Chapter Text
In all her life, Henrietta had experienced many horrible nights. She was goth, it was kind of in the handbook to see through the vanity of the living world. Her time working with the arcane arts had also proven that, quite pointedly, if the death of Michael said anything about the circumstances of her involvement in the craft.
Suffice to say, the call from Stan was concerning. The fact that no one ever showed up was worse. The fifteen unanswered phone calls from her phone to Stan were the breaking point.
She knew where the fight was happening, half of Denver was currently under an active evacuation so if she just followed the chaos, she’d find the stupid man she begrudgingly called a friend and kick his ass over making her worry like this.
Henrietta hiked up her skirts and hurried down the broken street, the pavement resembled peppermint bark in the way it was broken up, sharp edges jutting out revealing the exposed pipes and old layers of other roads beneath it. Some buildings teetered dangerously, their foundations disrupted by the earthquakes that shudder out of the center of the destruction. She held her book, the necronomicon, under one arm, and used her other hand to climb over debris.
The disturbance seemed to be coming from a warehouse in the center of town and even from a street over Henrietta could hear the loud roar of something that sounded like a turbine engine and shouting. More like screaming, if she were to be honest with herself, terrified screaming.
The building was easy to break into, all the doors were already blasted off their hinges, no doubt the super geeks’ doing on their crusade to defend the innocent or some other bullshit.
Henrietta ducked under a broken archway as she stumbled inside, following the sound of chaos. The louder it grew the more uneasy she felt, something heavy and sick growing in her gut as she hustled down the cold, empty corridors.
When she finally found them, the sight was not a pretty one.
“What the hell did you fucking idiots do?” she yelled, there was blood and black ooze everywhere, and Craig, still standing in her civilian clothes stood with a smoking gun and hole through a cloaked figure’s head.
Stan’s cousin’s focus shifted from the person she’d just shot to Henrietta’s face, her usually stoic face teary eyed and wide. Beneath the two of them was the mutilated body of… was that Professor Chaos? It was hard to tell, what with the way her face looked like blood and mush and Henrietta’s own lack of experience with all the hero bullshit. She only knew things on a basic level at Stan’s insistence, her own paranoid nature aside. “Where is St-Toolshed?”
“What the hell are you doing here?” Craig asked, someone’s sobbing overshadowed by the powerful wind turbine of sound. She seemed unbothered by the Great Sleeper emerging behind her.
The cloaked body crumpled backward to the floor, a jumbled heap of limbs and fabric. It took Henrietta a long moment to realize it was Mysterion, or rather, someone or something posing as him. The figure radiated a dark miasma, the aura so thick and sour she resisted the urge to pucker her face. It was rancid, like rotten meat and spoiled, curdling milk.
“You fuckers,” she cursed, hitching up her skirt and ducking between metal pipes and unopened wooden crates to reach them. “You tried to fix him without me! I told Toolshed it wouldn’t work. You conformists don’t know what kind of powers you’re messing with---”
A deafening roar cut her well deserved rant off. All four of their heads jerked away from each other and up to the figure that bellowed in the eye of the mystical vortex. One of the Great Old Ones. Him Who Lies Dreaming. The Sleeper of R’lyeh. Cthulhu.
He looked healthy, despite the absolute asswhooping the original Freedom Pals’ delivered unto him six years ago during the original event that drew them all together in the first place. The original tangling of the spidery webs of fate.
Thick, knotted scars trailed like lichtenberg figures up his arm when he’d been unlucky enough to grab a young Chaos and get zapped. There were deep pockets on both arms, wounds dug out by the heroes during their original encounter, now scabbed over or thick with layers of scar tissue, slow healing but powerful. And his face… It was hard to believe that at one point in time she’d worshipped him, Henrietta felt a chill that had nothing to do with the frigid December air zip down her spine. She resisted the juvenile urge to shudder, stuffing her hand down into her bra to look for the small warding charm she kept there in case of emergencies, and if the emergence of a calamity causing event wasn’t an emergency, then she didn’t know what was. The little bundle of sage and crystals trembled in her sweat-slick hand, or maybe it was her hand that trembled, or the air around them vibrating with the force of the wind and the god and the electricity.
“Henrietta,” Wendy’s irritatingly preppy voice called out, Henrietta’s eyes zeroed in on her kneeling form, practically tan next to the ghastly woman on the ground who after a moment of staring, she could confirm to be Professor Chaos. It was hard to tell through all the blood splattered on everything but Henrietta would recognize that silky blonde hair anywhere. And that ugly metal helmet. “Thank god you’re here.”
Henrietta didn’t waste another moment, and neither did Wendy, both approaching Craig and the body of “Mysterion” with urgency. Henrietta stormed. Wendy stumbled.
Above them Cthulhu’s maw of tentacles dripped viscous green slime in fat drops onto the concrete, his torso now halfway out of what Henriette thought was obviously a portal. The limbs writhed on their own, searching for a morsel to consume in a way that distinctly reminded her of a cat’s whiskers sniffing curiously for something in the air.
The long webbing hem of her skirt soaked up the blood at Craig’s feet, it pooled black and sludgy at the head of Not-Mysterion, Henrietta tried not to think about exactly how much blood was now soaking the soles of her mary janes, it squelched between her toes as she stepped over the body.
“We’re sooooooo fucked,” Craig breathed stuffing the gun into the waistband of her jeans. Beside her, silent tears fell from Wendy’s face as she staggered over, leaving Chaos to cry woundedly by herself on the ground, a twitching, sobbing, mostly unconscious mess.
Henrietta grabbed Wendy by the shoulders as she reached Craig and the body, her black talon nails digging into the meat of Wendy’s arms through the fabric of her thick coat. “What did you do?”
She looked shell shocked, like every plan she and that conformist asshole Timmy came up with just came tumbling down all at once. Like dominos. Big fat dominos that would end up killing everyone. Cthulhu roared, scanning them distantly like they were insects, nothing but pesky bugs beneath his feet. He was looking for something.
“What?” Wendy croaked, her words almost lost to the wind. Henrietta shook her again, pulling her so close their noses were almost touching. Wendy’s aura stunk of something dark and earthy, an unnatural tang that made the corners of Henrietta’s eyes well up with spicy tears.
“What the fuck did you do? You didn’t bring me the talismen.” In her heart she knew what became of the talismen. A week earlier, the conversation had gone as follows: Timmy, Wendy, and Henrietta in a dark room, illuminated only by the blue glow of a locked computer screen and Timmy’s iphone.
“You know Tolkien doesn’t like it when you smoke in here,” Wendy said primly, smoothing her skirt of its late night wrinkles. Her face was gaunt, even then. With grief.
“I don’t really care what Tolkien likes,” Henrietta said and took another drag off her long cigarette. Tolkien was a rich conformist asshole who could afford to replace his curtains and have the nicotine scrubbed down from the walls. His mansion had about ten too many rooms, what did he care if one or two of them stunk of cigarette smoke? “What do you want from me?”
“There’s something we need to discuss with you,” Wendy’s voice was calm and held an abnormal raspy quality, her face was bordering on haggard, like she hadn’t slept since Mysterion didn’t come back.
Henrietta took another drag off her cigarette. “And what could the big boss man possibly want with me? Our abilities aren’t exactly compatible. You with your ‘psycho’, me with my ‘voodoo’—” she purposefully said it wrong and in air quotes, well aware of what most of the new gen Freedom Pals thought of her business with the occult. And to be fair, if Henrietta had been a conformist loser she probably wouldn’t believe it either. “—we’re kinda like oil and water. Don’t mix well.”
Wendy habitually smoothed her skirt again, an angry tic Henrietta noticed when she and Stan first started dating. Thank God they’d broken up, she didn’t think she could stand having Wendy third wheel their hangouts with the other goths. “It’s about Mysterion.”
Henrietta put down her cigarette. “What about him?”
They’d been acquainted. Friendly acquainted, or as friendly as Henrietta could get at least. She ‘liked’ him, or something like that. Stan liked to tease, she thought he was an asshole. A conformist asshole.
“You’re aware he’s… missing, right?” Her voice choked on the word, and Wendy cleared her throat. Henrietta raised one thin, penciled on eyebrow and nodded slowly.
“Dead, you mean. For realsies this time.” It was hard to imagine someone with a netherborn metagene as Dead, capital D, but Mysterion was always full of surprises. Dick.
“He’s not—” Wendy protested, but stopped herself to take a deep, calming breath instead. “—he’s missing. There was no body and ever since, Timmy’s been picking up on strange psychic activity around the city.”
Beside her, Timmy made a small hum of agreement, gesturing limply with one hand over the tartan blanket spread over his lap.
“Strange psychic activity?” Henrietta raised one carefully penciled on eyebrow at her words, disbelieving. It was the vaguest description of ‘bullshit I don’t understand’ she’d ever seen.
“He monitors everyone’s brainwaves—” Wendy began but was quickly interrupted with a scoff.
“Yeah because that’s not creepy at all,” Henrietta rolled her eyes as she said it, taking a drag of her cigarette.
The taller girl frowned “—and there’s three areas where Mysterion’s functioning brainwaves have been appearing in pulses. I already tried to check the areas out to confirm his… missing status but there were too many cops out trying to clean up the mess from Chaos’s attack. I didn’t see him or anything like him despite my sensors. Timmy suggested the issue might be more occult than metaphysical.”
It was an interesting conundrum, but Henrietta wasn’t sure if it was something she personally wanted to dip her fingers into. She’d had enough of that six years ago when Mysterion came to her and the other goths in an attempt to foil their devil worshipping and figure out the origins of his powers. Her fingers briefly glanced Michael’s locket. The metal was still cold even though it sat cradled between her bosom. “And you… what? Want my consultation? I’m pretty sure I charge more than you and veggietron five thousand over there can afford here…”
“We’re not really asking,” Wendy’s voice was hard, her hands clenched into fists at her side. She crossed them over her chest defensively and stared down at Henrietta, no longer disguising her distaste. “You’re going to help us, or Timmy will make you. Our friend is in danger, Henrietta. I know you don’t actually give a fuck because of nihilism or whatever it is that makes you act like that but we’re not going to let him stay stranded out there, potentially hurt and definitely alone just because you didn’t want to get off your lazy, fat ass. I’m not going to let him.”
“Maybe he’s just tired of the hero do-gooder bullshit,” she replied as if Wendy’s threatening tone hadn’t bothered her in the slightest. It was a front but Henrietta was good at bluffing. “You know it’s been six years. Nobody’s managed to even put a dent in Chaos’s operation. He’s probably just drinking the loss off like the sore conformist loser he is.”
Timmy’s hand twitched and she felt a probe niggling in the back of her mind.
“Hey,” she snapped, turning to him. “Hands off the merchandise, asshole. I don’t want you rummaging around in there, you might turn me into a vegetable coma patient.”
The feeling slipped away softly, as if it were never there in the first place but Timmy’s grim expression never changed. “Timmah.” ‘Henrietta, your expertise is of vital importance to our search for our missing comrade. You will help us. Now is not the time to be stubborn. Don’t you want to help your friend?’
Henrietta scoffed “Mysterion is not my friend. He’s a douchebag who thinks he’s better than everyone else. If he wasn’t such a stuck up asshole you could’ve solved this ‘mystery’ by going to his house and checking on him… Oh wait! He’s such a paranoid loser that he doesn’t even trust the other losers he hangs out with to know his ‘secret identity’—” she said that in air quotes as well, well aware of the vein throbbing on Wendy’s forehead “—because he thinks you’ll what? Invite him to dinner? Hang out after patrol? Get out of my face.”
She took another long drag of her cigarette and wondered just how fucking long it was going to take Stan to get changed so he could drive her home. Damnit.
Wendy slammed her hands on the table, making her jump away from the sudden noise. “Damnit Henrietta!” She screamed, tears she hadn’t seen before dripped onto the wooden, turning it dark with wetness. “Can you just fucking help us for once in your life? Or go—! Get out of here and don’t come back! Someone is in danger and you’re just sitting here smoking a god damn cigarette like a deadbeat!”
Henrietta was silent for a long moment, she stubbed her cigarette out on the table, careless of the burn it made in the polished oak.
“Well theoretically… It could be his spirit, trapped in some sort of items? When a person dies sometimes their spirit will attach itself to important objects or places in their life. Those three spots could be manifestations of Mysterion’s will, so to speak. Of course that douchebag would be just the type to get stuck in limbo like that. Stubborn asshole just won’t stay dead…”
Wendy sniffled and wiped furiously at her nose with the back of her hand. She wouldn’t look Henrietta in the eye.
“But you would need something powerful to glue all the bits back together. If it was a curse it could be undone but not by any old shmo with a tiktok altar and a hex they found on the internet, someone with real power.” Someone like herself, actually. She didn’t say that though. Wendy wouldn’t believe her either way.
Timmy clumsily stroked the peach fuzz he called a beard on his chin. “Timmah.” ‘And I could put those pieces together. Powerful psychics in the past have claimed to repiece together the mind after all. It can’t be all that much different.’
“No, definitely not,” Henrietta denied, crossing her arms and glaring at the two of them. “You’re a psychic, even if you were able to harness the energy I doubt you’d be able to mash it together without turning Mysterion braindead. Or mentally stupid. It’s a delicate process.”
Timmy frowned. “T-Timmah.” ‘I could just be careful, very very careful.”
She shook her head. “Nobody can be that careful.”
When he continued to stare at her, Henrietta doubled down, crossing her arms and shaking her head. “I’m not going to tell you how,” she said, leaning forward in her chair. “I’m being serious, Timmy. You cannot put someone’s soul back together the same way you can put someone’s brain back together. They’re not the same thing.”
Something that wasn’t her own brain niggled in the back of her mind, searching. “Timmy, stop. I’m serious. Timmy seriously! Stop—!”
“You—you said—” Wendy started, her voice hoarse. In the present she was pale as a ghost. “—we could bring him back if we gathered the items. You said Timmy could fix him. You said someone powerful could put the pieces back together.”
“I know what I said! And I told you Timmy wouldn’t work! Not without my help and certainly not without a body!” She shook Wendy, hard, as she said it. There was a certain sort of delicacy required when piecing the soul of a human being back together that no amount of telepathy or psychic manhandling could fix. “Are you fucking stupid? Did all those dates with Stan kill any remaining brain cells you had left? I thought you’re supposed to be the smart one Wendy!”
Henrietta could barely hear her own voice over the screaming wind but Wendy still managed to burst into a fresh wave of tears.
“Stan is dead,” was all she managed to spit out, and Henrietta’s heart stumbled over itself, skipping a long painful beat.
Craig pulled Wendy out of her grasp, her strong fingers digging deep into the tall girl’s coat. “What did you just say?”
Wendy’s eyes were glossy behind her goggles, she looked pale, almost grey in the flashing purple light. “Timmy thought he could do it, the—the pieces, they were in him and we had to get them out but it was hurting him… He asked us to stop…” she squeezed her eyes shut like she was trying to forget a bad dream.
Behind them Cthulhu’s head emerged from the inky black miasma. His face was just as slimy and disgusting as Henrietta remembered it, though this time it was covered in much more scars than their first encounter. Long oozing tentacles of thick, corded brown flesh writhed like a searching maw as the giant struggled to push itself through the vortex. The frame was almost too small, his broad, mucus-covered shoulders almost unable to squeeze through the circumference of the circle. The warding charm in Henrietta’s hand trembled against the intense flaring of power.
Craig pushed her away, hands coming to surreptitiously swipe at her downturn face. “And you didn’t listen? You really killed him?” Her words were a sharp edge, serrated and cut deep to the bone, voice cracking. “We don’t have time for this, we’ll all be dead in a minute unless somebody does something to stop that fucking thing.”
Henrietta’s free hand came up to glance against the cool locket against her chest. She wondered if there was enough room in it for another soul.
“He stopped breathing, Timmy managed to—restart his heart but he didn’t wake up…” Wendy’s face was grey and paperthin. “But we brought Mysterion back! I don’t understand what… He was killing her. He wouldn’t stop.”
Henrietta turned to look at the figure with its brains blown out all over the floor. It felt nothing like the real Mysterion, more like a cheap imitation of what someone thought he was supposed to be like. A facade maybe, or a wax coating covering a rotten custard inside. “You sure did fuck something up. It doesn’t matter, that thing—” she gestured to the dead body and glared up at the Ancient One “—won’t be bothering anyone anytime soon. You two need to get your head in the game or Cthulhu’s going to flatten us.”
-
Above them Kyle snapped, baring her teeth with a snarl as she jumped, trying to pin Cartman against the makeshift control panel. He cackled with barely restrained glee as she missed, smashing into the metal rods with a painful sounding smack. The scaffolding shook with the force of the blow, the rattle nothing in comparison to the roar the monster in the portal let out.
“You’re too late, you stupid fucking cunt,” Cartman hissed, though his ugly face lit up with delight. He must’ve been insane. He had to be.
Kyle’s heart was black and shriveled. His happiness mocked her, just another reminder of her colossal failure and the sight of Stan laid out, a corpse still breathing but only just. “I’m going to kill you, Eric Cartman.”
He laughed heartily at that, fat belly jiggling without restraint. The sound hurt Kyle's sensitive ears but so did the vortex and the roaring and the sound of Stan’s pleading still ringing in her ears. “You wish. You and your little faggy friends can’t stop Cthulhu, not this time and definitely not without your little attack dog. How did it feel when Mysterion died? Huh? Did it hurt to watch your stupid friend kill himself against my greatest creation? I have to admit Chaos might be a crazy dyke bitch but she sure knows how to put up a fight. Too bad Fauxsterion over there splattered her on the pavement.” He ducked another of her punches. “Speaking of, who’s that poser you’ve got all suited up in the big purple cape? I know for a fact Chaos creamed him into the pavement earlier last week.”
Cocky son of a bitch. Kyle growled under her breath and fired a laser beam at him. It skimmed the tuft of his mousy brown hair which he smacked frantically with a manic look in his eyes. “You bitch! You ruined my hair!”
“It was ugly anyways,” she scowled, wings twitching, wanting to flare out in a show of anger and dominance. Kyle wouldn’t put it past him to shred one of them in an attempt to gain the upper hand or flee. “Just like you. You’re an ugly little rat and you’re going to pay for what you’ve done.”
Cartman laughed again in a sarcastic way, like he thought what she said was funny. “What I did? Who cares what I did? The world is about to be mine—no—it is mine! I already won!” He swung, a pudgy hand raking across her chest. Kyle pushed him away but a few seconds too late, his silvery nails digging deep lines into the meat of her torso. “There’s nothing you Freedom Fags can do to stop him. Or me.”
Beside them Cthulhu howled, a guttural sound that shook the glass windows above their heads. His fat, slimy tentacles lashed out like feelers, searching for something to hold onto and consume as he emerged from the vortex. Kyle’s stomach dropped out of her ass when she realized he was more than halfway through in the time it took for her and Cartman to throw a few punches. Against her will tears burned in her eyes. She didn’t let them fall.
Kyle tackled him with a scream.
They tumbled across the rickety wooden floor of the scaffolding, the planks rattling against the metal as Kyle attempted to throttle Cartman, her hands wrapped around his thick throat in a futile effort to choke him. Even with her long fingers, she couldn’t quite get her hands around it, his strangled chuckle vibrating against her palms.
Cartman raked his claws down her arm, cutting through the fabric of her coat and gouging thin lines into her paperthin skin.
“Where’s Toolbag? Isn’t he your little bodyguard? Or pet maybe?” A meaty fist connected against Kyle’s temple, her vision whiting out for a moment. Despite that she didn’t let go, wouldn’t let him shake her off. Not this time. He was going to jail or the morgue. Kyle felt the heat of her laser vision evaporate the tears on her cheeks and eyelashes. Her pulse pounded in her head. She was so tired.
“How do we stop it?” Even though her sight was blurry with tears and tinted red with her power, she never took her eyes off his face. It was ugly and scrunched up in pain. One fat hand wrapped around her wrist and failed to pull her off. Her hollow bones creaked.
“You. Can’t.” He gasped out as he choked, fat legs kicking out beneath her as he tried and failed to buck her off. Kyle’s eyes were sparking now and even through the haze she saw the way his face turned a distinctly paler shade. “Even if you closed the portal now, it’s not like it would do anything. Urk. He’s already too far into our world, you’d have to push him back through before you closed it and You. Can’t. Do. That.”
Even the distress of being choked couldn’t stop the manic grin that spread across his face. Kyle struggled to slam his head into the scaffolding but Cartman still yowled in pain at the motion so clearly she was doing something right.
“Why would you bring him back anyways? He’s going to destroy the world, Cartman!” She knew all her angry pleading would mean nothing to him. He didn’t care about all the people this disaster was going to hurt—had already hurt. Cartman only cared about himself. Earlier, Wendy tried to call an ambulance but the destruction surrounding the safe house was too much. No one could reach Stan and this motherfucker who started it all, who puppeted Chaos behind the scenes, who built a machine to destroy the world, who killed Stan (and Stan was dead, most likely braindead at least, if Timmy and Wendy’s words were anything to go by) was grinning and laughing like he hadn’t already ended her whole world. Cthuhlu or not.
“No,” Cartman growled, finally managing to shove her off. She stumbled back, smacking her ass against the planks and her head against a metal pole. He sneered as he sat up and massaged his throat, spitting a fat glob of saliva into the space between them. “He’s going to reshape it. Cthuhlu listens to me, he does whatever I want! I’m going to rule the world ‘the world’s mine oyster, which I with sword will open’ and that sword’s going to make me rich and powerful.”
“You won’t get away with this,” Kyle forced out, her head pounding, that last smack made her vision begin to double in dizzying fashion.
He smiled, sincerely this time, standing up. “I already did.”
Kyle let loose a torrential laser with a scream. It was anguish, straight anguish that poured out of her, unfocused from the concussion and slicing straight through the fat of Cartman’s upper arm. He howled in pain, stumbling backwards into the precarious railing of the scaffolding’s platform, it shook the whole structure, her tears evaporating under the sudden intense heat.
The beam sputtered out after a few intense moments, clipping the frame of the Vortex. The metal, some kind of steel or maybe aluminium, cut like a knife through butter leaving a small chunk punctured out like hole punch. Kyle took labored breaths as she stared at the spot for a long moment, ignoring Cartman’s wailing as he stood curled around his injured arm.
A thought began to form… if Wendy and the others could push the eldritch monster through, she could destroy the frame with her lasers. An ultimate attack might be the key, wrath of kite would be strong enough to completely mangle the frame, stopping the Vortex for good.
“Guys!” She hollered, voice thick and hoarse from her tears, turning towards the small blocky figures standing in a cluster near the fallen assortment of dead bodies. It looked like Craig, Wendy, and Henrietta? They were fighting about something while trying to avoid being splattered by Cthuhlu’s huge hands. “Push him back in! We can close the gate! I can close it!”
Before she could get a response, a thick-fingered hand grabbed her by the hair, wrenching her head up to look him in the face. Cartman’s eyes were redrimmed with rage. He punched her in the nose, swinging his good arm. “You motherfucker—!”
-
The gargantuan hand swung toward them and the three girls had barely enough time to jump out of the way. Craig watched, whole body aching as Henrietta ducked to the floor and Wendy took a few quick, stumbling steps backwards, barely out of range. Her power burned hot and sharp through her veins, almost bubbling from the heat of her barely contained rage. Stan. Dead. Or at least braindead if his ex-girlfriend was to be believed. Her chest ached and it wasn’t from the broken ribs.
Cthulhu's big beady eyes zeroed in on them, the only ones not distracted by his slimy little monsters, he observed them with something that might have read as curiosity, or as a predator absentmindedly tracking potential prey. He turned to the small, elevated control area where a fuming Eric Cartman stood.
“Kill them!” Cartman howled from his place hunched over a broken shape on the scaffolding. He was holding one arm close to himself and covered in blood but it was impossible to say whether or not it was his own. He pointed one tiny fat finger at the three of them. “Turn them into red paste! I want them dead!”
The behemoth turned to them, bellowing a wordless roar. It almost sounded like nothing at all, just a wall of noise so loud and so intense it knocked Craig off her feet. Her hands slapped against her ears without thinking, stumbling backwards in an attempt to keep her balance. The sound rattled in the hollow cavity of her chest, she felt the vibration in her joints and watched through squinted, watery eyes as Wendy was knocked down to her hands and knees. A quick glance told Craig her ears were bleeding, long black stains that trickled down from pale skin like a nose bleed.
Cthulhu swiped at them with one meaty, gnarled paw, his sharp talons scraping against the concrete floor, gouging thick divots, crisscrossing hatchets with the previous jagged lines from Chaos’s lightning attacks. Craig dove out of the way, slamming shoulder first into a large wooden crate left discarded on the ground from the construction of the Vortex’s frame. It hurt like a bitch, thin wooden planks cracking and splintering under the pressure of her super powered impact, sending her sprawling into the sawdust and hay tuft left inside. The darkness of the closed box was soothing to her pounding head. Time felt like it was passing too fast, too slow, and not at all. Her blinks were gummy and too long, she couldn’t hear past the deafening ringing in her ears, bloodied and deafened by the animalistic scream of the monster.
Craig never met Cthulhu, after the whole event, before she became a vigilante, Stan told her stories about it sometimes, on the roof smoking cigarettes with Tweek with shaking hands and his eyes squeezed shut like he was trying to imagine anything else. Even then she’d decided she never wanted to meet it. To see it in all its horrible eldritch glory with her own two eyes.
Fate had a funny way of fucking you over.
Her moment (however long or short it ended up being) of safe darkness was interrupted by a figure tugging on her exposed arm, heaving as they pulled her out of the box and back out into the open with the monster they were supposed to kill.
“CRAIG!?!” Tweek. Sweet, beautiful, anal, crazy Tweek in all her stupid, frizzy glory knelt over her, intense eyes wide and terrified and staring directly into Craig’s. She was sure she looked like a mess: covered in hay and splinters, bloody in the face and the chest, and covered in bruises. Not that Tweek looked much better, her concussion definitely wasn’t any better, pupils two noticeably different sizes and sling arm beginning to turn swollen and purple. Static electricity visibly snapped between her fingers, jumping to little points against Craig’s aching shoulder like little painful kisses. “Ohmygod! Are you okay? Are you hemorrhaging? Are you dying?!”
“I’m fine Honey,” came out in a hoarse croak, completely unreassuring and Craig cleared her throat to try again. “I’m fine. Honey, I told you to stay out of the way, I don’t want you to get hurt. You have a concussion.”
Tweek frowned, her thin, trembling fingers brushing against the sticky blood that coated Craig’s temples, her black bangs stuck in clumps to her forehead from it. “So do you. If that’s not a concussion then I -ACK!- I don’t know what is,”
Her toothy grin was crooked and weak, Craig wanted to wipe the whole defeated look off her face.
“We’re going to die, Craig,” Tweek never called her by her name in uniform, and technically even though they weren’t actually wearing their super suits, Craig knew in her heart Tweek meant it in the way that said she’d given up. “I love you,”
“We’re not going to die,” she replied, cupping Tweek’s long face, ignoring the chaos around them for a moment. Someone was screaming, it sounded like they were dying. Craig’s chest throbbed where she’d been stabbed through with darkness. Maybe she was dying. Her thumb brushed away tears that threatened to fall but some dropped down onto the tattered scarf laid haphazardly over her chest anyways. “Did you hear Kyle? We just gotta—” she coughed and something splattered against her face “—we gotta push him back in and we’re golden. I promise, Honey.”
A sob broke free of Tweek’s chest, her whole body shook with it, like she would blow away to pieces before her next breath. “You’re too fucking optimistic. Don’t you know it’s -ngh- the end of the—the world?”
Craig thought about Stan, braindead or regular dead somewhere with no one but Timmy for company. Of Karen splattered against the pavement of this very room. Of the gun with the hot muzzle tucked into the back of her jeans, safety on and digging into the tender flesh of her back like a hot iron. She wondered if there were enough bullets left in the chamber to take them both out before they were crushed or eaten or worse. Her breaths were ragged gasps, like she was trying to catch something before it got away. Maybe Tweek was getting away, maybe the fight.
Maybe none of it really mattered anymore.
She let the doubt wash over her for a long, tender moment. Felt her body push itself into a sitting position. Everything rushed back all at once. The sound, the pain, the crippling fear, Craig gasped against the feeling, her heart pounding too quick and too fluttery in her chest. The world lurched beneath her hands and she leaned heavily into Tweek’s chest for a moment, her long blonde hair tickling Craig’s nose.
“We just need to push Cthulhu in,” she repeated, a little to Tweek and a little to herself. Internally Craig began to hype herself up to stand. And then walk. And then fight. “Everything else can wait. You can bail now, Honey. If you want to. I won’t ask you to lay down your life like this.”
Tweek was so cold against her near feverish body, something inside her was wrong wrong wrong. It didn’t matter. They didn’t have time. She wanted Tweek to run far away from here, as far as she could get.
“I’m not leaving you. You can’t even stand,” Tweek’s voice quivered as she spoke. “I’m going to -ngh- help. Everyone. You. I don’t know!”
Craig pressed a chaste kiss to the purple knuckles of Tweek’s broken arm dangling near her face and pulled herself up off the ground.
The floor titled beneath her feet, or maybe it was her who was tilting. Either way it took Craig a long moment to steady herself, pulling the torn mask off her face. It didn’t even matter now, everyone in this room was either going to die or not and their odds weren’t looking too good right now.
Wendy and Henrietta were fighting with Cthulhu directly, flashes of bright magic and something that looked like a souped-up taser tearing into the meaty grey-green flesh of the god’s slimy body. They both looked worse for wear despite being the freshest fighters in the warehouse. It sort of felt like if Craig took another step she might fall down and never get back up again.
“Okay,” she said, Tweek hovered nervously at her side, hands held out awkwardly like she was expecting to have to catch Craig the second she tried to do anything. “You. Me. Anyone else who can help. Push that bastard back to where he came from. Let Kyle take care of the rest.”
Her broken ribs shifted as she threw herself down, mashing her knuckles into the concrete in a superpowered blow. It fractured in a fast line towards the hand Cthuhlu kept braced against the ground, crumbling beneath the force of his heavy hand, sending the giant off centered. His strike meant to squash Wendy missed, sending a cloud of dust and debris flying past her instead.
Her head whipped up in their direction, blue eyes wide behind her goggles, her face covered dust, sweat, and blood.
“Hey!” Craig called, hoping to be heard over the roaring wind, the fighting. “You and Tweek start pushing him back! I have a plan!”
Wendy nodded, stabbing her long poker into Cthulhu’s hand. The prongs pierced his thick hide, leaving the monster to shout something incomprehensible at her. Wendy stayed unphased, operation Save The Fucking World was a go.
“Tweek,” Craig panted, one hand pressed against her sluggishly bleeding chest wound, the other on her knee to keep herself from keeling over. “Go help Wendy push that thing back into hell where it belongs. Get Henrietta too. I’m going to—to help the others so they can help us. We need… all the Freedom Pals for this one,”
“You can barely s-stand,” Craig tried to ignore the plea in Tweek’s voice. “Ngh—Craig please. You—you—”
“I’ll be fine,” she pressed a winded kiss to Tweek’s cheek. “Go. Help. We can do this.”
They were already done kissing before Craig knew what was going on, Tweek’s palms pressed flat against the sides of her face, their mouths together for one long, soft moment. Tears in her blue-green eyes. And then she was gone.
Thunder boomed above them.
Craig forced herself to move, hobbling in a half-limp/half-run towards the other side of the room where Beta Squad was losing their battle.
Scott and his gooey, shaping shifting monster matched each other blow for blow as they moved across the crowded space. It was him who Craig reached first, tackling him out of the way before the creature could skewer him through with a hardened rod of pointy goo. Her ribs burned like crazy as they crashed to the ground, skidding a few feet from her unrestrained use of super strength.
“Jethuth Chrith, C,” Scott yelped, his hand coming automatically up to cradle the back of Craig’s head like it was precious cargo—as if she hadn’t already smacked it against practically every surface in this building already. “What the hell?”
“You were dead meat, Scotty,” she panted out. Fuck if it wasn’t hard to breath. “Skewered, like a kebab. You're welcome.”
All of Scott’s mousy brown stuck up in different directions, Chaos’s electrocution did that to people and Scott managed a nonlethal dosage earlier. It made his reflexes twitchy, slower than usual. “Are you okay?”
The creature advanced on them, Craig pulling herself to her feet in time to punch it through its core, her fist connecting with something hard and meaty. She wrapped her fingers around it, pulling the slimy lump of the thing’s beating heart right out of its chest. Her fingers squeezed against the quivering fleshy mound, squelching the thing’s core into nothing but ooze as it burst under the pressure. Scott’s eyes widened.
“How did you know it had a heart?” He asked, then added after a moment of thought “that was dithguthting…”
Craig hadn’t known. “New plan. We need to push that thing back in its hole. Go help Wendy and Tweek, they need your strength. I’m going to help Jimmy and Tolkien, where’s Clyde?”
Scott looked around for a moment as the creature melted back into a slimy pile of goo at their feet. “I’m not thure. If I thee him I’ll grab him, thith theemth like an ‘all handth on deck’ thituation,”
She gave him a single pat on the arm and watched as he flinched against the rough treatment, strength more unchecked than she’d like it to be. “Good man. Don’t die.”
Scott nodded and took off in a strength enhanced jump, landing a cannonball blow against Cthulhu's shoulder, forcing the creature back a pace or two. Tweek caught him before he could fall twenty feet to the ground or get splattered against Cthulhu's shoulder like a mosquito.
Scott and Jimmy stood back to back, striking out against an increasing tide of oozing creatures. They lacked any certain shape, turning into a myriad of things before eventually destabilizing, falling back into their formless blobs. Both looked worse for wear, Jimmy sporting a nasty cut above his eye from his broken red visor and Tolkien with a nasty looking black eye.
“Hey!” She called, hobbling over as fast as she could. Her bum leg, weakened from being broken a week earlier trailing behind her, each step closer and closer to being unable to support her weight. Craig took a deep breath, ignoring the painful twinge of her ribs, and charged forward, smacking into the solid form of a police officer, sending it flying a few feet into Tolkien’s ready fist. The creature splattered on the concrete, unable to hold its form for a moment as he unloaded a round of bullets into the figure, trying it back into a pocket of soupy black slime.
“I thought it killed you,” he said, and then did a double take when he realized just exactly how much blood she was covered in. “Are you—?”
“Not dead yet,” Craig interrupted, ducking under a sharp needle aimed at her head. Her head cracked against the slimy, semi-solid creature as she threw it back, sending the beast sliding back a few feet. Thank God for super strength.
“They won’t—” Tolkien punched another, this one half-molded into the malformed shape of his father. “—die!”
Craig shook her head and then regretted it when the action gave her an intense bout of vertigo. “They can, there’s a heart inside them. You have to squish it.”
Next to them, Jimmy laughed. He smacked one away with his crutch. “How’d you f-f-f—How’d you feh-feh—manage that?”
“I stuck my hand in one,” she said, sticking her hand into another, fishing for the heart but coming up empty. She kicked another away from them. They just wouldn’t let up and Craig could feel herself rapidly running out of steam. No, she still needed to help the others push that fucking monster back into the portal.
“You’re crazy,” Tolkien managed to laugh in the chaos of it all. He punched one that had unknowingly crept up behind her, shooting it a few times for good measure.
“There’s a new plan,” she panted on her hands and knees “We're going to push it back into the Vortex. Can you two—help?”
Jimmy made a few quick passes, sending a few of the creatures stumbling back from his rapid fire blows, melting down for a moment into their more goopy forms.
“I don’t know how much help the two of us would be, we’re not exactly above average in the strength department,” Tolkien grunted, shooting a round into one of the blobs. It absorbed the blows, dropping the bullets out of its body with a few quiet plinks. They seemed to be learning.
Craig punched the next one so hard it splattered against the wall ten feet away, the heart in her fist. She dropped the wet, pulsing flesh and smushed it beneath her foot. “That’s two,”
“Jesus,” Tolkien said, dropping another with his stun gun. His suit looked worse for wear, many of the panels dented or ripped off entirely. Then his eyes went wide as he reached out to— “Craig—!”
Something was over her mouth in an instant, and then her eyes. Craig clawed at the viscous slime that covered her head, one of the monsters was on her, pulling her back into itself like some kind of fucked up hug. It wrapped itself around her struggling limbs as she kicked out, trying to pull it away from her eyes, out of her mouth.
Someone grabbed her leg, trying to pull her out but the effort was futile, the monster’s hold on her was too strong. She couldn’t get out.
Craig’s lungs burned like they were going to pop, she couldn’t breath past the slime trying to worm its way into her nostrils, into her mouth. She felt it on her tongue, squirming like a jaded lover, trying to force its way deep into her core, to choke her out, take her over completely.
This was it. This was how she died, not with Tweek, not fighting a giant monster but suffocating in the endless blackness of some lame slime monster.
Something hot and solid grabbed her ankle and pulled.
Craig gagged on her hands and knees, chest burning and heaving as she coughed up slimy, saliva covered black tendrils. They oozed on the cracked concrete beneath her, the creature shrieking as it was encased in boiling hot metal. The steel spiked and bulged in places where the monster tried to escape the burning to not avail. After a moment of struggling the metal dropped out the heart, letting it fall to the ground to immediately be impaled by a handful of sharp, razor thin needles.
“Craig? Are you okay?” Tolkien was by her side in an instant, holding her up by the shoulders, patting her down for injuries. Craig’s eyes blurred with tears, an involuntary reaction to almost choking to death as she heaved and heaved. He pointed his gun forward. “Get the hell away from her!”
The needles fell away from the heart and a single polished loafer crushed it beneath its toe.
Fucking Disarray.
“This has been such a shit show,” the General stood before them, his arms crossed and face collected into something close to resembling distasteful neutral, curly hair sticking straight up. He was covered in black goop and sweat and blood just like all the rest of them, looking more than a little worse for wear. “Stand down, asshole.”
The metal dropped the remaining slime carcass of the goo monster with a resounding wet smack, floating back over Disarray’s head like a strange protective lava lamp.
“What, did you want to finish us off instead you sadistic bastard?” Tolkien’s arm didn’t waver even though Craig could hear the fatigue in his voice. They were all getting tired.
“No,” the ginger growled, what little patience he had already ran thin. “Why would I expend the energy to save you just to kill you? And get my hands dirty for no reason? You heroes are so senseless.” He paused for a moment. “Is she alright? Still able to fight?”
“Why? Want me to kick your ass?” Craig croaked out, trying to smile cockily at him. It came out more like she was just baring her teeth. Most of the oozing creatures had metal spikes through them. What did Disarray want?
“You can’t waste any more time trying to stop these disgusting creatures,” the ginger said, ignoring her statement about kicking his ass. He adjusted his goggles and frowned at them. “They need your strength.”
“Like you care,” she spat out along with a glob of black ooze, around them the monsters were already beginning to reform.
“I’ll take care of these. Jimmy and I will keep them at bay,” Tolkien’s statement and his black eye made Craig wonder just how hard he’d been hit.
“You two can’t possibly—”
“They can with help,” General Disarray looked disgusted with himself as he spoke, his whole face screwed up in displeasure. Craig’s throat felt like it was full of broken glass as she laughed.
“Oh so you’re a good guy now? Is that what’s happening? The end of the world finally gave you a change of heart? You suck, Disarray.”
“Who do you think sent you the data in the first place?” He hissed, eyes flashing. The metal writhed above him with his anger. “This wasn’t a part of the plan. He knew about our killswitch. Disabled it. My Professor’s sacrifice won’t be in vain.”
Craig pulled herself up off the floor, eying him warily. “You’d really help us?”
Disarray nodded. “I have people I need to protect as well. The three of us aren’t pushers but we can keep these ugly little beasts distracted so she and the other Freedom Freaks can send that thing back to hell where it belongs.”
“Go,” Tolkien told her, brushing some imaginary dust off her shoulder. “Unfortunately, he’s right. They need your help.”
“Are you sure?” She asked, something churned deep and uncomfortable in her gut.
“We got this. Go save the fucking world, Craig,”
She nodded and turned away.
Cthulhu was absolutely massive, Craig tried not to let unease keep her from approaching as her friends duked it out with the behemoth. With all the effort everyone was putting into pushing him back in, he wasn’t moving forward anymore but he wasn’t moving back in either.
Her girlfriend landed like a comet of blonde hair.
“We can’t win this,” Tweek panted, her whole body vibrated with electricity. “Not without, ACK, not without Mysterion! His shadows, they’re the only thing strong enough to push Cthulhu down enough for us to send that fucker back to! AGH! Back to hell where he belongs!”
She tilted a little as she spoke and Craig grabbed her by the shoulder to keep her from face planting on the ground.
“We don’t have Mysterion, we’ll have to figure something else out,” Craig replied, trying to puzzle out how exactly they were going to win this thing. Cthulhu was just too big, too heavy. She pulled Tweek away from the heavy paw that swiped towards them, lightning jumping from her girlfriend’s hand to electrocute the monster. It roared at the biting pain as Henrietta stumbled into the two of them.
“Any brilliant ideas, Craig? You fucking poser? We’re kind of getting our asses kicked, here.” She asked, something gross and black dripping from her fingertips. Was that… Cthulhu’s blood?
“Did you cut him?” Craig asked, ignoring the insult. Henrietta frowned at her. “How?”
“Yeah? And? It wasn’t enough, clearly.” The goth replied, casting something with her hands that sent a black torrent of energy towards Cthulhu. The monster howled again, turning towards them and away from Clyde who was about to be grabbed out of the air.
“Well, doesn't Mysterion’s power come from the same source as Cthulhu? Stan told me she told him that once,” Craig explained. Fuck did her throat hurt.
“She?” Henrietta sounded intrigued, or as intrigued as a nihilist asshole could seem.
“Long story. It doesn’t matter now since we’re all going to die.” Craig sighed, glancing at Mysterion splattered on the ground with a bullet through his head. She was going to kill Wendy Testaburger for this, if they survived. “You have to try again. The.. bits… are all still here. Sort of. It’s not any better than what we were trying before, right? We need those powers or we need you to harness those powers. I don’t think there’s any other way.”
Henrietta looked at her like she was crazy. “You’re crazy. That’s an insane plan. It won’t work.”
Well,” Craig threw her hands up helplessly. “What else can we do? You have to try.”
Henrietta stared at the dead body for a long moment, the wind from the Vortex tearing at her skirts and short black hair.
“Well,” she huffed, pushing up her silky black sleeves. “Here goes nothing,”
She jogged over to the corpse, kneeling down in the congealing pool of blood and placed her hands on the body. Henrietta better pull through or else they were screwed.
-
Karen’s head fucking hurt. No, not hurt, throbbed. It kind of felt like one big painful bruise, her hands flew to her face, feeling for her nose which she was sure was broken. It wasn’t but it felt like it was, the agonizingly painful zings that came with touching something that wasn’t quite healed yet assaulting her senses as she tried to ground herself back in her body.
In an instant Craig was by her side, holding her up as she coughed out something gross and red, her hands trembling as she grabbed her old high school friend by the fabric of her jacket.
“What the hell? I said Mysterion, not some random Chaos lackey!” A loud voice shouted.
The world was spinning, she tried to quell the nausea.
“I said girl,” Craig intoned, staring at Henrietta? What the hell? With a blank expression. It felt like the whole world was rocking beneath them.
“What?” Henri asked, skeptical. “This chick is really Mysterion?”
“Yeah, asshole.” Karen croaked. There was something warm in her chest. She was Karen McCormick. She was Mysterion.
“Kare we don’t have time for this. Can you use your powers?” There was an unusual urgency in Craig’s voice that made Karen look up from her trembling, alive hands.
“What the hell is going on here?” Karen gasped when she saw Cthulhu, the warmth in her chest turning to ice. What the hell had she missed by being dead? She and Marj went to stop Cartman and then—?
“Cthulhu is back. World’s ending. We need you to help us push him back in the hole.” Craig said, monotonous as ever. Karen’s head swam, it was all too much.
“You need me to… push him?”
“Yeah,” Craig confirmed, her hand steady on Karen’s back. “In the hole. Kyle will do the rest. That’s the plan.”
“That’s a shitty plan,” she replied. Craig nodded.
“I know. That’s all we got.”
“Help me up.”
Karen’s legs wobbled as she stood but she closed her eyes anyways, looking for the tugging pulling sensation of the shadows. They listened to her command, swarming in droves to surround her and the girls like a warm, comforting blanket.
“Holy shit!” Henri cried, shadows pooling between her fingers like an animal that wanted to be pet.
“Restrain him,” she let Craig lean her against Henri who put an arm around her waist to keep her from toppling over. The shadows ran like dogs, crawling up Cthulhu’s massive molted body to restrain his arms and legs like cuffs, bodily hauling him backwards towards the massive portal behind him. Somewhere above them someone screamed in frustration.
“Let’s go guys!” Craig called, running over to whoever the hell was —fighting Cthulhu, Jesus Christ— stopping next to Scott near his feet where the two began to push as hard as they could. Clyde was flying near one of his shoulders shoving him over and over again as Tweek summoned a rush of wind to force him backwards. Slowly but surely, the Freedom Pals manhandled the eldritch god back through. Cthulhu struggled against the bonds but he wasn’t strong enough, his anchor in their world still too weak to prevent the pushback.
Karen huffed as the strain of holding the shadows against Cthulhu's will began to take a toll on her body. She felt herself break out into a sweat and then her knees weaken in such a way that ended with Henri supporting her entire weight, the goth struggling to hold her upright.
“Mysterion,” she said, trying to fold Karen’s legs so they could collapse gracefully to the ground.
“It’s Karen,” she pushed out through gritted teeth. Cthulhu raged against his restraints and yet still slid back another few feet, his legs finally passing through the barrier. “Everyone’s already seen me. My identity being a secret doesn’t matter anymore. Not between friends at least.”
Henri nodded, lowering them to the floor. “I don’t have friends, but Karen don’t push yourself too hard. I don’t know if your spirit could endure a third consolidation from the void…”
Karen laughed and tried not to let it show that her vision was beginning to flicker in and out. “I’m together now. I’ve got it all figured out. Don’t worry.”
In hindsight separating herself was a stupid idea. Karen really was just as much Mysterion as Mysterion was Karen. Before they could continue and just before the last of Karen’s straining powers ran out, part of the floor fractured beneath the monster’s feet, a combo attack between their two powerhouses Scott and Craig, sending the eldritch god off balance, shrieking as he stumbled backwards into the portal.
“Kyle, now!” Craig yelled, a beam of red laser vision pierced Cthulhu’s chest, forcing him to fall back the last few steps, disappearing into the whorl.
“Wrath of Kite!” She shouted, and in a second a torrent of multicolored lasers rained down on the machine, cutting through the steel and destroying it, disabling the portal permanently. Pieces crashed down to the floor and her friends scrambled out of the way of the falling debris.
“Holy shit,” someone said. “I can’t believe we did it.”
“We need to get out of here before the cops come,” Henrietta grumbled, Karen laughed and let the shadows disperse. She felt drained, like she could nap for a thousand years.
“I think we have time,” she said and tried to stumble forward, dragging the goth with her.
“You don’t even know what’s going on right now, you just had your brain blasted.” Henri replied and resisted.
“You’re under arrest Eric Cartman,” Wendy called, tying up his wrists with more zip ties than strictly necessary. She kicked him down the scaffolding’s stairs, watching with a vicious grin as he rolled to a stop at the bottom, screaming. “I already sent the police all our information and our location. You’re going to jail for a long time.”
“I’ll kill you!” He shrieked, trying to wiggle out of his restraints. “I’ll fucking rip your tits off you hateful bitch!”
Police sirens yowled in the distance, growing closer. Wendy pistol whipped him with one of her long pronged tasers and he fell blissfully quiet in unconsciousness.
“Hey idiots!” Henri called to everyone, trying to get their attention. “We really need to go! The cops are basically here!”
Before Karen was able to ask where the hell they were going to go an unfamiliar voice let out a piercing shriek. Her head whipped to the side to watch a woman covered in black slime rush towards—towards Marj. The memories of what they’d been doing in the warehouse rushed back all at once.
She tore out of Henri’s grip before she even realized what she was doing, stumbling on wobbly legs over towards the prone figure lying in the carnage.
Karen’s hand trembled, hovering uncertainly above Marj’s prone form. Her face was ashen, though whether it was from head trauma or blood loss she wasn’t sure.
“We need an ambulance,” she croaked out, her voice hoarse over the stone trapped in her throat. “Or—or something. I don’t know. Just—someone help her!”
The woman across from her pet cornsilk hair with trembling fingers. Dougie limped over behind her.
“We can’t call an ambulance, not for anyone,” he said, staring at Marj’s too shallow breathing. Karen was sure how much more strain her heart could take before she died again. At least she knew this time she’d come back. “The cops will arrest all of us, villain or vigilante,”
“He’s right,” Tolkien’s voice was tired and oozing with sympathy. He pulled Karen to her feet, slinging one of her arms over his shoulder. She couldn't quite keep herself standing by herself. “We have to go. Regroup at the base. I contacted Nichole, she’s already on standby.”
A painful lump coalesced in her throat. “But M—Chaos…” She stumbled over her words, head still spinning from the reintroduction of the two halves of her soul, though, to be fair, it wasn’t as if anyone were really trying especially hard to hide their identities from Dougie or Cartman right now. Everyone seemed to have figured they were going to die so it didn’t matter all that much.
Karen watched as Dougie picked her up, cradling Marj’s injured head closer. The woman with him wept openly. “You take yours, I take mine.” To Karen he said “She’ll be okay. I’ll—I’ll send for you when she’s stabilized, alright?”
Karen nodded. There was nothing else she could do, she could barely walk right now, much less fight Dougie for Marj, especially not when she was so injured.
“Thanks for your help,” Tolkien said gruffly, pulling Karen in the direction of the other Freedom Pals. Dougie nodded once, sharply and cradled Marj close as he began to jog away, pulling the strange middle aged woman after him. “Come on, Mysterion,”
“Karen,” she whispered, her eyes never leaving Dougie back even as they stumbled away from the retreating villains. “It’s Karen,”
Police burst into the building through the broken front doors just as they ducked down through a broken window in the back to make the rough journey to Tolkien’s mansion to lick their wounds.
It was all going to be okay. It had to be.