As Jinx dashed into the hallway to press her attack, she realized she probably wasn't supposed to enjoy hitting Raven in the face as much as she did. The realization didn't reduce the satisfaction she felt, however.
She quickly noticed a scattering of books, the same ones Raven had hurled only a moment ago, glowing black and rising into the air. Raven herself was still pressed against the wall, where she'd ended up after Jinx had kicked her out. Jinx followed her instincts and pried Raven away from the wall, pushing her towards the center of the hallway.
It worked; Raven was hit by a couple of the books as they telekinetically flew in Jinx's general direction. At the near end of the hallway she saw the Puppet King quickly step out of the way of an errant book that slid through where he'd been standing. Jinx tossed a hex at him for good measure, and he ran down an adjacent hallway, out of her sight.
She heard Cyborg run down the hallway in the other direction almost as clearly as she saw it. Raven didn't miss his departure either, and flew after him. Jinx almost missed grabbing her leg to halt the pursuit. Raven strained to pull forward, but Jinx simply pulled back with moderate effort.
Raven responded by kicking her in the face with her other leg. Jinx grunted in pain and almost let go of Raven. She yanked backwards as hard as she could, intentionally losing her footing and taking Raven with her. She released her grip, and thrust a knee into Raven's midsection as it passed overhead, before placing an arm behind her own head to cushion the fall.
Jinx's landing was hardly pleasant, but she imagined she did better than Raven, who hit the floor without making a sound other than the thud of impact. Come to think of it, she hadn't heard Raven make a sound at all thus far, which was odd. Granted she hadn't been aiming when she thrust her knee into Raven's torso, but almost anywhere should've been sensitive enough to cause a reaction, particularly since Raven was facing downward at the time.
Jinx sighed as she rolled back onto her feet. Raven wasn't that sluggish, or that reckless, or that quiet. This wasn't Raven following something's mental commands, this was Raven's body inhabited by some other controlling force. That took a lot of the mirth out of beating Raven up.
Raven was slowly rising off the ground, a development Jinx felt should be discouraged. She sprinted down the hallway, stepping over a couple vines large enough to be a tripping hazard. Raven reacted by quickly floating off to the side, but not fast enough to catch Jinx completely off-guard.
Not willing to risk running into the wall herself, Jinx settled for shoving Raven into it as she ran past. She had intended to stop and turn around, find some way to knock Raven out; but a wave of black energy rushed past her, throwing her forward. Jinx regained her footing easily enough, and slowed down...but the end of the hallway was right there; she had barely enough time to cover her face with an arm before she ran into the wall.
With her face protected by her arm and her reduction of speed, the impact was more embarrassing than genuinely painful. With a snarl, she turned around, only to be distracted by a small pool of bright red fluid nearby. It only took her a split second to notice the vine over the middle of the pool, looking like an inch of it had been shredded. She remembered this corner was about where the Puppet King had been standing; she must've hit the vine instead of him when she threw that hex.
She didn't have time to ponder the implications, as the next telekinetic volley wasn't composed of books, but fragments from Cyborg's door. Jinx jumped behind the corner, out of the path of the sharp metal pieces that embedded themselves into the wall.
Jinx considered her options. If she had more room to maneuver, she could take on Raven at range. But here, Raven could fill the hallway with projectiles, and Jinx would have to back off or try to hex her way through them. She could try hexes against Raven, she supposed, but that wasn't likely to work either. Dropping the floor or ceiling on anyone who flew was mostly a joke, and hitting them directly would be tricky. And even if she managed to land a hex directly on Raven, odds were that a hex strong enough to do more than inconvenience Raven would have a good chance of lasting injury. And Jinx figured she'd get roped into covering for Raven, and she just didn't have that kind of time.
She guessed it was the Puppet King controlling Raven somehow, rather than the hopefully solitary bear remaining. It'd explain why Raven wasn't nearly as zombie-like as the legions of kids, as well as why he came with Raven. And right now the last thing she wanted to happen was for the Puppet King to send Raven after Cyborg, so...
"Hey Raven," she called out loudly, "What happens to you when I obliterate...Marionette Man?"
She had absolutely no expectation of Raven answering, but it wasn't meant for her, anyway. Hopefully that would keep the Puppet King from feeling safe enough to send away his bodyguard. Now, she just had to either track down the Puppet King or get the drop on Raven.
Or maybe both.
Cyborg silently approached the pumpkin trio, with the Tower behind him. Jinx was right; the wood-and-root area that took over part of the hallway was weird, but he ran through it without a problem. Normally he'd have spent some time investigating it before moving on; but getting this over with as quickly as possible was in the best interests of Jinx and Raven, so he had carried on all the way to the ground floor and out the door.
The obstacle course, where the pumpkins were resting, was at a lower elevation than the Tower. But while the ground beneath him kept him from seeing the course itself, the pumpkins were tall enough that he could still see them from this angle. The larger one in the middle, almost certainly the 'Great Pumpkin' that the Puppet King had identified, was noticeably taller even from this distance; Cyborg guessed it was about a third taller than its two pumpkin bodyguards.
He wasn't sure why the bodygourds were just sitting there. They were perfectly capable of movement even while they were being fired on, he saw it. And they'd have to have noticed when he had to leave Jinx behind. ...or did they? He certainly hadn't heard another bark since then, and of course neither Raven nor the Puppet King were bears. The Puppet King implied the pumpkins weren't under his control, so maybe the bears—or hopefully, bear—didn't actually know he left, much less that he was out here?
He crawled to the edge of the short cliff overlooking the obstacle course and his targets, figuring that whatever the reason they weren't patrolling or coming after him, he wasn't going to complain. Cyborg got his answer as he peered over the entire height of the creatures: the bodygourds were sitting next to the Great Pumpkin, their burn-bearing sides facing it. If they didn't know where an attack could be coming from, using the thing's forcefield for cover would minimize exposure. They certainly wouldn't want to risk him showing up from behind and firing more missiles into them.
They probably didn't know he was out of missiles. It was just as well for them, anyway; Cyborg was confident he could make it work with his sonic cannon...assuming he could aim well enough to capitalize on the damage his improvised turrets had caused.
From here he could finally see the entire height and width of the Great Pumpkin. Like the others, it looked like a larger version of a standard round pumpkin. Unlike the others, though, it didn't have any vines coming out of the bottom of the gourd. Just a stem at the top, proportional to the thing's size. He almost dismissed this as just an oddity, but something in his mind insisted this was an important difference.
Then he remembered: Control Freak said his radio-jamming pumpkin was stolen in August, but he'd started back in March so he couldn't have made a replacement in time. Maybe the bears couldn't recreate it either, and just made this "Great Pumpkin" big and shoved a bunch of magic or whatever inside; maybe it wasn't a monster like the rest of the gourd army. It was kind of a wild guess, but it would mean the pumpkin was a single point of failure for their entire scheme and might not stand up to his sonic cannon at all if he could land a shot on it.
Cyborg stood up and deployed his sonic cannon, think that neutralizing the bodygourds would be the best start. A few of the wounds were visible on the edge of their shells, and he aimed for one and fired, his sonic cannon set for high output.
The eerie squealing filled the air around him as he maintained the blue beam, but the targetted pumpkin turned away to cover all its damaged spots from him. Its companion, on the other hand, jumped into the air. Cyborg estimated the landing point of its ungainly flight...about half a vine's length away from him.
He stopped firing and started running towards the Tower, dodging to his right. The vine's length slammed against the grounded immediately to his left, close enough that the shockwave knocked him off the side of the cliff. Fortunately it was still a short cliff, so it wasn't a long fall. He managed to roll back onto his feet, and quickly fired at the bodygourd in the distance.
The squealing in the air told him he'd managed to hit a good spot, and the pumpkin quickly extended its vines and stepped over the Great Pumpkin, cowering behind it. Cyborg switched out his sonic cannon for his chainsaw attachment and pressed against the cliff, having guessed what was about to happen.
The nearer pumpkin planted one of its vines on the ground near him, presumably for footing...or maybe "vining"? Whatever the term, Cyborg dashed at the vine with a yell and ran his chainsaw against it. The material was resistant, so Cyborg pressed his weight on it; the squeal overhead accompanied the tool digging into the vine.
Suddenly the vine whipped back into the air; Cyborg went spinning for a second as his support was gone, and regained his bearing just in time to see the vine whipped back the other way.
He yelled as he went sailing across the island, grunting as he bounced off the ground a couple times until his momentum finally stopped. He groaned, shook his head and stood up.
There, only sixty feet away from him, was the Great Pumpkin. Not how he would have planned to get to the obstacle course, but it seemed to have worked. He retracted his chainsaw and redeployed his sonic cannon, and took a shot at the overgrown gourd. A translucent sphere appeared around the pumpkin, with an orange hexagonal pattern on it, halting the blue beam from reaching any further.
Cyborg sighed. He wasn't really surprised, since this had happened with the turret exercise too; but he would have been completely fine with hitting the Great Pumpkin for some unknown reason.
He didn't know if the pumpkin hiding behind this one would come out to attack him, and he wasn't completely sure the Great Pumpkin had no defenses of its own...But it was hard to miss the other bodygourd charging at him, with the rumbles in the ground growing louder and louder.
He frantically looked around for some place to hide or use as cover, but the turrets were little more than strewn debris now. Which left...the Great Pumpkin itself, with the other pumpkin still behind it.
Cyborg growled in determination, as he started sprinting towards the Great Pumpkin and switched from his sonic cannon back to his chainsaw. He accepted that he'd just have to improvise some more...maybe circle around the Great Pumpkin and see if there was anything useful on the opposite side of the obstacle course.
The sound of a bark rang out in his mind, wordlessly.
Jinx heard a bark, with the same pitch as the still-unseen bear. She didn't hear any words though, and doubted it'd be talking to Cyborg, so she assumed it was telling something to the Puppet King. She didn't know what it'd have to tell, though. The floor had shaken violently half a minute ago, telling her that Cyborg had started going after the pumpkins; but the floor continuing to vibrate didn't tell her anything useful.
Trying to outmaneuver Raven or the Puppet King would've been a lot easier if she had taken the time to memorize the Tower layout the last few times she was here. As it was, she was mentally juggling learning the floor plan, listening for the Puppet King's wooden feet hitting the metal floor, and keeping an eye out for Raven. Doable, but her ongoing lack of sleep was fogging her memory, making it that much more difficult to remember all the halls and corners she'd seen and how they interconnected.
She almost missed the motion near the edge of her vision, and quickly ducked behind a corner. It was too far away to make out anything except the shape, but a head with a cloak floating in the air had to be Raven. She was slowly drifting from left to right across a hall in the distance.
A hall leading into the dimensional overlap. Jinx sighed inwardly. She'd been trying to avoid entering it, since she had no idea what other weirdness might be present, but she couldn't avoid it if Raven was looking around in there.
After the Raven shape passed out of sight, and after waiting a few seconds to make sure she wasn't heading back the way she came, Jinx crept down the hallway as quickly as she could. Which wasn't particularly fast, but Raven or the Puppet King hearing her coming would be a bigger problem than temporarily losing track of Raven.
Jinx crossed the threshold between the metallic Tower and the plant-based Tower-resembling area. The transition also replaced the dark lighting with a bright red glow, and Jinx shut her eyes in response to the abrupt intensity shift.
Blinking a few times to adjust her eyes to the light, she discovered that everything had taken on a red tint; even her own skin was now a very pale pink instead of its usual solid gray. The glow seemed to come from the air itself; the end of the hallway had brighter lighting than the walls to either side of her. She glanced over her shoulder...
And while it still looked like the normal Tower near her, off in the distance the "darkness" was white, not black. She also noticed out of the corner of her eye that her shoulder was lacking its color. She turned around, facing the white, and put her hand in front of her face...and she saw the shape of her hand in solid black where it lay across the white, with lighter shades of black across the softer areas of white. The whole effect reminded her more strongly than anything else of one of those silhouette puppet shows; a shadow play.
Incredibly weird, Jinx thought to herself, but if it's just unnatural lighting then I'll be fine. It's not like it's making me nauseous or anything.
She continued forward, trying to take in the sights while approaching Raven's last known location. The detail that concerned her the most was that the walls, which seemed to be composed of tightly packed roots, had tiny gaps that could be seen through clearly. It was probably helpful for tracking someone down and a hindrance for anyone trying to remain unseen...and unfortunately Jinx was both of those. At least the vines that had been laid along the floor in the normal Tower weren't present here, making it far easier to move around.
The intersection where she'd last seen Raven was, unsurprisingly, empty. Jinx saw motion at the edge of the hallway to her right, though, and quickly dashed off behind the corner to observe from a distance. This time the intersection was close enough to see clearly: Raven floating across, followed shortly by the Puppet King.
Seeing her opportunity, Jinx stalked them as soon as they'd left her sight, traveling down the hallway and sneaking up behind the two of them. Although she was prepared to leap at them when either of them looked behind themselves, they never did; evidently the Puppet King was wholly unused to people sneaking up on him.
At about two feet behind the Puppet King, Jinx made her move. She quietly pounced at Raven, kicking the Puppet King as she passed over him. Raven had barely started to turn around when Jinx pushed her to the ground, pinning Raven's knees with her lower leg. She grabbed Raven's right arm and yanked it up into the air, then swung her other fist into Raven's now exposed face.
"No!" came the Puppet King's voice from behind, as Raven's unconscious body slumped to the ground after Jinx released her arm.
She quickly wheeled to face him, readying a hex...which annoyingly was more magenta than purple, with all the red tinting. "Problem?" she sarcastically asked, smirking.
He ran away instead of answering. She threw the hex at him, but her aim was off and it impacted uselessly on the wood-like floor. She ran after him, while silently mouthing the word "ow" and squeezing her right hand against the sore knuckles of her left hand. Raven's head was apparently harder than Jinx had imagined.
She saw no sign of him where she'd last seen him, and there were too many hallways he could've gone down to try checking them all. She sighed. Then the sigh turned into a hiss, as the adrenaline withdrew and all her muscles reminded her just how hard she'd worked them during the recent fight with the bear. Come to think of it, there was still at least one bear out there, shouldn't it have—
Shit.
Jinx dove back the way she came, positive she had just brought that bear down on herself.
A fusillade of icicles shooting through the hallway she'd just left supported her conclusion. She got back on her feet just in time for the bear itself to confirm her theory by stepping into view. It looked very similar to the other large bear, but it had no sneer or anger on its face. Its solid black eyes and blank expression gave it a look of indifference, which managed to be more disturbing than anger would have been.
It barked, Jinx's ears confirming that this was the same bear she'd heard before.
"So we meet at last. You've become quite the nuisance. Nevertheless, it will be your honor to serve the Green One. But first, you need to die."