Sarah made it out of Overbrook unscathed, and hopped her way across town back toward the Keyes Park area. So it might not be as quick as the tram, but she wasn't going to do that again. She was sure that there wasn't anything to stop someone from doing it for no reason other than anyone who tried it had to be crazy anyway.
Water splashed around her boots as she landed at the edge of the small lake in Keyes Park. The cave Vanessa had told her about had to be around here somewhere. There! Over by the edge of the water and tucked away underneath a couple of large trees, a rickety wooden door marked "Do Not Enter" barricaded the entrance to a dark tunnel. It was clearly only a token discouragement against people wandering in, as it opened readily to permit entrance.
Not wanting to alert the Hellions to her presence by bringing out a light, she waited inside for a few moments to allow her eyes to adjust. However, it wasn't completely dark inside. Further on down the tunnel, there were guttering torches affixed to sconces along the walls.
There was no way that she would be able to slip past every thug down here, but she'd avoid as many as she could and try to silence the ones she couldn't quickly and quietly.
Once group of Hellions fell without a sound, but stealth only lasted for so long. Shots echoed through the confined space, and shouts rang out as Hellion blood brothers rushed to one another's aid. Sarah fought them off, ducking and weaving to avoid their attacks when she could and making herself ignore the pain of their blows when she couldn't.
Sarah pushed forward, hoping that each delay wouldn't make her too late to help Wu Yin. Hoping that the sounds of battle wouldn't alert the Hellions deeper within the caves into doing something sudden.
She'd been fortunate to avoid being hit with anything too powerful. The Hellions were common street punks for the most part, and even their weapons were garbage compared to the things the Freaks used. Her confidence built as she took down thug after thug, and she almost had to laugh when one of them pulled a knife on her, of all things.
Swooping in to knock him out with a combo attack, she left herself open carelessly. The knife sliced down across her side, cutting a long gash in her suit, and going clean through her belt, sending it slipping to the ground.
Swearing quietly to herself, she knocked him out with a swift kick and snatched up the knife. Damned punks, she hadn't expected one of them to have a monofilament knife. Well, it was hers now. She took the Hellion's safety sheath and shoved the knife inside, and put it in her pouch for the moment before trying to adjust her belt so that it wasn't about to fall off again.
Sarah continued on. Down a long, twisting passage, an eerie reddish light flickered up ahead. Gutteral chanting in some long-forgotten tongue echoed through the caverns.
Above a circle of glowing runes, a man hovered, suspended in midair. His body twisted and contorted in agony as tendrils of dark energy twisted around him. Several Hellions stood in a ring around the chamber, arms raised as their voices called forth ancient evils. Something was happening, and Sarah didn't care to wait and find out what.
She leapt forward, soaring through the air over twenty feet from the tunnel mouth, and slammed into the victim. On impact with him, her belt slipped loose again and fell to the floor in the middle of the runed circle. Sarah and the man went tumbling to the ground on the far side of the cavern.
A burst of flames erupted from the center of the circle of runes, and an unearthly roar rumbled as the ground shook for a moment. And then all was still and quiet for a breath, and Sarah relaxed a little in relief at preventing whatever the Hellions had been trying to do.
"Meddling cape!" growled a Hellion.
"What have you done?!"
"You've ruined everything!"
No time to relax now. Sarah sprung into action to fight off the group of Hellions angry that their malicious prank had gone awry. She ducked quickly as hot flames shot above her head, then grabbed one nearby thug and hurled him toward the others, knocking two more of them down.
"Oh, my goodness..." murmured Mr. Yin from behind her.
"Keep down, Mr. Yin," Sarah said. "And stay back. I'll protect you."
Thankfully, Mr. Yin was sensible enough to stay out of the way, and the Hellions were quite pissed off at her at the moment.
"You've made a big mistake, cape," spat one Hellion with a large tattoo across his entire face and bald head. "Hey, boys. What do you say we make her our demonic vessel instead? Huh?"
"Don't even try it," Sarah snapped, narrowly missing him with a kick as he quickly sidestepped.
"This will be the last time you cross Demonfire!" He put his hands together and let forth a gout of wickedly hot flames, singeing her hair a bit as she ducked.
"Because I'm not letting you walk out of here again," Sarah said.
With a powerful kick, her foot impacted hard upon Demonfire's chest, sending him sprawling back accompanied by the sound of cracking ribs. Sarah moved in to finish him off, and didn't rest until the other Hellions were dead. She wasn't about to show mercy on people who preyed on innocents like this, and doubly didn't want to risk trying to get Mr. Yin out of here and having them wake up again to attack them from behind.
"You... You killed them all?" Mr. Yin said, tentatively poking his head out from behind a stalagmite where he'd been hiding.
Sarah nodded tersely. "Are you alright, Mr. Yin?"
"It still aches, but it's fading," Mr. Yin said. "I think I'm more shaken up than anything else..." He looked over her critically. "What about you? I'm surprised you're even still standing after all that, and you don't even look winded!"
Sarah chuckled softly. "Super powers, don't you know?" She grinned. She liked to act like it really was that easy, but she wasn't exactly made of steel, and bullets didn't bounce off of her. She just kept going despite all that because she was too damned stubborn to do otherwise. In reality, she was in a lot of pain herself at the moment from all the various injuries she had taken on the way in and from the fight with the Hellions' inner circle.
"My daughter..." Mr. Yin said. "Have you seen my daughter? Is she-"
Sarah held up a hand. "Penny's fine. I found her first and got her to safety."
"Oh, thank goodness," Mr. Yin said, breathing a sigh of relief.
She went over cautiously toward the center of the cave where the runic circle had been, and now was fading away, and snatched up her belt. It didn't look to have been damaged by the demonic flames that had burst forth, so she guessed that they hadn't been real flames.
"I've got something that belongs to you here," Sarah said. "I hope it hasn't been-" She pulled out the phone, illuminated by eerie red lights. "-damaged?"
Vanessa's words washed over Penny, half-heard as her mind wandered. Meditation was so boring. She wanted to be out helping Sarah save her father, not stuck here in a tent with Mom. She wanted to be a hero, and fight bad guys, and not just hide, and that was why she was here meditating, for whatever good that might do.
"Focus," Vanessa was saying. "Center yourself. Be one with the world around you. Be at harmony with the energies of the ethereal."
Yeah, yeah, whatever. Penny hoped that Sarah and Dad would be alright. If she concentrated enough, she almost thought she could see Sarah fighting her way through the Hellions' caverns. In her mind's eye, the heroine moved like a dancer in a deadly ballet. It was almost like martial arts, but not like any Penny had ever seen. Sarah fought quick and dirty to take any advantage she could, and her enemies frequently didn't see it coming.
"Penny," Vanessa said sharply. "Penny, are you paying attention?"
Penny snapped back to the here and now, scowling. "I really don't think this is helping." She folded her arms across her chest and looked away.
"You're not concentrating," Vanessa said.
"I could be concentrating perfectly fine if you didn't keep going on and on about ethereal nonsense," Penny said.
"Perhaps we should attempt a different approach," Vanessa said. "Try-"
Something dark touched the edges of Penny's mind. Her entire body tensed. Her blood burned in her veins, and her brain was on fire. She clutched her head and let out a scream as something forced its way into her mind like a knife.
"Penny!" Vanessa said, standing up in alarm and stepping hurriedly over toward her.
"Get... out... of... my... mind!" Penny gritted out between clenched teeth.
A cackling voice echoing in her head drew her down into darkness.
Mr. Yin took the phone from Sarah and looked over it uneasily. "They were trying to summon a demon. To possess me..."
"It looks like, when I interrupted the ritual, it wound up possessing the phone instead," Sarah said. "That's just lovely..."
The red lights on the phone went out and it resumed its normal appearance. Mr. Yin examined it closely, and then muttered something in Chinese that didn't sound particularly polite. "I think it contacted Penny. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear..."
"What are you talking about?" Sarah said. "Her connection is text-only. Is that really text or demons only?"
"I have no idea!" Mr. Yin said in a panic. "It says the last message was sent less than a minute ago, to Penny, but the message was blank... We have to get to her and make sure she's- she's... not possessed or- I don't even know!"
"Alright, alright," Sarah said with a sigh, gesturing for Mr. Yin to follow and heading for the tunnel. "I won't even pretend to understand how all this demon business actually works. Let's get out of here. Penny's in Overbrook right now."
"What's she doing over there?" Mr. Yin wondered.
"She's with her mother."
Mr. Yin stumbled in surprise. "What!? You exposed my precious daughter to that witch?"
"Now see here," Sarah snapped, looking toward Mr. Yin. "If it weren't for that witch, I would have never known where to find you, and you would have wound up as demon fodder for whatever malicious schemes these damned Hellions had planned!"
"Fine, but why did you have to drag Penny into it, and worse, leave her with that... that... woman?"
"We are not having this argument," Sarah said, trying to adjust her belt so that it wasn't about to fall off again. Why did she not wear an outfit that had belt loops? She was going to need to replace it or repair it, not to mention the damage to her suit that would need to be patched up as well. Between being burned, shot, and cut just on this job alone, it was a wonder that she didn't have to replace her suit after every mission.
Mr. Yin was quiet for the remainder of the trip out of the caves, for which Sarah was most grateful. She glanced aside at him and debated on whether she really wanted to try to carry him across multiple suburbs. He was a fair bit larger and heavier than Penny, and even if she weren't, she wasn't entirely comfortable with getting quite that personal with him.
"Can you make your way to the tram station and to Overbrook from here?" Sarah asked.
Mr. Yin nodded. "I'll be fine. Go on ahead, and hurry!"
Sarah nodded tersely, and leapt away into the night.
Penny's feet hit the ground in a frantic rhythm as she ran. The monster was coming for her. It roared and rumbled and thundered, its enormous strides swallowing the ground behind her as fast as she could run. But no matter how far she ran, the eerie, bloody landscape never changed, and she never got any further away from the demon.
Her bare feet squished against pulsating flesh. The sky was full of eyes rather than stars, some of them shut, some blinking and looking to and fro, others staring impassively and menacingly. Surreal formations spired out of the ground, twisting into spirals or curves, some of them arching completely overhead.
A voice wafted on the wind, as if carried from a very long way away, calling her name again and again. She could hardly hear it over the pounding of footsteps and the snarling of the beast.
"Mom, is that you?" Penny said.
"Penny?" whispered the voice. "Penny, can you hear me?"
"I can hear you, Mom!" Penny said.
"It's no use," another voice murmured. "She can't hear us."
"No, wait!" Penny shouted. "I can hear you! Help me! Please, help me!"
If there came a reply, however, she could not hear it.
Sarah landed in the midst of the Carnival of Chaos without being bothered by the Freakshow on the way in, and rushed into Vanessa DeVore's tent without even pausing.
Penny lay on the floor of the tent, curled up in a fetal position and twitching a little now and then. Vanessa crouched beside her, hand on the girl's shoulder and gazing at her intently.
Sarah swore under her breath. "So the demon really did manage to get to her?"
"What happened with the Hellions?" Vanessa asked, glancing up at Sarah in alarm.
"I rescued Mr. Yin, but the Hellions finished their summoning ritual anyway, it seems," Sarah said. "And it apparently possessed his cell phone. Mr. Yin is on his way here now, by the way. Might want to have your Carnies make sure the Freaks don't kill him trying to get here."
Vanessa gave a short nod. "I feared that the presence of her implants would lead to something like this. Allowing direct access into your mind from outside is never a good idea, and no one even saw fit to warn her of the potential dangers before doing this to her. And all for the sake of convenience! Now do you see, Dancer in the Night? Do you see now the dangers of technology?"
Sarah opened her mouth to protest that that wasn't her super name, that she didn't actually have one, but decided against arguing about it just now.
"Yes, I see that very well," Sarah said simply, finding it easier to just agree for the moment. "Is there anything we can do? You're supposed to be a powerful psychic, aren't you? Can't you, I don't know, get the demon out of there and kick it back to whatever hell it belongs in?"
"I'm afraid it is not quite that simple," Vanessa said. "I can enter her mind and battle the demon, yes, or enable someone else to do it instead. However, the person doing so much be someone that Penny trusts completely, as well as being capable and strong-willed. I'm afraid that right now, that person is you."
"Me?" Sarah said, raising an eyebrow. "Why would she trust me more than her own mother? She just met me!"
"Much as it pains me to think that this is true, I cannot deny it, not for the sake of my daughter's wellbeing," Vanessa said. "You rescued her from the Hellions, and she has developed quite the case of hero worship for you. She wants to be like you, not like me. She was barely willing to listen when I attempted to teach her a little about how to control her powers."
Sarah sighed. "Fine. Then send me in and I will kick that monster's sorry butt back where it came from."
Some so-called heroes, Sarah was sure, would have just gotten Mr. Yin out of that cave, cashed in their bounty, and called it a day's work. Everything after that was simply extra, and she had no way of knowing if she was going to get any sort of reward whatsoever for it. But she didn't care. She wasn't about to stand by while a demon from some other dimension ravaged the mind of a poor young girl. What kind of a hero would that make her, anyway? Not the kind that she would care to be, that was certain.