iCarly: iMeet the Relatives, Chapter 26: Infection

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I don't own iCarly, of course.

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Chapter 26: Infection

Carly, Sam, Brittney and Freddie were back at the apartment, watching the battle on TV. Then the live feed, out of focus as it was, was cut off as an announcer took over, expressing that officials had been called, and the air strike had been called off, but warning residents to remain indoors regardless, for their safety, though exactly how remaining inside a building was going to save people from being stepped on by a titan wasn't made clear. The speaker cut to a military official, who began to describe the recent events in terms of a possible terrorist attack….

"….could have told you that wouldn't work, angel," said Devlin, just then shadowcloaking in, already retracting his trident, with Grif simultaneously teleporting in in his usual electric tornado. "We wasted valuable time trying to explain the unexplainable to cretins who were already determined not to believe it, anyway…"

"Devlin!" Brittney ran over to him and threw her arms around him in a bear hug. "I was so worried!"

"Ub, uh….now, now, Brittney," Devlin was startled by the force of her emotion. "There was no need to be afraid. Everything's under control." In the back of his mind, he wondered: wasn't this the exact opposite of what he normally did? Normally, demons encouraged strong feelings in mortals, and the stronger the better. Yet here he was, actually trying to comfort a mortal girl… "Everything's alright now." He stroked her hair while she clung to him.

"I still felt as though we should've given it a try, Devlin. Live and learn, I guess." He thought, and his golden armor disappeared, as did his sword, withdrawing into his soul, where it was normally stored. Carly ran to him.

"Grif! Are you alright?"

"Of course, Carly. But what in Home's name were YOU doing, going to that garage? You could've been drawn back down into the Darkness, and I might not have been able to find you in time!"

She hugged him close. "I know, it wasn't exactly the brightest move I've ever made, but, but it just seemed like I had to. I don't know why. Sam tried to talk me out of it…."

"Thank you, Sam."

"…but I didn't listen. Grif." And here she looked up at him. "I can't shake this feeling that, that time's like, running out or something. Like the sand in an hourglass. Something's happening, or about to happen. Something awful."

"Something awful is ALREADY happening. Devlin? You delivered that crystal head back to Jemiah?"

"I did. He didn't seem very surprised to see it, frankly." Brittney still hadn't let him go, and Grif was beginning to wonder if they'd have use a crowbar to peel the girl off the ninth circle demon. Sam was studying the far wall with unusual intensity. It seemed to be a really interesting wall. "Said something about he'd seen things like that before."

Grif sighed. "Then I guess we'd best go see what he and your uncle have discovered. Carly, Sam, Freddie…you three may as well accompany us; you're in this about as deep as anyone."

"Okay," said Sam, looking around. "Say, Where's Spencer?"

Both Grif and Carly looked away, with Carly's face turning a deep, crimson red. Devlin smirked. "They're, uhm, okay. They'll be fine so long as they don't leave the premises. The wards we've placed around this place should be sufficient to keep any malevolent influence out."

"But where are they?" Sam kept looking around, as did Freddie.

"Just come on. We'll worry about them later. It's just….they're okay for now. Now, let's go!" And Carly grabbed both their hands and hauled them, unceremoniously, into the electric tornado Grif had summoned.

In Spencer's bedroom: things had quieted down. Sort of. "I can't buh-LEEVE I let you talk me into that!" Jillian's face was almost as livid as her uniform, which as it so happened, she wasn't wearing right then. In point of fact, she wasn't wearing anything at all, and her face and bare upper torso, including her perfect breasts, were both flushing a deep crimson. Her night-black hair was only slightly tousled, and she was lying face up, propped up on her elbows, on Spencer's bed.

"ME talk YOU into it?! YOU'RE the one who practically jumped on me! I oughtta charge you with rape!"

"Yeah? I'd love to see that. Where exactly would you tell 'em to serve the summons?"

Spencer got up from the bed, hauling his pants back on. "Well, anyway, I think we can both agree that it was a mistake of cosmic proportions."

"There's an understatement, if I ever heard one."

"Can the attitude. Just get the he-*, just get outta my bedroom."

"Believe me, I've never been more happy to leave some mortal's residence as I am now! This was worse than an exorcism." She concentrated, and her uniform reappeared. She sprang off the bed with the litheness of a jungle cat, and, in one bound, was at the door. "Shay, if I ever see you again, it'll be about a million years too soon. No, wait. Make that ten trillion."

He sat on the side of the bed, shirtless, scowling. "Just go."

She turned to the door knob, even as it snicked open, all by itself. Just before she opened it, she turned back to him. "You ever mention this, to anyone,an' I'll…"

"Yeah? You'll what?"

They stared at each other for a moment. Then, without a word, they leaped for each other.

"I've seen similar things, yes. They're from other timelines. But this just confirms what we already knew: the Darkness is spreading, and I think it's safe to say that more than one world in threatened. Brittney's Earth could be on its menu, as well."

"So what's our plan, Uncle Jemiah?" The six of them were in Jemiah's office in the Columbia Building. Darian BenDarian had been called away to confer with the Black Throne.

Jemiah grunted. "Unsure. Normally, whenever there's a case of manifested Darkness this potent, there are usually causative factors. Sometimes, humans actually summon the Darkness, not realizing what they're doing, of course. I'll check with our mortal scientist friends and see if they know of any attempts to penetrate dimensional walls.

"But in the meantime, I've alert High Command, and we can expect reinforcements. That's going to be…disturbing to the temporal authorities, but they'll just have to deal with it." He gestured, and a three-dimensional image of Lake Superior sprang into view. Immediately, it zoomed in on the spot of Darkness, and the others could see the angel aircraft closing in on the site. "But we can't figure out how the 'hole' that BenDarian's people found ties in with this."

"Uncle Jemiah…Could the hole have served to transport something here, something that is actively summoning the Darkness?"

Grunt. "That's what we're supposing now. But we can't figure out how or why anyone would want to summon the Darkness. What could they possibly gain by it?"

Devlin cleared his throat for attention. "Perhaps whoever is responsible for the hole seeks to simply see what would happen, should a world fall to the Darkness? After all, haven't we pretty much established that this hole leads to another world-line, another universe?"

Another grunt. "That's entirely possible. But if what we know is true, there must be mortals on this side who are actively working to summon the End of All Things. No angel or demon would be so stupid. So…who would do such a thing?"

Spencer's bedroom: Jillian and Spencer lay locked in each other's embrace. "Where," she breathed, "did you learn to do all that?" They were practically face to face, astonishment and a bit of awe on both their countenances. "Are you sure you don't have a little demon in you?"

Spencer looked as puzzled as she was. "If I do, mom or dad got around more than either of them ever let on. As for the rest, I…have no idea? It just all kinda came to me…"

"Speaking of…" And once again, she pulled him in close, beating him to the gesture by approximately two point zero three seconds.

He really couldn't have agreed more enthusiastically.

…..

Lake Superior: Dr. Phillips was the first one to see the intruder.

They'd come within thirty miles of what they'd come to call the "Darkness tornado." The angel in charge of the ship, Remiel, banked around the dark horizon ("It's an event horizon," breathed Phillips, eyes wide. Weston thought he looked like a kid sitting on Santa Claus's lap. "We've gotta have something, some probe, we can stick in there.")

Suddenly, something extruded from the tornado, something the humans' eyes at first refused to focus on. It looked like a giant crystal snowflake, but there was an aura of sheer menace surrounding it that shrieked "danger!" Remiel was already banking the airship away. The two demons, still standing silently behind the mortals, drew their tridents and extended them. Weston thought he could hear, or perhaps feel, an ever-so-slight hum beginning to pervade the enclosed space of the otherwise silent airship.

For a moment, the thing was motionless, as though examining its surroundings without any visible movement. Neither of the humans could see anything resembling eyes or ears of any sort.

Then, abruptly, it turned towards the airship, and both humans could definitely hear and feel the thrum of the angel defense shields coming online.

They were under attack.

Seattle, The Columbia Building: "What is that thing?" asked Freddie, who, along with the others, had come up alongside Jemiah to study the lightglobe representation of the Earth. However, he felt fairly sure the answer wouldn't mean anything to him.

"Another creature from another timeline. I think this cinches it: several worlds are under attack, and by residents of the Darkness…creatures that have fallen into it and become trapped. Their nature has been changed by the conditions there. Analogous, if you will, to a starving man driven to such extremes that he will eat human flesh."

Brittney looked up at Devlin, who was standing beside her, his attention focused on the image. That could've happened to me? The worst horror movie she'd ever seen paled by comparison.

"So what's the plan, Uncle Jemiah?"

"We will establish a quarantine about the phenomenon, then move to eradicate this presence. But we've yet to discover how the intrusions are happening, and until we do, they will continue to spread."

Lake Superior: Remiel had already exited the ship, and the two demons, whose names the scientists still didn't know, had taken up observation positions at the forward aeroscreen. At Grif's remote direction, Samael and Adriel, flanked by Zophiel, moved to triangulate on the horror. It didn't wait for them. Something that was the absence of light flowed in a sluggish manner across the intervening area, zeroing in on Adriel. Perhaps it figured the female angel would be the easier target. It figured wrong.

Her sword shining as bright as the sun, Adriel easily dodged the beam, if it could be called that, and pointed her sword back at it. A beam of light, too bright for mortal eyes to look at, flashed from the tip with a rolling thunderous sound. It struck the entity, shearing into the creature's crystalline structure like a laser. The monster gave out a scream that was so highly pitched the human scientists watching it could barely hear it, but counterattacked with a barely visible shuddering of the space between them, which propagated in a wave, impossible to block or dodge easily. Even though Adriel managed to dodge the main thrust of the wave, part of it caught her and slammed her back into the water. Samael flew over to cover her area and make sure the monster didn't get the chance to send any destruction towards either the airship or the distant shore. The humans there had no protection against the thing's attacks. Even the angels seemed to be having problems with it, Weston noticed, uncomfortably. He looked at their demonic guardians, and saw they, too, were uneasy about the way matters were transpiring.

That made him all the more uneasy. If the demons, who presumably knew the capabilities of the angels better than he did, were troubled about this turn of events…

…Maybe everybody had reason to be worried.

Although smashed deep into the water, Adriel recovered, being unaffected by the medium in which she found herself, and headed for the surface. But just as she broke the surface, to her surprise, tentacles of water formed around her, dragging her back down. Samael noticed this, and motioned for Remiel to cover for him, flying down to where Adriel was struggling with the water-tentacles. He sliced them away, only to have more appear, with several targeting him. But between Adriel's and his own efforts, they managed to beat them off, and regain the sky. But now they had an additional source of attack.

The lake itself.

"It hasn't been drawing in the water," whispered Phillips, "It's been infecting the water!"

At that moment, a shrill chime sounded from the control panel. One of the demons glanced down at a read out. He turned to the human scientists. "Have you informed your people of our recent revelations to you?" There was an inflection in his voice that both humans took note of, one that automatically worried them.

"No…we actually haven't had time. Our reports, what we've got so far, are still waiting to be uploaded."

"It seems someone has informed someone." He turned and looked at them. "There's a nuclear missile on its way here."

….

"We have to stop that nuke." Grif and Devlin were both en route to the Lake, their course paralleling the missile's path. Neither one of them had a problem keeping up with the missile, speed-wise, but it had a head start they had to beat. "And just who fired it, anyway?" They both knew the missile presented no harm to either the demons or the angels, and, within the confines of the angelic airship, no threat to the humans. Those outside, however, especially on the distant shore, would be a different matter.

"Unknown. No doubt your uncle is investigating the matter. But it's likely somebody saw us on the news, you know. Your 'explanation'…" He shook his head. "That's the problem with you angels. You give everybody the benefit of the doubt. Even if doing otherwise would be more effective."

Grif shot him an amused glance. "Speaking of 'otherwise,' what are you gonna do about Brittney?"

Devlin hunched himself a little closer on the rock he was riding. "What do you mean?"

"I know she's asked you to get her back to her home dimension. And she, at least, thinks you said you'd try. So?"

Devlin set his face in stone harder than the one he was levitating on. "That's my affair, angel. I'll thank you to keep your attentions to yourself and your own concerns."

"Affair," thought Grif, even as he grinned wider. Interesting choice of words. "It's plain that she's infatuated with you in any case. I suppose I wondered how you were going to handle that."

"And you can keep wondering."

The missile appeared in front of them, its contrail streaming back the way it came. "I suppose we do have more pressing concerns."

"Indeed."

The missile loomed closer….

To be continued…