. Another two steps, and he saw what appeared to be decals in the form of a jack-o-lantern eye and mouth, "looking" to his left. Which was kind of odd, but the pumpkin didn't look to have been hollowed, much less carved; the area around the stem was still intact. Someone came up with the decal idea to get out of the effort normally involved with a jack-o-lantern, maybe.
Still confused at how the pumpkin got here, he next noticed its vine on the ground. The scattered glass fragments from the pumpkin's entry glimmered as Cyborg adjusted his shoulder lamp to get a better look at the green vine. An inch thick, with small but healthy looking green leaves. He didn't know a whole lot about pumpkins, but all seemed to be....
Cyborg paused, realizing the extreme unlikeliness that a pumpkin would be decorated with its vine still attached. Before realizing that the pumpkin's vine connects to its stem, which was still visible and visibly separate on top of the pumpkin.
As if that wasn't enough of a mystery, he then saw a much thinner vine, trailing off into the darkness outside his lamp's range. He turned to follow it with his eyes, turning the lamp to keep it lit. This vine was brown and barely half a centimeter thick; its leaves larger than the other vine's but looked sickly. It was quite long, however, and he eventually found the end.
Wrapped around his left ankle.
Abruptly the vine went taut with the sound of rustling leaves, and he felt a tug. A split second later, it released from his leg and disappeared from view.
He'd been looking at his feet from tracking the vine all the way there, so he didn't see what bludgeoned his head to the right, and the surprise and pain prevented him from reacting before it was followed with a slam to the left.
He swung an arm in the direction he guessed the attacker was coming from, and stepped back. He'd hoped the swing would interrupt the attack, but he was surprised that he had actually hit the thing. His arm had continued its motion, so he looked up to see where he'd knocked the thing off its feet.
The pumpkin was tumbling through the air. Over the next couple seconds, he saw its rotation cancel out, leaving its stem pointing upward. Then he saw it had four green vines dangling down from its base, two of them longer than the other two. Its movement also slowed, so that it ended up floating gently down to the ground, without hitting the wall behind it.
As it descended, one of the longer vines reached out for the ground, its five feet length pointing straight down. As soon as the tip touched the concrete floor, a bizarre transformation occurred: each of the remaining three vines stiffened just as that one had, but then they all bent at various points, forming a shape of some mockery of skeletal structure. The end result looked very much like a stick figure made of vines, with a pumpkin for a head.
The appearance wasn't cosmetic, either; The thing starting running towards Cyborg, just as easily as an actual human would.
Getting a hold of his senses, Cyborg sighed as armed his sonic cannon. "Pumpkin monsters on Halloween? Even Mad Mod ain't that tacky. I don't think." His sonic cannon provided extra emphasis, in the form of a salvo of seven blue beams.
The monstrosity bobbed and weaved with uncanny agility, leaving all of Cyborg's shots to connect with the wall. The wall was only superficially damaged, a result of the lower power setting on Cyborg's cannon, while the thing altered direction and dove for the cover provided by the boxes that were quickly becoming the centerpiece of the room.
Cyborg wasn't too put off by the move, since he was still tracking it with his X-ray vision. He did, however, find it to prudent to silently sidestep away from his spot. He also aimed his cannon towards the center of the single box that comprised the top of the stack.
Cyborg watched through X-ray vision as the abomination leapt into the air and smacked that box towards the ground, impacting right where Cyborg would have been if he hadn't moved. Having anticipated this move, he grinned to himself, made the minor aim adjustment to center on the thing's pumpkin "head", and fired.
He thought he saw his shot connect, but before he could be sure the thing had pushed itself off of a box in a flying charge, and its vine-punch to his torso was definitely a hit.
Since Cyborg saw the attack coming this time, he was able to aim his counterattack more deliberately. The pumpkin monster was also more prepared, however, and smoothly shifted its head out of the way of Cyborg's fist. Without missing a beat, Cyborg stepped forward and launched another swing, forcing it to step back in order to defend itself. He continued to press forward in that fashion for several seconds, keeping his foe from finding an opening to counterattack and simultaneously pushing it back against the boxes, hoping a collision would distract it enough for Cyborg to get the winning punch in.
The plan was reasonably successful; when the pumpkin "head" touched a box it turned to see what it was. Cyborg wasted no time taking a swipe at the thing's body. Oddly enough, the force shoved the rigid vine-limbs out from under the pumpkin; It started to fall to the ground for a split second, before it swept one of its shorter "arm" vines off of Cyborg's forearm and braced against the ground with it.
It had already pushed itself back up to a standing position when Cyborg's next swing came. This time, though, the vines dangled freely, and simply flowed with Cyborg's swing as easily as a string on a balloon. Cyborg unclenched his fist, then grabbed one of the vines as it slid into his hand.
It reacted by going into some sort of frenzy, its other big vines bludgeoned random points all over his body. Cyborg grunted from the pain as he threw the vine off to the side, carrying the rest of the monster with it. It quickly did that jellyfish-like floating thing it had done before, and started to float back to the ground.
Cyborg took the opportunity to fire his sonic cannon at it for the several seconds it took for it to touch down. The shots connected easily, as it seemed unable to dodge while in its floating state. But when it touched the ground to go back to its stick-figure-like form, the only evidence of Cyborg's onslaught was some bubbling and pale marks on the orange surface of the pumpkin; its dodging of the last shot suggested that it wasn't significantly impaired.
Cyborg suddenly realized that the long, thin brown vine was trailing away from the thing again. Then he felt another tug, this time around his torso, as the vine went taut. "You're gonna have to do better than that," Cyborg said mockingly at the futile attempt to pull him to the ground.
With alarming speed, the vine retracted like a rubber band. Hurling the pumpkin towards Cyborg.
Cyborg didn't quite realize what was happening, until the high speed assailant rammed a vine across his head.
He yelled in agony and staggered back a few steps, as the thing flew past him.
"OK," he admitted with some effort, "that was better."
The thing responded by repeating the maneuver from behind him, this time hitting his back. The force was sufficient to throw him to the ground. The jarring impact rang in his ears, sounding like a prolonged version of a basketball hitting the side of his head. As he propped himself up on one arm, he saw the thing a fair distance in front of him, just touching down on the ground. While this thing wasn't incredibly strong, it was persistent, and the small amounts of damage were starting to pile up. Nothing that'd require dedicated repair time...yet.
Lacking any other ideas, he silently boosted the power level of his arm. He figured if shooting didn't stop it, an overpowered punch might do the trick. If he could get it to make contact. He grit his teeth and readied himself to make the punch.
Unsurprisingly, the thing repeated its attack, and was quickly approaching.
Surprisingly, a glowing purple wave raced across Cyborg's vision. As it crossed the vine, the vine snapped audibly.
The pumpkin seemed to slow as a result. Whatever the reason, Cyborg saw it as his opening. With a yell, Cyborg thrust his fist forward. The pumpkin eventually attempted to move out of the way, but not in time. A sickening crunch launched the pumpkin across the warehouse at extreme speed.
Whatever damage Cyborg's punch had done directly would have to remain a mystery, as the pumpkin slammed against the wall with such intensity that its shell was crushed, and its contents fell to the ground with a disturbing squishy sound.
The immediate threat neutralized, Cyborg turned to verify what he already expected. And sure enough, there was Jinx. Seemed the timetable on getting used to her being one of the good guys just got fast tracked.
"What the hell is going on?" she demanded of him.
"I don't know!" he answered. "Something about kids being brainwashed or zombified and then the communicators got jammed and then this...pumpkin...thing." With that, he indicated the pile of pumpkin pulp with his shoulder lamp. The orange pumpkin pulp, the disconnected vines....
The red pool oozing out of the pulp.
Cyborg blinked, then turned back to Jinx. "Umm...since when do pumpkins bleed?"
The telltale sounds of kids banging on the walls chose that moment to resume, with added fervor.
"Can we play xenobiologist later?" Jinx yelled over the cacophony. "We need to get out of here."
"How?" Cyborg hollered back. "We're surrounded!"
Jinx shook her head, then smoothly sprinted to one of the corners. She glanced at the floor for a second, then flicked a small purple speck out of her finger.
Cyborg opened his mouth to ask what the heck she was thinking, but he never got to actually saying anything. His eye practically popped out of its socket, as he saw a trapdoor of some sort literally pop out of the floor.
"Come on," she yelled as she pushed the trapdoor all the way open, keeping her eyes on the opening.