JL New Wave: Kiz and The Outsiders (IC)

If you're going through Hell, keep going.

kizkiz said:

"Yeah," Tanha said, looking around. The morning hadn't come, but the stark black of night had retreated to a muddled gray color as if the sky was obscured with smog. The cold of night warred with what should have been the heat of day, resulting in low lying fog, ooze out of the ground like oil from a teenager's pores. A healthy dose of Despair had been heaped upon the desolation of the eternal almost night. The wind was still there, picking up grit and rubbing it into every exposed patch of skin. The could redoubled its efforts, dropping down below the point at which water froze.

"Well," she craned her neck up towards the sky and squinted. "Look's like Havel upped his game." She turned back towards Lisa, "I hope you can keep up, because walking in this miasma will take ages."
Tanha waited a moment before adding, "We could always do plan B?"

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Lisa searched the sky for a long moment, what sky there was, and then shook her head.

"Yeah. Let's go."

"Which one was Havel again?"

"Because someone should tell him that deep black is kind of my motif now, and-- I've gone through some stuff. I don't remember all of it. But there was... it was deep, and dark, and misty, and I couldn't look away from the misery at the heart of me. This isn't that. This is like the outskirts of that. I'm good."

She stepped forward, and glanced over her shoulder. "It's you guys that'll need to keep up with me."

And then she flourished, unfurled somehow, still human and standing in front of them but spreading out wings like a cape, expanding several meters in either direction and up a bit, a portable shelter walking into the wind.

"Now everyone come the Hell on."

And the world moved on...

Lisa turned to Tanha. "Which one was Havel again?"

"Oh he collects names like some folks collect horses," Tanha waved her hand into the air. "Sauron. The Necromancer King. The Anti-Circle."

"Because someone should tell him that deep black is kind of my motif now, and--"

"Beg pardon, but he's the original Man in Black, so I think he's got you beat by a few thousand years, Sai"

"--I've gone through some stuff. I don't remember all of it. But there was... it was deep, and dark, and misty, and I couldn't look away from the misery at the heart of me. This isn't that. This is like the outskirts of that. I'm good."

Tanha shrugged, "He shredded a few worlds, down to their bones, then rose up the bones to strike down another. He was snowballing before he had a palaver with Kiz. He thought of himself as a child of Death and Destiny, but personally I think he's more bipolar waffling between Despair and Delirium."

Lisa stepped forward and glanced over her shoulder. "It's you guys that'll need to keep up with me."

And then she flourished, unfurled somehow, still human and standing in front of them but spreading out wings like a cape, expanding several meters in either direction and up a bit, a portable shelter walking into the wind.

"Now everyone come the Hell on."

"Of course, Thankyee Sai." Tanha snuggled beneath the umbrella of Lisa's existence, brushing up closer than necessary.

--- --- ---

In the way of dreams, they walked across the desolate landscape. The scenery was unbroken hard packed earth and endless, gloomy gray sky. Tanha chattered on, unfazed by the gloom or lack of food. Hours passed beneath endless, heavy footfalls.

A hollow in the landscape, shaded and oozing a pustulant snot yellow miasma. The tendrils slithered along the ground and beckoned with discordant voices only half heard. It was the humming of a million bees and the beating heart at the center of the universe. It was the sound and vibrations like nails on chalk board or the crunch of walking on new fallen snow. It was obscene and revolting, but spoke of revelation if you could just understand what it was saying. There was power there in the seams leaking the stuff between dimensions and universes; something ancient spilling over from a pot left too long in the fires of Creation.

"Come in," The Thinny said at least, "It's great inside."

Moving on Up.

kizkiz said:

In the way of dreams, they walked across the desolate landscape. The scenery was unbroken hard packed earth and endless, gloomy gray sky. Tanha chattered on, unfazed by the gloom or lack of food. Hours passed beneath endless, heavy footfalls.

A hollow in the landscape, shaded and oozing a pustulant snot yellow miasma. The tendrils slithered along the ground and beckoned with discordant voices only half heard. It was the humming of a million bees and the beating heart at the center of the universe. It was the sound and vibrations like nails on chalk board or the crunch of walking on new fallen snow. It was obscene and revolting, but spoke of revelation if you could just understand what it was saying. There was power there in the seams leaking the stuff between dimensions and universes; something ancient spilling over from a pot left too long in the fires of Creation.

"Come in," The Thinny said at least, "It's great inside."

Click to expand...

Len and Mick were outrageously strong for mortals.

Certainly, their morals were questionable-- if Mick even had morals, but their fortitude was damn near legendary.

Two mortal men sticking to their (ray)guns in a city defended by a man whose footspeed could only be described as mythic... not just surviving in that world, but carving out a rep and cred and turf.

But even they were at their limits.

This world had moved on. And in moving on, it had moved into environments, climates, territories that no mortal man had evolved to endure.

As they drew close to the Lovecraftian epiphany that was The Thinny, as they slogged on, they were as close as they had ever been to death, but still they stayed standing-- helping each other stay vertical where they needed to.

Lisa gazed at them sadly for a long, long moment.

Then glanced at Tanha with her infuriating personal space issues.

"Either this is about to save our lives, or I just walked us a long way of dying only for it to kill us."

And she reached out with the whispering wisps of her hair, her long brunette locks elllllooooooongaaaaating, stretching for The Thinny, touching on it, feeling out... just as she'd followed Kiz and The Outsiders through the hole they'd made in the world on the way out the door.

Delving into the mindfuck mindblown mad mad mad mad madness of it, trying to trace a path through like the finest Starhavener or Kwai tracker...

...over, under, around... and through?

Where the sidewalk ends...

The problem was through to where? Recursion, infinite loops, and Escher all were elements of the Dreaming. All were a natural palette to draw from.

However, this was a dream dreamt by people who had only ever read about a Thinny. It touched upon their experiences, but none of the dreamers were Void Binders. This Thinny was all flash and no sizzle. Inside was white static. Dissonance. Unsubstantiated understandings. And then nothing.

"Aww shucks," Tanha said as they fell out of the dream. "Umm," her head swiveled. Her body followed in a slow, languid turn like she was swimming in water. She pointed back up at the dream they had exited. "Looks like they haven't finished it all."

Her eyes furrowed as gossamer exploded all around them. She moved in a blur, her hands flashing through gestures and incantations flew off her tongue faster than the sound could travel. Darkness blossomed around them. An endless infinite thing heavy with the pressure of the bottom of the ocean. And the sound, a droning litany of a million lost voices each clamoring to be heard of the other.

Lisa found her grip on what she sought, a strangle hold on something firm. Terra Prima. And the group found themselves being yanked through the Void by braided strands of Lisa's hair.

It was an abandoned lot. Broken bottles and weeds choked the clods of untilled earth. A wooden fence wreathed the place adorned with graffiti in neon yellows and violent greens. There was one thing that was out of place. A rose stood there between Lisa's feet. A perfect flower of blood red and emerald green. The floral scent was raw and pure. A chorus of angelic trumpets blared; a perfect brass procession as if announcing the Silver Hosts arrival. Except it was just Lisa, Len, Mick, and Tanha. After a few notes, the rose was just a rose again. One odd, beautiful thing amongst the exposed innards of the vast, sprawling New York skyline that encroached all around them. Buildings scrapped the sky, bloated out the sun, pierced the clouds above.

"Alrighty, if this plays out like it should, Sai, there's an even huger Thinny that the first ones would have used to create some sort of wormhole gateway nexus place. We need to find the one that leads us to the Dark Tower. Should be a deli or a bar of some sort. Probably guarded by vampires and ratmen hiding behind human flesh masks, that sort of thing." Tanha looked around, kicking a clot of dirt into a patch of dandelions and milk weed.

"And I reackon that Kiz only has five seconds left."

If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.

kizkiz said:

"Aww shucks," Tanha said as they fell out of the dream. "Umm," her head swiveled. Her body followed in a slow, languid turn like she was swimming in water. She pointed back up at the dream they had exited. "Looks like they haven't finished it all."

Click to expand...

"It's all so surreal when you see behind the green-screen," Len grimaced, that feeling of being out of his element only deepening.

"Or an early draft gets leaked," Lisa agreed.

"Bah," Rory scoffed. "Who writes this crap, anyway?"

kizkiz said:

Her eyes furrowed as gossamer exploded all around them. She moved in a blur, her hands flashing through gestures and incantations flew off her tongue faster than the sound could travel. Darkness blossomed around them. An endless infinite thing heavy with the pressure of the bottom of the ocean. And the sound, a droning litany of a million lost voices each clamoring to be heard of the other.

Click to expand...

As much as The Glider and The Unseelie ricocheted off of each other, this was turning her sculpting of glamors to something exceptionally useful... instead of falling into the wide white space from those episodes of "Looney Tunes" in which Bugs and Daffy were each in turn tormented by a gleefully sadistic animator...

...this was the wormhole they were looking for.

The Einstein-Rosen Bridge to some/no/anywhere.

And Lisa's hair unspun again, feeding into the seething Marianas pitch of fathomless incomprehensibility...

...although a distant part of her brain wondered, shouldn't it be red?

kizkiz said:

Lisa found her grip on what she sought, a strangle hold on something firm. Terra Prima. And the group found themselves being yanked through the Void by braided strands of Lisa's hair.

It was an abandoned lot. Broken bottles and weeds choked the clods of untilled earth. A wooden fence wreathed the place adorned with graffiti in neon yellows and violent greens. There was one thing that was out of place. A rose stood there between Lisa's feet. A perfect flower of blood red and emerald green. The floral scent was raw and pure. A chorus of angelic trumpets blared; a perfect brass procession as if announcing the Silver Hosts arrival. Except it was just Lisa, Len, Mick, and Tanha. After a few notes, the rose was just a rose again. One odd, beautiful thing amongst the exposed innards of the vast, sprawling New York skyline that encroached all around them. Buildings scrapped the sky, bloated out the sun, pierced the clouds above.

Click to expand...

Len and Rory were sprawled onto the junkyard lot, ears popping, drenched in cold sweat like they'd just had their atoms spun through a StarGate and slammed back together at the other end.

Lisa landed on her feet. Still dark-haired and Caucasian-skinned and human, not the ghostly Ebon Glider again yet.

She gazed at her fingers. "So it's still a dream of New York Prime. The New York Prime of this Skerry's internal Multiverse. Not one of the New Yorks on any of the three Prime Earths..." she trailed off, not entirely comfortable with speaking this way, this knowledge, this four-dimensional vision that had upgraded her mind as she'd fallen through worlds chasing Kiz and The Outsiders.

As Mick pushed himself up on his elbow, he glanced to his left... and saw the Rose.

His eyes widened, and then his leathery brow furrowed, unable to put a name to this particular emotion. Sociopaths didn't tend to have a wide spectrum in that regard. Was it... awe? Adoration?

"I don't think you should burn that one, Mick," Len squinted, sitting up.

"Never," Mick swore. "A bloom this red? As beautiful as any flame. I'd die rather than let it go out."

Len smirked faintly, then pushed to his feet and offered his partner a hand up. "Of course not."

They were still dressed in their Western attire, their weapons still limited by their forms but far less limited than true guns.

kizkiz said:

"Alrighty, if this plays out like it should, Sai, there's an even huger Thinny that the first ones would have used to create some sort of wormhole gateway nexus place. We need to find the one that leads us to the Dark Tower. Should be a deli or a bar of some sort. Probably guarded by vampires and ratmen hiding behind human flesh masks, that sort of thing." Tanha looked around, kicking a clot of dirt into a patch of dandelions and milk weed.

Click to expand...

"Finally, something to shoot," Heatwave almost smiled. "Not to mention, my kind of odds."

kizkiz said:

"And I reackon that Kiz only has five seconds left."

Click to expand...

"I always did work better with a ticking clock," Cold nodded, spinning the chambers of his cryotechnic revolver.

Lisa's hair wafted on a breeze as unfelt as it was unseen, probing for that Thinny, intent on saving her new mentor's life, her new... what else was he? Something good to her, for her. Something big. "This way."

And she started running, gravel and broken bottle-glass crunching under her boots.

The end of the world.

"There they are," Jake Three said, wiggling his nose.

"Yeah," Jake Two said, sighing.

"Thanks," Jake Prime said, setting down his peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich. He couldn't really taste the food anymore after what poppa had done. Still, it reminded him of Bama, who was still around, she just couldn't move very well anymore with the broken leg and desire to consume human flesh. Still she really loved him now, and he had his three twinners and his best friend so it didn't really matter, it shouldn't have mattered, even if it did. He sighed.

"So..." Jake Four said, coming over to join Jake Three and Jake Two on the lip of the sky scrapper. The one over looking the abandoned lot was only thirteen stories high, but it gave a good vantage point. The boys had spent awhile trying to out spit each other, but since it had taken longer than their attention spans for the the cowpeople to arrive, well they'd fallen into other distractions.

"So they ain't-" Three started to say.

"Aren't" Prime corrected.

"Real cowpeople..."

"Your so silly," Four said, giggling and snorting. "I mean really, poppa said cowboys and cowgirls, so, you know like Westerns. Not Greek mythology."

"Oh," Three said, trailing off. "Yeah, of course, I knew that, I was just, just joking around."

"Okay you guys," Two said, "Let's go wake up our friends, right? Poppa said only let them get a block from that thingy." Two pointed vaguely towards the Red Rose.

"Come," Prime said, raising his bazooka. The other three joined him, lifting theirs from their backs. "Let us break the fifth seal." As one, they squeezed the trigger and four black wraiths screamed from the trumpet end like rusty metal grating on metal and nails on a chalk board. The dark fiends moved at supersonic speeds towards the abandoned lot of the Red, Red Rose. If allowed to hit the Red, Red Rose, they'd be like four nuclear explosions going off simultaneously. Instead of radiation, some other more esoteric, necromantic energy would be vented in every direction.

In the careless excitement of youth, the the boys mounted up without verifying the destruction. Their steeds were of congealed nightmare, and they road off like the four horseboys of the apocalypse, which they were. Their mounts easily dispersed with their rider, leaping from roof top to roof top. Wherever they landed, long dead corpses, fast moving zombies that had been quiescent, rose and burst from windows and doors. All nine million of New York Prime's residences awoke and smelled dinner. They sprinted without regard for their fellow zombie or the impact on their own bodies, they just knew they needed to eat the last four living things on Earth.

Jake Prime left the initial confrontation with the cowpeople to his twinners. Three of poppa's horseboys might be enough, but Jake had been told to tell his five Grandfathers that the cowpeople were here, so he did as he was told. Racing across the rooftops made for a short trip, even with most of the rooftops now seething with hundreds of his friends. It was like a rooftop party everywhere he went, and he was the guest of honor. It was hard to leave his friends, they wanted nothing more than to hang out with him, some of them tried, but those tumbled over the side and joined the friends clogging the streets below.

Jake kicked his best friend (besides his three twinners), Pestilence, in its chalk white withers. Pestilence leap two hundred feet down from the rooftop to the street without complaint or really any sound at all. His best friend was the quiet type, which Jake didn't really mind. On the ground, when Jake didn't need to ride Pestilence anymore, his best friend's body contorted. The white skin burst and bone swelled. It's spine snapped, popped, and reformed. Instead of horse hooves, its lower half was a sleek, bullet-shaped centipede's body with a hundred dagger sharp legs. It's torso had four, chitinous lobster claws and pale carapace armor. Claws so sharp they could cut a steel bar in half. It's head was still sleek equestrian, but it had sprouted eight dark eyes that were like two rows of black pits. It's mouth was a nest of of shark's teeth. Instead of a tongue, it was a tentacle like pseudopod capped with a scorpion's stinger oozing acid.

Jack was still mostly himself, but that was the point.

The Dixie Pig was a refuge from the seething mass of undead clogging the streets like it was Mardi Gras. Here the street in front of the restaurant was empty. The door to the restaurant was left ajar with bright, pink neon lights declaring the restaurant was both open and had the best ribs in New York. Jake had had them often enough to know that was true. That ribs that was.

Inside was a normalish scene of pale skinned men and women munching down around ribs and other bits of humanity. They slurped at cups brimming with frothy red liquid.

"Hey everyone!" Jake Prime called out, smiling. He was greeted with pleasantries, asking after how he was, and his family, and stuff like that. Jake took a few minutes to smile at them and answer their nice questions. They really were a great bunch of people, much nicer than the people who had been his so called friends and family before.

The five grandfathers were old and smelled funny, but Jake was polite enough not to comment. They had black eyes like Pestilence did and their mouths were much the same, filled with razor sharp fangs. Their skin crawled like they had worms living beneath the surface or maybe that's all they had inside themselves was worms and their skin was just a bag keeping all the worms together. Poppa had told him not to ask, so Jake hadn't.

"So, your grace," Grandfather Sigismund said, bowing his head, "Are we to assume, the profane interlopers have arrived?"

Grandfather Dracul frowned; his nostril's dilated. "I smell them brother."

"Of course," Sigismund said, "Let his grace speak, or I'll rip the worms from your belly."

Dracul bowed his head as did the other three Grandfathers. Jake knew everyone deferred to Sigismund, so when Sigismund treated him like an adult, Jake really liked that. Jake's smile got bigger. "Yeah, Grandfathers, the cowpeople popped out of the rose."

All five Grandfather's made smiles as big as Jake's own.

Unacknowledged or unseen by any of the six in the room, a thumb-sized black widow peaked out from a crack in the corner of the room then scuttled back out of sight.

“Well this world is fucked.”

“What an asshole,” Tanha said, effecting a convincing New Yorker accent. The a-sounds in particular bunched and tensed as her tongue glided along the roof of her mouth. Already pieces of her old outfit were dripping off her like the whole mirage had been painted and someone had just tossed paint thinner on her. The sexy cow girl outfit gave way to a Uma Thurman from Kill Bill, a blazing yellow one piece leather motorcycle outfit with a gleaming silver and crystal katana sword. Tanha held the sword in her right hand flared out the side. Her hips swayed in the opposite direction as a seductive counterweight.

Tanha flicked her head backwards, sending back a cloud of corn silk blonde hair. The hair alighted into place with bangs framing a vague tan on her face. Longer shoulder length hair fell in perfect straight lines that only moved when needed to highlight her dramatic movements.

Her weight shifted, and she rolled to the side when the shrieking black missile’s streaked overhead. Those she ignored. She darted forward into the line of zombies rushing towards the group. “Find our fucking next waypoint already.” Fucking came out more like ‘fooking’ with the New Yorker accent.

Her movements where like watching silk flitter in a playful breeze. She flowed with and around the zombies, her blade gliding through outstretched hands and severing forearms as easily as if they were paper. Even the skulls of the zombies didn't deflect her momentum. As she picked up speed, her katana left trailers of gleaming silver in its wake like a sparkler waved in the hands of a child at night. Even gravity was only a consideration. She ran up and along the sides of the brick buildings, sliding along the glass of a bay window like it was foot thick ice. She slashed, decapitating ten zombies before meeting the brick on the other side of the window. She cartwheeled off the side of the building, impaling a zombie from the crown of its head down through its neck and into its chest cavity. She landed in the midst of a thick knot amongst the surging millions strong hoard. Her katana came out of the zombie’s body like the corpse had been a sheath. She executed a Battōjutsu quick draw albeit a grizzly one which begged the question how she might have practiced it to do it so well from an impaled corpses head. The blade cleaved one zombie in half and took out two more before its arc was complete.

Tanha darted back towards the trio of humans. “Well this world is fucked.” Again sounding more like ‘fooked.’ She gave a low whistle and shook her head. “Roof tops?”

The Time Has Come to Be Gone.

And then they went from ghost town to Romero nightmare.

"What were you saying," Cold grimaced, as he spun the chamber on his revolver, gritting his teeth, "about your kind of odds?"

"Still don't hate 'em," Heatwave growled. "C'mon, Snart. This isn't even our first army today."

Then Tanha metamorphosed into a Tarantino pastiche with shades of Wachowski and began slicing and dicing and defying gravity-- ripping into The Crazy 88s of The Dead like they were so much hibachi dining.

Cold squinted. "Loved your girlfriend in Sucker Punch."

"Don't be an ass," Rory snorted. Then paused. "Sucker Punch had robots, not zombies."

kizkiz said:

Tanha darted back towards the trio of humans. “Well this world is fucked.” Again sounding more like ‘fooked.’ She gave a low whistle and shook her head. “Roof tops?”

Click to expand...

"Easy, there, Queen Bea," Snart snarked. "We don't all have your particular set of skills. Me an' Mick don't have over or around, we just have through."

He glanced at Lisa, frowning. "Unless you got your speed-ghost powers back?"

"Shut up a second," Lisa murmured, gazing up at the sky.

And then in a sudden, reality-wrenching surge of black leathery elongation-- she exploded from the ground, launched upwards into the air-- her dark brunette hair spilling way too long and way too wide-- not quite her tendrils again but analogous--

--she rrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaached--

--and as those wraithlike projectiles barrelled in at rocket-launch speeds, she attempted to gather them up, to snare them and wrap them up and engulf them in herself.

She didn't know what they were or what they did.

But there was no way she was letting them land.

Snart watched her go for a second.

And then nodded.

"Yippee-kie-yay it is, then," he growled.

And as one, he and Rory slapped leather and drew on the zombie horde, firing-- firing-- firing--

--wherever Snart aimed, there froze and shattered five zombies, ten, twelve--

--wherever Heatwave pulled his trigger, corpses ignited and exploded, spontaneous subhuman combustion, roaring as the firelight reflected in his eyes--

--firing so many more bullets than revolvers could hold without reloading, reflecting the enormous capacities of the guns' waking-world equivalents--

--and, in conjunction with the action-movie genre-fusion--

--over the hammering of gunfire there swelled a soundtrack.

Leaves are falling all around
It's time I was on my way
Thanks to you I'm much obliged
For such a pleasant stay
But now it's time for me to go
The autumn moon lights my way
For now I smell the rain
And with it pain
And it's headed my way

Ah, sometimes I grow so tired
But I know I've got one thing I got to do

Rory's sledgehammer boot caved in the face of a dead thing, his fist backhanded another, he squeezed his trigger and a wall of them exploded before him like fireworks...

Ramble on
And now's the time, the time is now
To sing my song
I'm goin' 'round the world, I got to find my girl
On my way
I've been this way ten years to the day
Ramble on
Gotta find the queen of all my dreams

Got no time for spreadin' roots
The time has come to be gone
And though our health we drank a thousand times
It's time to ramble on

Snart unleashed a (literal?) hail of cryonic bullets, aimed low... cutting off the legs of a freshly-rotten wave of attackers, and with their next steps they shattered below the waists and fell to clutching and crawling along the ground...

...his next salvo rendered them frozen statues crushed and broken by the falling feet of the next inexorable line...

Ramble on
And now's the time, the time is now
To sing my song
I'm going 'round the world, I got to find my girl
on my way
I've been this way ten years to the day
I gotta ramble on
I gotta find the queen of all my dreams

I ain't tellin' no lie
Mine's a tale that can't be told
My freedom I hold dear
How years ago in days of old
When magic filled the air

Rory was laughing.

Big, whooping, joyous, crowing laughter.

A kid in a candy store.

Pyres gouted skyward, a landlocked Viking funeral for all these corpsified sons of bitches.

'T was in the darkest depths of Mordor
I met a girl so fair
But Gollum, and the evil one
crept up and slipped away with her
Her, her, yeah
Ain't nothing I can do, no

"C'mahn," Snart egged them on.

Firing ice.

"C'mahn."

"Take a number, people."

"I'm a mastermind. I crunch numbers."

I guess I keep on rambling
I'm gonna, yeah, yeah, yeah
Sing my song (I gotta find my baby)
I'm going 'round the world (I gotta ramble on sing my song, gotta work my way around the world baby, baby)
Ramble on, yeah
Doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, my baby
Doo, doo, doo, doo, doodoo doodoo doodoo doodoo doodoo

I gotta keep searching for my baby (baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby)
I gotta keep-a-searchin' for my baby (my, my, my, my, my, my, my baby)
Yeah yeah, yeah yeah, yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah (my, my, my, my, my, my baby)
Oh, I can't find my bluebird (my, my, my, my, my, my, yeah)
I'd listen to my bluebird sing but I, I can't find my bluebird (yeah, I keep rambling baby)
I keep rambling baby (I keep, I keep, I keep)
I keep rambling baby, baby, baby, baby, baby...

The Twinners: Jake Two, Three, and Four upon an adjacent rooftop watching the carnage

“Huh, they’re still there.” Jake Three said, whistling and shaking his head.

"Yeah," Jake Two said, sighing. “I mean, I guess soon they’ll be up here, I just...”

"So..." Jake Four said, coming over to join Jake Three and Jake Two on the lip of the sky scrapper again. The one over looking the abandoned lot was only thirteen stories high, but it still gave a good vantage point.

The boys had come back some time ago. Time was not behaving very well, all the boys had agreed. Their Casio Calculator watches were going all screwy. They’d set timers so they could converge in about an hour. It had been longer than an hour, but the sun hadn’t moved. Sometimes the timer would spurt forward on one watch only to go backwards on another. It was really weird, but that topic of conversation had blown through some time ago.

“That’s kinda cool,” Four said at least. The three of them were staring down over the ledge. One building over, perhaps by chance or perhaps by random, the cowpeople had built up quite a huge pile of stuff. “What do you think it is exactly? Wonder what it smells like.”

“Shit, churned out double dipped ice cream, I dunno.” Three picked at an innocent looking expanse of flesh on his elbow until it started to ooze something black and something blacker wriggled out.

“Prime doesn’t like swears,” Two said, looking at the thing wriggling in Three’s fingers.

“Yeah well, Prime said all our friends would overwhelm them,” Three said, lifting the wriggling, black thing to his right eye. He shrugged and threw it over the side of the building. The wound had already closed.

“It’s bodies, right?” Four asked. “I think it is.”

“No way, really?” Two turned from watching Three to looking at the cowpeople.

“I mean, that kinda makes sense,” Three said, “They have destroyed tons and tons of our friends. Not very nice.”

“Nope,” Two said, shaking his head.

“You mean it is nice?” Four asked.

“What?” Two turned to look at Four.

“You said nope, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh.”

“Whatever.”

“So, corpse explosion?” Three said, cutting into the back and forth.

“Awesome!” Two and Four said in unison.

The Outsiders are still...outside!

“Through,” Tanha said, dancing up the side of one of the corpse walls, slicing a few bits here and there, only to run back down to finish what she wanted to say to Snark. “We aren’t going anyway but up.” She nodded at the corpse walls.

It was hard to imagine even for her, and she’d been there when Kiz put down the Man in Black upon the shores of Creation and forced a name upon him. A proper name. One that stuck. This was warping or being warped into a nightmare. Only by such dread logic would all the populace of New York be so tightly packed and pressed so hard that every body downed was just replaced, but replaced by something crawling over it. Repeat that a thousand or ten thousand or a thousand or a million times. Snark was the mastermind of counting; he probably knew the exact number.

“So was that what you had in mind?” She flicked off gore from her blades before leaping up ten feet, whirling and slicing two zombies in mid-air. She landed again, although there wasn’t much space clear. The pavement was soaked in gore and fat. It was the rancid fat that made it so difficult to do much of anything.

“How about we go up now?” She pointed towards one of the larger piles of bodies. Bodies wasn’t a great way to describe what resulted from fire, ice, void, and blade. It was more like an undead smoothie. Still there was some solidity to it if you moved fast enough. Or perhaps the wonder twins could figure out some way to solidify it more. Or maybe.

She shook her head, they were getting mired down not by the onslaught, which was in the logic of dreams infinite. It was just that after doing this for so long they’d accepted the logic of the scene. The narrative had pervaded their thoughts. Even her, an adapt of this shit, had fallen into the trap. Trap. “Trap,” she whispered finding something there for her mind to hold onto. “What kind of trap is this?” She wondered aloud. “Words bring on logic...” Even as she spoke she didn’t stop her sweeping dance trying to fill the gaps between the fire and ice and whatever Lisa ended up doing.

“Flight...internal consistency...resonance, fucking fuck.” There was something there to be found, but he was good.

She was of dreams.

He was of nightmares.