are you my lionkiller?
Returning upstairs is a relief, though Pacifica keeps looking over her shoulder, afraid the thing is following them. It didn't follow when she was alone, so it probably won't now that she has support, but it's not like there are any guarantees. She's perfectly willing to abandon the house if need be. She contemplated extended stays in various hotels long before a horrendous lobster-thing burrowed its way into her basement. A horrendous lobster-thing is really just one more reason to want to leave.
Dipper shrugs his shoulders up and winces; Pacifica realizes she'd been digging her nails into him when he had ended up being her accidental human shield. Once again, she's struck by the fact he's tall enough for her to hide behind. Doesn't mean he's a worthy opponent for a huge monster, though. She thinks even the goons who hang out at the Skull Fracture wouldn't be a match for it.
"Wow, that thing is horrifying!" Dipper enthuses, beginning to sketch it in his journal. "I don't know what it is. There wasn't anything like it in the journals."
"I think we should call it 'Super-Pinchy,'" Mabel says, leaning over his journal as he draws. "No, the Mega-Lobster! No, the Boss-Claw!"
"I like 'Boss-Lobster,'" Dipper says absently, shading in one of its claws.
"What are we going to do about it?" Pacifica wants to know.
"I don't think it's intelligent. It's probably a bottom feeder like a normal lobster, a scavenger. It looks like it's been eating your boxes; must like the taste of cardboard," Dipper says, making a note of that.
Pacifica does not like the idea of a stupid Boss-Lobster eating her things. "Then make it stop!"
"I intend to," Dipper says, tucking his journal away again. "I think it doesn't like light very much, it's been staying away from the stairs. Do you have any spotlights or UV flares?"
"Sure, let me check my closet," Pacifica says sarcastically.
Dipper snaps his fingers. "Fire! A Boss-Lobster has to be some kind of water-affinity, I bet we could scare it with fire."
"I call flamethrower," Mabel says.
"You can't use a flamethrower in my house!" Pacifica exclaims.
Mabel shrugs. "That's okay, we don't actually have one. But we should definitely get one."
"Or, maybe something a little more plausible," Dipper says, scribbling in his journal again.
They spend most of an hour scouring the house for every flashlight and flammable liquid they can find, which ultimately doesn't amount to much. Pacifica's Malibu home is both ultra-modern and ultra-austere, containing few objects besides artfully arranged furniture and decorations. A service cleans the house and takes care of the yard, leaving little in the way of common household items. It's only now as she moves around the place with Dipper and Mabel, seeing it through their eyes, that she realizes how big and empty it is. It must seem like incredible luxury to them, given what she saw of their very common suburban home. But it's a hollow place, in more ways than one.
They reconvene in the kitchen having secured about five flashlights of varying sizes and a pile of unused kitchen rags. They wrap long cloth strips around the legs of a disassembled chair they found in a closet and soak them in engine oil from the speedboat in the garage. It makes a mess that Pacifica kind of enjoys, in the same way she'd enjoyed getting mud all over the carpet at the mansion. She likes ruining her parents' stuff. It's petty, but cathartic.
"So how do we scare a tough ol' Boss-Lobster?" Mabel says as she surveys their handiwork.
"If it doesn't like light, it really won't like fire. We'll surround it and force it back into the tunnel and drop the torches in after it to keep it in there," Dipper says. "Then we can replace the light bulbs in the basement, and maybe put a lamp or two near the hole, and you can just leave the lights on all the time until you get the hole filled," he says to Pacifica.
Pacifica doesn't like the idea of that thing still being out there somewhere, maybe waiting to dig its way in again. "Can't we, like, kill it?"
"Sure. Get me a harpoon gun, a winch, and a flatbed truck," Dipper says dryly.
Pacifica blows out an irritated breath upwards, ruffling her bangs. "Fine. We'll try it your way."
The torches visibly stain the ceiling of the stairwell; Pacifica decides to worry about that later. The three of them stop again at the halfway mark, searching the darkness as oily smoke pours off their torches and rolls across the ceiling (they've disabled the smoke detector in the stairwell). The Boss-Lobster doesn't appear to have moved at all in their absence, though Pacifica thinks there's more cardboard bits strewn around than before. Perhaps it takes the same defensive position when it hears them approach and forages in the meantime. She spots the partially chewed head of one of her old—and very expensive—dolls and her resolve hardens.
"Okay, all at once," Dipper whispers. "Herd it towards the hole."
The creature's torso bobs slightly, interlocking plates sliding against each other with a hissing sigh. The way it moves is like the worst aspects of spiders and crustaceans put together: jerky and unnatural but also spindly and indelicate. It makes Pacifica shudder just to see its eyestalks slowly extend and retract.
"Now!" Dipper shouts, and they all turn on their flashlights and spread out in a half-circle.
At first the Boss-Lobster reacts to the sudden onslaught of illumination by folding into itself even more, clicking shut like an ugly transforming toy. But when the lit torches get near and the heat begins to rise, it comes alive with its plates separating and claws rising like the blooming of a hideous, slimy-shelled flower. Its carapace, splotchy brown and sickly off-white, becomes mottled with red.
"Uh, I think it's angry, maybe—" Dipper starts to say.
The Boss-Lobster screeches. It sounds like a giant cicada filtered through a buzzsaw. Pacifica nearly drops her torch.
The Boss-Lobster surges forward.
"Dipper!" Mabel shouts in alarm as the monster charges him.
Dipper, displaying a ridiculous disregard for personal safety, neither runs nor dodges. He stands his ground and swings his torch out in an arc in front of him, yelling back at the monster. The Boss-Lobster skids to an ungainly, clicking halt, claws flinching back from the fire, eyes bobbing wildly on their stalks. It snaps its pincers in the air, dancing backwards, hissing in warning and fear.
"Force it back!" Dipper shouts, stabbing his torch at the thing. It recoils again, snapping a claw within inches of Dipper's face.
Pacifica thinks her heart might stop from sheer terror. The torches float in the dark, leaving glowing retinal imprints as they streak back and forth. Their flicking illumination and the beams of the flashlights cast bizarre layered shadows, leaping and careening across the walls and ceiling, cutting through the dark in short-lived patches and bright patterned swathes. It's like fighting in a strobe light, the harsh white LEDs clashing with warm torch tones while something scuttling and horrific bobs and weaves in the murky spaces between the flashes. Pacifica's light gleams on the dimpled, glistening carapace and her mouth is dry. This is insane. Someone is going to get killed.
Somehow, she finds herself stepping forward and swinging her torch, screaming nonsense at the top of her lungs. It's the exact same feeling as when she'd stepped into the launching tube, or when she'd parachuted into the halls of fear itself. Something else takes her over. She's terrified, but not beyond reason. The Boss-Lobster isn't the first terrible thing she's faced.
It's actually working. The Boss-Lobster slowly retreats, giving ground as it rages against their tightening circle of fire, snapping its claws and swiveling towards each of them in turn on its crab-like lower half. Its spidery legs pop up and down, clicking against the concrete as it grudgingly rocks back and forth, withdrawing by inches.
Emboldened, Dipper jumps forward and slashes at the monster with his torch. It must be close enough for the creature to acutely feel the heat, because it rears back on half of its legs like some abominable, crab-limbed horse and flails wildly with its claws. One of the pincers catches on a nearby shelf and sends it tipping towards the floor; Dipper sees it and quickly sidesteps out of the way. The shelf hits the floor with a bang, scattering boxes and Christmas lights. But Dipper doesn't realize he's now slightly too close to the Boss-Lobster until it's already too late.
Pacifica watches the claw sweep in an arc as if it's happening in slow motion. She wants to scream, she wants to warn him, but by the time she can articulate the thought it's already over. The tip of the claw catches him at the hip and spins him around like a top. His torch goes flying, clattering to the floor and rolling back towards the stairs. He hits the ground hard with a wet smack, knocking the wind out of him.
The Boss-Lobster rushes forward and lowers its opened claw towards Dipper's head.
Pacifica's mind goes blank and frantic. She can't witness the actuality of her earlier thought. God no I didn't mean it—
Mabel's torch comes flying out of the shadows. It bounces off the Boss-Lobster's armored chest with a shower of sparks and smoke and the creature shrieks and shakes, scuttling backwards.
Pacifica doesn't know what she's doing. She's not thinking; she feels nothing but terror, sees nothing in her mind but Dipper's neck below the razor edge of the monster's claw. She's running. She jumps, feet and hands catching on the segmented shelves of the Boss-Lobster's back. It bucks beneath her weight, starting to pivot. Her left hand closes around the lip of the armored collar that surmounts what serves as the thing's head; the tips of her fingers touch the white, pulpy flesh that pulses below the shell, warm and slick. Eye stalks turn to look at her, reflecting her flickering light. It's the last thing one of them sees as she grinds the flaming rag-wrapped end of her torch into the black marble of an eyeball. It bursts and melts where it catches between her torch and the shell.
The Boss-Lobster shrieks again, this time in a different, higher tone. It squirms wildly beneath her; the rubber edges of her shoes get caught in its shell as segments retract and squeeze together defensively. The monster thrashes in pain and fear. The next thing Pacifica knows, she's falling. She hits a pile of boxes and sinks into the cardboard, dazed.
There's a couple short squeaks and quivering, piercing squeals that fade with distance, and then silence.