4

Logan knew, even before things got under way, that this battle was going to be terribly one sided. Or one tentacled, if that was even a phrase.

Logan had time to pop his claws and cut the first tentacle that lashed out at him, but the second caught him in the gut a millisecond later and sent him flying. He went crashing through a parked car, the windshield dissolving beneath him like the thinnest coat of rime on a pond, and he came to rest sprawled awkwardly on the collapsed front seat. Yeah – as an opening salvo, that could have gone better.

He wasn't the only one who ended up thrown down the street. Kier had gone flying, and Rogue just barely managed to dodge a hit by ducking down behind a parked car. Bob just winked out of existence, because as an energy being he had a choice in retaining his physicality or not (good thing – that tentacle almost decapitated him). Doyle was a ghost, therefore intangible, but he still stood back anyways. Leaving poor Bren in the middle of the street, bringing out his Brachen side so he was strong enough to take the beating.

But that was when they found out the battle wasn't totally hopeless.

A tentacle lashed out at Bren and he grabbed it, and there was this ear shredding noise, like a dental drill turned up to eleven and amplified, and the tentacle tore itself away from Bren, melting like it was made of wax. “What the fuck ..?” Kier exclaimed, picking himself up off the street. So far, the Eel Monster's vampire fan club was just watching. And why not? There was no reason to engage when they were getting their asses handed to them so easily.

Logan popped the door of the car he trashed and got out, replaying what he'd just seen in his head, waiting for all the glass shards to be pushed out of his back by his healing factor. “The vines, “ he said. “Bren, the Gorgons won't let it harm you.”

Bren looked at him, deeply confused. “What?”

“The vines are toxic to it.” When Bren had grabbed the tentacle, it had looked like the tattoos surged, moving down his arms and spreading onto the tentacles, and it was those points of contact where the tentacle was melting.

Bren looked at his arms, which were now a sort of teal green with red spikes sticking out of them. With the black vines on top of it, he had clashing arms. The vines were still writhing, but like angry snakes – they wanted blood.

“Ooh, I can help,” Rogue said, and darted out with an ungloved hand, touching the side of Bren's face.

“I don't think -” Logan began, but by then Rogue had borrowed Bren's power, turning teal green and getting red spikes shooting out of her skin. She broke the contact and made him stumbled back a couple of steps, but she didn't take so much that he collapsed, which was good. She looked at her arm, and frowned. “I don't have any vines.”

“I was gonna say you get his abilities; the Gorgon vines aren't an ability,” Logan said, flexing his back. Most of the glass was out, but damn, it was an unpleasant sensation.

Bob popped back into reality, this time slightly to the left and behind the eel tower, and holding a sword that looked to be made of fire, red-orange flames dancing in an impossible shape, balanced on a haft of marble. “Too right,” he agreed, before stabbing the sword deep into the eel pile.

It screamed like a dentist drill once more and Bob was hit by a flail of tentacles, sending him flying or disappearing again (hard to say which under all those green-black scales), but the flaming sword was still stuck deep in the eel pile and wasn't shaking loose, which was counterintuitive, but wasn't a demon made of nothing but tentacles kind of counterintuitive too? None of it made too much sense, so he couldn't sweat the small stuff.

The tentacle flails headed towards Rogue and Bren, and Bren stepped in between it and Rogue, perhaps hoping to deflect it. The tentacles still hit him, sending both him and Rogue sprawling, but as its tentacles reeled back, they were melting where they'd hit Bren. He was pure poison to the thing, and they had to make that work for them, because that was pretty much all they had.

Kier started to lunge, probably to get protective of his boyfriend (for all the good that would do), but Logan grabbed his arm and joined him by Bren's side. He helped Rogue up while Kier helped Bren up. “We hafta work together,” Logan told them, as Bob popped back in to ram another flaming sword – as improbable as the last – in the demon's opposite side. Again, he disappeared in a cascade of writhing demon flesh.

“Why isn't Bob just shutting it down?” Rogue asked, still frowning. In Brachen form, this looked ten times meaner.

“I'm assumin' it's immune to him, which is why he's goin' for the weapons.” Also, Bob could have pushed him earlier and hadn't, suggesting that Sushi Skyscraper there couldn't be pushed. Hell, did it even have a brain he would recognize if he cut it out of its head? (Wherever its head was. No way to tell.) “Bren, you're are main weapon here, so you're gonna hafta try and get as close to it as you can. Grab a tentacle and don't let go; climb it like a rope.”

“Say what?” Bren asked, horrified.

“Then, while its distracted with him, we do as much damage to it from as many different points as we can. But we're the real distraction – only Bren's vines have any hope of hurting this thing.”

“I've never been good at climbing ropes,” Bren continued. Logan ignored him.

“We hit as a group, and hope the Gorgons and Bob can shut this thing down enough to make it die or retreat, whichever comes first.”

“And then what do we do about the vamps?” Kier wondered.

“Ropes and me? We don't get along,” Bren continued, a bit more flustered. “Gravity hates me!”

Logan shrugged. “We gotta be alive to worry about them.” As an afterthought he added, “No offense.”

Kier shook his head. “'S okay. I was alive once.”

“Guys, don't ignore me,” Bren pleaded. “I can't do this.”

Logan gave him a sympathetic look, but told him, “You hafta. You're all we got.”

That made him look vaguely sick, but it was hard to tell, as he was already green.

Bren started down the street towards the thing, nervous but clearly trying to be brave, and they split up, moving slowly, hanging back behind Bren. Bren started off tentatively, and Logan could smell his fear, but then he must have figured fuck it, because he suddenly charged, fist pulled back as if about to punch it in its non-existent face. A tentacle lashed out, and Bren grabbed it as it slapped past, making Bren leave the ground, but he was still holding on to the tentacle, and it was melting in big snotty clumps as it screamed like a jackhammer being driven into the body of a steel car.

Logan ran then, slashing blindly, hitting tentacles without quite seeing them. He kept slashing deeper into the forest of tentacles, and the stench grew to hideous levels. The blood of this thing was basically liquid shit - black, thick, noisome - and pretty much explained the gagging stench of it. He would not only have to burn his clothes after this, but peel off at least one layer of skin.

Eventually a tentacle caught him and sent him flying again, only this time his fall was cushioned by a vampire minion not paying enough attention to get out of the way. As Logan got up off of him, he raked a claw behind him, cutting off his head and turning him to dust. The vampires around him didn't like that - they all looked in his direction, fangs and yellow eyes flashing, growling like a disturbed tiger. Logan, on his feet now, showed them his claws, still dripping with liquid shit gore. "Really? You think you guys could last one minute?"

"They'll -"

"- try -"

" - we all -"

"- do," said some very familiar voices. The crowd parted - well, partially parted. Some, when they realized who was coming their way, ran and hid in shadowed doorways. They'd try him, but this kind of trouble? No way.

The Weird Sisters. In shiny red plastic raincoats, baggy green cargo pants, steel toed boots, and blue t-shirts with kittens on them, they were adorably tacky serial killers, their hair swept behind them in new shorter (but still matching) cuts. The way the vampire horde cowered away from them, their reputation was as fearsome here as it was in the regular world. "Is this where you go when you disappear?"

"It's -"

"- fun -"

"- here, we -"

"- run the -"

"- entire coast and -"

" - San Francisco. Nobody -"

"- will try us. We -"

"- wonder why." They gave him brilliant stereo smiles that had no warmth at all, and crawled with madness.

Logan tried to shake it off - holy fucking god, these crazy bitches were creepy, even counting out the fact that their signature move was ripping people's arms off - and asked, "What about the spaghetti monster?"

"Yes -"

"- Bob -"

"- asked us -"

"- to help."

Speak of the devil - which he was pretty sure Bob had been called at some point (in fact, if you were a Biblical literalist, you could probably call him Lucifer) - Bob winked back into existence, this time right next to Bren, whom he grabbed by the shoulder. They both blinked out then, leaving Kier trying to physically rip a tentacle off (he was doing a pretty good job) and Rogue punching into the mass of its body, trying to make a more painful and meaningful hit. Before they could react to Bren's loss and their ultimate doom, Bob and Bren appeared right on top of the pile of eels. "Here, it's a better view," Bob told him, then drove Bastet's knife into the topmost tentacle.

As Bren pressed down on top of its head (? Maybe - hard to say), it screamed so loud windows blew out explosively all along the street, powered glass like frost peppering the sidewalk, and Logan grunted as his eardrums popped like cheap firecrackers. It left him feeling hollow and weird, hearing everything like the world was suddenly under water, but he could still hear the Sisters loud and clear as they said, "Dibs -"

" - on -"

"- the crowd."

The vampire minions around them - at least two dozen, probably more - visibly recoiled as they turned their insane smiles on them. Perhaps their reputation was even more fearsome here (and if they owned the California coastline, that would track), as despite their number advantage, no one wanted to fight them. Logan left them to it, glad the vampire crowd was pulling back (way back - you could see some running), and raced back towards the tentacle pile, slashing at everything that flailed his way. He'd must have cut off at least two dozen tentacles, but there was no obvious thinning of them, no lessening the pile at all. Did this thing grow them back?

It seemed to be shrinking, though, as Bren hung on to the top of it. Tentacles spasmed upwards, trying to knock him off, but couldn't quite manage it. Rogue and Kier were still trying to fight their way inward to the unknown eye of the tentacle hurricane, and Logan was hacking his way through, as Bob winked back into the middle of the street holding a bow and arrow. "This medieval shit is pretty awesome, inn't?" He pulled back the bow and shot an arrow, which burst into flame in mid-air before burying itself deep in the pile. Once there, there was a small but muffled explosion, and the pile quivered for several seconds like a Jello salad.

Logan was up to his elbows in liquid shit blood and wondered if he would smell this in his nightmares for years to come when the pile of tentacles suddenly collapsed like a badly made soufflé, and Bren yelped as he tumbled off the top. Kier was just underneath that section, though, and managed to catch him before he did a header onto the concrete. “Did you shoot an arrow made of dynamite into it?” Bren asked Bob, back on his feet but still looking shaky (and dripping with goop).

Bob, who no longer had the bow, smiled and shrugged. “It was either that or shoot a Denny's Grand Slam at it, and frankly I don't wanna know if he could get gas that bad.”

Rogue made a noise of disgust and tried to fling the shitty blood off her arms. She was mainly unsuccessful. “What the hell was this thing made of? A septic tank?”

“He's mainly just one big digestive system. A stomach with tentacles.” Bob said. He was irritatingly free of goop.

“Why are we even here again?” Bren asked, hands on his knees, trying to breathe through his mouth. “What are we doing?”

“We're after a death god. And I think we have an escort.”

“You -”

“- do,” the Sisters agreed. The vampire horde was gone; they couldn't have left fast enough. Bob had picked exactly the right back up. What they lacked in numbers they made up for in complete fucked up weirdness that no one wanted a piece of.

A tentacle flopped, making Bren jump. “It's still alive?”

“They're really hard to kill,” Bob admitted. “It's just stunned. We probably oughta mosey along before he wakes up.”

“Can we get a shower first?” Kier asked, trying to scoop the shit blood off his pantleg. He wasn't successful. This stuff clung like landfill mud.

“Shower?“ Rogue replied in disbelief. “We're gonna need a fucking cyclone to get this crap off.”

Bob continued grinning like this was all great fun. Of course, he was totally spotless, not a single splatter of shit blood on him, not a hair out of place. Bastard. “Well, it's a good thing we're goin' by the ocean, 'ey?” He started walking down the street again, bare feet slapping on the asphalt, when he paused and turned around. “Oh, but don't wake Cthulu, okay? Talk about a tentacled nightmare. He's even worse than this guy.”

“We -”

“- like - “

“- Cthulu, he - “

“- owes us -”

“- twenty bucks.”

Rogue flashed Logan an alarmed and quizzical look, and he could only shrug. Could have been a joke, could have been serious – he didn't know and he didn't care. As long as he got the shit blood off him before he had to fight it, he was good.