fandomtownies | The Playground in the Park, Saturday Noon

The monsters were coming.

Get ready.

	With a grim determination, Dean stepped forward, his boots crunching softly on the gravel path towards the playground. When he arrived he kept an eye on the approaching shadows. He knew that this would be no ordinary fight but this is why he was sent here. To end threats before they could slip elsewhere and back to his reality. He shifted his stance, ready to stand his ground against whatever horrors lurked in the shadows of the park. "All right you creepy crawlies. I've seen scarier things hiding under a kids bed!" he shouted. "Bring it on!"
	Were the shadows... blinking? A strange hissing shape wove its way out of the darkness, almost a man but not quite, his features too blurry to make sense of. Something coiled around his arms, shifting and moving. "WE DON'T TALK ABOUT THAT, MIDGE!" it hissed.
	"Midge?" Clearly Dean was missing context here. Instead of asking for clarification, Dean just pulled out his gun and emptied a clip at it. Which probably wasn't very effective against shadows.
	"MARYANNE! MARYANNE!" the creature shrieked. The bullets shot through it, fizzling and disappearing into thin air as it continued to move. The... thing? Curling around its hands.
	"Okay. Ixnay on the bullets," Dean growled as he stashed his gun and yanked out the Angel blade from its scabbard. "C'mon Skipper," Dean said taunting the thing and motioning with the blade. "Talk to me about Ginger and the Professor."¹ ¹This conversation of course all used the appropriate meta for Gilligan's island.
	"LO-OH-OH-VEY," the creature moaned. It didn't seem intimidated by the blade. It... didn't seem to respond to much of anything. But the ground underneath its feet turned an ugly yellow with each step. Closer. Closer.
	"Do not sing Kum-by-yah!" Dean snarled and lashed out with the blade.
	The creature moaned. "Kum-bah-yah." The blade didn't touch it. Just pushed straight through, as if the thing wasn't made of anything at all. Unfortunately, the snake-teeth that portruded from its hands, lashing out at Dean's shoulder, were rather more corporeal.
	Dean let out a shout from the pain and struggled to get away from the creatures grasp"Oh, that's just freaking great!" He stabbed at the arm with the blade trying to see if that portion was at least corporeal.
	And again, it sliced right through. The mindless thing kept going, coughing up nonsense names and stranger words. Its snake arm flailed out again, trying to catch Dean a second time. The heart, perhaps?
	The snake arm hit home and began to burrow into his flesh. Dean screamed out in pain. No. Not like this. His mind flashed back to his father smiling outside the gate to hell. Bobby's grin and uttering "Idgits" one last time. Charlie crumpled over in the bathroom of a cheap motel. Castiel's last look when he said "I love you." And then the barn as Sam's face as his vision went black. No. Not going down like that. If this thing continued to grow it would overtake the island. And if it slipped through the cracks? Home. And Dean was not letting this get back to his family. With one final wild slash he struck out with the blade, aiming for whatever served as their head.
	And. The creature. Just. Stopped. The eyes of the snake thing at its fingertips lit up first. Then, the space where a human's eyes were supposed to be. "... Fam... ly?" it stuttered. Its shadowy head slid from its body. It fell apart into a hundred little glitter-stars.
	Dean flopped to the ground like a dead fish once the grip of the creature released. He let out a small cough before saying to no one in particular. "Yeah. That was weird."

Edited 2024-04-27 11:54 (UTC)

	So, the world's bitchiest sorceress sucked plenty already when there was just one of her. But for the last day or so, Navaan had been harassed by three tiny versions of her made out of foodstuffs. That was weird and annoying enough, but they'd gone too far when they'd gotten into her doctor bag and smashed all of her very best medicinal booze. What was she supposed to do, drink the rubbing alcohol? That was for the patients! The ones she didn't like! "Where are you?" she howled. "I'm gonna take my booze back outta your ass!" Maybe don't think about that threat too closely. Definitely needed to be workshopped a little more.
	Three little Lilianas blinked their innocent little eyes. Each had a perfectly poised, delicate shrimp hand - or pavlova, yes, for the most precious - sitting on one spoke of the park's unimpressive merry-go-round. Were they... humming? They were most certainly humming. Disconcerting.
	"You know," Navaan said, stopping short. "That's a little creepier than if you'd just gone all in with the threats and stuff." They were also kind cute-- No! They had ruined her alcohol stash! And who knew what else that had been in her doctor bag when they'd smashed it. (Navaan certainly couldn't be expected to remember whatall she'd put in there. What was she, a rememberologist?) She continued her angry stalk towards the merry-go-round, once again yelling. "Yeah! I'm talking to you! Booze destroyers! Bitchy sorcerettes! Ummm..." She tried to think of another good insult. "You look like you were made with yesterday's catch and cracked meringue!" Somewhere, a tiny bat abruptly felt his feelings get hurt.
	The three Lilianas shuddered. "Un... ho... lee," the most precious whispered. Her two sisters eeled away from the merry-go-round. The shrimp that made up their bodies seemed to... undulate. It was not sexy.
	Navaan had found a lot of things sexy in her life. Many of them weird. Some of them fish-related. Even the world's bitchiest sorceress was sexy when she wasn't talking and/or being a giant bitch. But she was going to have to agree with the narrative here that these undulating fishy sorcerettes were not at all sexy. She planted her feet and took up a surprisingly competent fighting stance. "I don't know what creepy shit you're up to, but you're gonna pay for what you did to my booze! Like, for the replacement booze I mean. And maybe some dry cleaning. And - also don't come too much closer to me, keep your creepy wobbling to yourselves over there!"
	"Scalingthefish," hissed the strange, oozing shrimp-thing on the left. "Atmediumlowheat!" spat the second, righting itself up, and-- hurling itself physically at Navaan's face, a mountain of rice and seafood rising at once and flooding her vision with malevolent intent.
	Okay, so it wasn't even the tide of angry paella that was freaking Navaan out, it was what they were saying. How did somebody make reading a recipe intimidating? If Navaan weren't so unnerved, she would probably try to take notes for the next time she had to intimidate someone while doctoring or solving mysteries or whatever. It took her a moment too long to backflip out of the way of the wave of old rice and seafood and while she managed to avoid being dragged under by it, she did end up liberally spattered.
	That crawling, twisting, convulsing wave of paella smashed into the ground, flattening out as it... ebbed... Individual pieces of shrimp started to pull back towards a center, rice sli-i-i-ding across the mud. They reassembled into a facsimile of Liliana. Most Precious gave an idle wave of her little hand. "Whiskthewhites," she spoke coolly. "WINE!" shrieked the paella-Lilianas, like a mad pulsing alarm. "WIIIINE!" They broke apart into pieces, winding around each other, until they formed... one... massive... shrieking Liliana. "WIIIIIIIIIINE."
	"Okay, so I wanna go on record here as saying this is some fucked up shit," Navaan said.
	The giant Liliana-paella growled. Then it tossed its head back and it cackled. "COVERANDLETREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEST!" Arms outstretched, its head flopped forward like a sick, fishy thing. Its feet followed. It would devour, Navaan.
	That was not the way Navaan liked being eaten, Lilianas! The step forward got the vampire moving, at least, breaking through her horrified-fascination-paralysis. "I didn't even know you could have unsexy fights!" she wailed as she booked it around the playground. "I've never been less turned on in my liiiiiiiiiiife!" She ran towards her dripping doctor's bag and snatched it up. There was still all sorts of things in there, many of them ruined by the shattered glass and alcohol. She rooted through the bag, grabbing what few salvageable things she could see and consigning the rest to Sithrak. Which meant she had to make it count. She just needed a few more things... "Oh hey! Thanks bottle of rubbing alcohol I grabbed off the mantle!" she said, fishing that out. Along with a pair of panties that were four sizes to large for her with a (sadly, now illegible) number scrawled across the ass. She opened the bottle and shoved the panties two-thirds of the way in, hearing the thing shamble closer and closer... There! Last item! In her pockets, not her bag, thanks you, Lady Luck! She looked up at the massive, screeching seafood sorceress and yelled, "NEVER FUCK WITH A DOCTOR, LADY!" and flung her bag at the creature. It sailed through the air, landing pretty harmlessly at the thing's feet. Exactly where it was intended to go. "FLAMBE MOTHERFUCKER!" Because it was followed a moment later by a makeshift Molotov cocktail, aimed right for the highly flammable remains of her bag.

	No! How dare you! Only the best of cooking wines should go in a paella! The mass of rice and shrimp recoiled as the bag struck it, a thousand grains shivering at once. Most Precious gasped behind them, her delicate meringue cracking a touch in pure horror. Then the molotov cocktail struck. And the paella was suddenly violently on fire.
	"Wooo!" Navaan chortled, running around the playground in a victory lap. There was suddenly a chicken kickline dancing their way around the swings and Navaan joined them, intuiting the choreography in the way that only the truly nonsensical could. "Wooooooooooooooooooo!!! That's right! I said FLAMBE MOTHERFUCKER! Wooowooowooowooo!" Someone had forgotten there were three sorcerettes. And that same someone was now without her doctor bag and almost everything that had been in it.
	The Most Precious had not forgotten. She would avenge her sisters! Her sisters, who were now coming apart and falling to the ground in a pile of flaming food! Hissing, flaring her pretty purple skirts-- she attacked full bore, flinging herself at Navaan's hair for a good, angry pull.
	"Wooooooo--waugh!" Navaan tumbled off the kickline, dragged backwards by a deathgrip in her hair. "Ow! Ow ow ow ow ow! Let go! That's not how you sexy hair pull! Ow ow--PRESIDENT CARROT TOP!!!" Just like bitchy sorceresses to ignore safewords. Honestly now. Navaan flailed her arms wildly behind her, trying to smack the little purple freak off her hair and away from her. And if anybody asked, falling on her ass was also part of that. Trying to drag her down on the ground, too, or whatever.
	The purple freak did not let go. Instead, she clung tightly. And bit down on Navaan's scalp.
	THIS CONTINUED TO NOT BE THE SEXY VERSION OF ANY OF THOSE THINGS! Navaan was flailing, Navaan was shrieking, Navaan was...bleeding? "THIS IS NOT MY KINK AND THIS KINK ISN'T OKAY!" she screeched. She managed to wrestle the thing off and scamper away, but suddenly things seemed not as good as when she was yelling FLAMBE MOTHERFUCKER. Her supplies? Burned. Her doctor bag? Smoldering. Creepy purple thing? Still leering creepily and purpley, her mouth stained by Navaan's own blood. (For a moment, there was nearly a connection between that and vampirism and the people she'd lured out of Varnova to eat, but that seemed like tying current action horror sensibilities to some deep thematic elements and we weren't about that here.) Her pockets? Empty--wait. Frowning, Navaan reached into her pocket and pulled out the only other thing she'd been able to salvage from her bag - one slightly sodden fake death (sold by one of any number of reputable fake death merchants near you!). Even knowing that the last sorcerette was heading towards her with her little fucking mouth of lamprey teeth or whatever, Navaan couldn't help but take a moment to look at that the fake death. She'd killed a god with one of these. The Fun God, who'd been preying on her little guys, her monks who worshipped the god of luck and had been her very best patients - and nurses! - for the longest time. That adventure had brought her Grier and Morag the Immortal, and that hot guy she'd seduced all the good secrets out of, but then tricked him for the best secret... Those were the people who liked her best in the whole world. Well, not the hot guy. He'd been a cultist of the Fun God. But the other people. She wasn't actually sure if anybody here on the island liked her. She tended not to think about that much, or sometimes how lonely it got, but it was true she didn't have anybody here that liked her the way her friends back home did. Maybe...maybe it was time to go home for a while. Visit her little guys. Find out where Grier had ended up and how serious and boring she was being. Deputize a nurse to blow into the bottom of Morag's head so she could participate in a conversation or two. But to do that, she had to survive. And you know what Navaan was best at, even above adventuring, doctoring, and even fucking? Coming up with stupid fucking plans that were actually so stupid they just might work. "HEY CRUSTY!" she yelled. "NECROMANCE THIS!" And whipped the tiny, egg-shaped fake death right at the last sorcerette's face.
	The tiny egg sailed through the air and smashed into the face of the Most Precious, shattering against her pretty purple meringue. For a moment the Most Precious just laughed; even with as delicate as pavlovas were, the magic that bolstered her and her sisters was enough to shrug off a piddly little thing like that. Sure, there was now yolk, running down her face but-- Wait. Yolk? Her laughter turned into a wail of despair. "Separatethewhitesfromtheyoooolks..." she moaned as her body started to liquify and run, bubbling and melting as the fat from the yolk caused the meringue to collapse in on itself. "Whipintostiffpeaks..." And then she was gone, leaving just a thick, purple puddle of goo on the grass, with a few fallen blackberries as garnish.
	"...Yeah, that was real weird," Navaan said, looking at the goo in fascination. One of the chickens from the kickline drew closer. "Was that not what you expected to happen?" Navaan shook her head. "Nope! I figured, that by throwing a fake death at a fake necromancer, it would act like a real death, and kill her." "But wait," the chicken said. "Wouldn't the fake necromancer be able to control the fake death because it would be a real death?" She looked confused, counting on her wing feathers while she did complex math in her head. "Okay, I actually didn't think about it that hard," Navaan confessed. "I just wanted to see what she'd look like naked." The chicken appeared nonplussed by this explanation. Navaan appeared nonchalant. "Let's go rejoin the kickline." Finally. Something they could both agree on. "One...two...three...KICK!"

Edited 2024-04-27 11:55 (UTC)

"Okay, where are you?" Atton yelled, "I know you're still out here, you stupid dragon!"

He was going to beat this stupid metaphor into the ground.

Literally.

And the stupid hope-krayt-dragon came roaring out of the shadow-smoke, all claws and a nasty attitude.

It was going to get him this time. Gonna go and chomp down on that head of his...

"Oh, for f--"

Atton dove out of the way, just underneath its giant maw, and rolled-- straight into a slide. "Ugh. This is just my luck!"

Was it just your luck, Atton? Or had you spent way too much time on that metaphor you wanted to wreck?

The dragon lashed out with a single claw, catching him across the back. It left a gaping wound behind.

Atton staggered forward, reaching back to grope helplessly at the back of his jacket.

The old one. The one he'd come to Fandom with. The one he'd made a huge fuss about to Sparkle years ago, and then to Summer just a week ago. Ruined now, soaked through.

"Karking... metaphors," he managed, stumbling away from the thing. "Yeah, yeah, you got me as Jaq, you got me as Atton, good job, we've-- made everything super-literal..."

The dragon roared. It had the smell of blood in its nose now. It wanted more. That scratch? Barely a flesh wound; look, just a little healing energy on Atton's part, and it was already melting away.

No, it wanted all of him, this time.

It hurled itself physically at the man, jaw first again, this time sure his weakened prey would give in.

Hope. The stupid thing was hope, in his stupid karking lyrics that he'd stupidly written. Hope, always the monster under Atton's bed, ready to maul him whenever he tripped up and let it out.

To face death and keep standing... it leaves scars, yes. But it leaves room to heal.

Stupid Meetra. He just couldn't be rid of her.

Maybe that was the point, wasn't it? Face death, face hope, that was the first part. Atton turned around, looked at it.

Keep standing. The second part.

"I always thought I was good at that part," he murmured.

The krayt dragon's prey was here. It was not resisting. It closed its jaws around him...

...Atton lit both of his lightsabers.

The burning flesh stank like hell. It parted easily, though, like raw steak, parting at the seams and the sinew; inexplicably, the layers fell apart like those of an onion.

Within moments, there was little left of the dragon but strips of tissue, artfully arranged outwards, fanning out from the bones into the grass around them.

Atton took three deep breaths.

"Well," he said. "That was disgusting."

Rey had been dealing with this for the last day or two, so she was here and ready with her lightsaber was in her hand, if not ignited yet. Bring it.

Two puppets emerged from the shadows. Shaped like bees, they were about the size of a 12-year-old child, crocheted from the finest wool. One was a yellow-and-white, the other a yellow-and-purple; the buttons on their faces seemed to exude a kind of malignancy through sheer cuteness.

One opened its wool mouth and exposed a truly mindboggling array of sharp teeth. It made a strange hissing, sliding noise, as if two pieces of fabric were being rubbed against each other in a particularly frustrating way.

They hurled themselves at Rey in tandem, one from each side.

Well, that was awful.

Within about half a second the lightsaber was on and she was slashing at one side and then the other.

Funny how she did all this fancy lightsaber training and then got into a fight and just tried to stab.

The instincts went were the instincts felt like going. If it worked, it was better not to argue with it, right?

... Though it wasn't working much right now. A single wool bee-antenna fell to the ground, singed, but the bees simply ducked under the saber-attacks.

In creepy unison, they tried to punch her in the back on the way past.

Rey didn't expect that, and it pushed her back a couple steps. In return she spun around to face them again, swinging again with more varied strokes to try and prevent the ducking again.

"Bzzzzzzt," said the bees, in that strange wool-on-wool dialect again. They jumped back, up into the air, reaching into their little pockets for little pieces of honey-wool.

They started throwing them at Rey, one after the other.

Somehow... somehow it was them reaching into their pockets that was the most disturbing thing about this.

Rey was practiced at fending off things coming at her, but even as she was deflecting them she was also aware that being too defensive meant that she wasn't actually beating them.

Could she deflect one back at them...?

The little balls were wool and yet, somehow, impossible to destroy.

... which meant that deflecting them was definitely an option.

One little ball went soaring right back at the bee-thing on the left, and hit it smack upside the head, leaving a comical round burn mark behind. It clapped its little bee wings.

Oh, it was angry now.

While its friend kept throwing, the injured bee flew right at Rey's head.

This was all completely fine!

Rey dropped into a duck to avoid taking a nightmare bee puppet to the head, at which point she noted one of the balls on the ground, hurling it with the Force at the one throwing.

"Bzzzzzzzzzzz--phut!"

That was the sound of one idiot ball winding up in a bee puppet maw. It buzzed, momentarily confused.

And then began its own flight towards Rey, just... very. Very. Very slowly. Oooh, look at the pretty light...

That really was slow.

It kind of felt weird to run up and try to stab it while it was this slow but she was doing it anyway.

And down went the bee puppet in a completely overdramatic wooly buzz of defeat and the smell of burnt yarn.

One giant bee to go!

Of all the smells to have a reason to hate forever.

She spun on the other bee, charging at it like a totally normal person.

This bee had no interest in going out like a chump! It bumbled and buzzed around the playground, trying to get away from the lightsaber.

Edited 2024-04-27 21:14 (UTC)

And Rey was absolutely going to chase it. Don't think she wouldn't do something like vault playground equipment to get closer.

At one point she found another ball to throw at it, too.

Which careened the bee into the slide's staircase with a hilarious bonking noise.

Which led to Rey catching up to try and stab it.

Which led to more delightful burned yarn smell! Congratulations, Rey!

Beaker couldn't imagine anything ending without a big musical number! In deference to the rest of the people on the story team, he didn't use Muppet chickens.

He manifested regular--but talking!--chickens in a long line, singing and dancing along to the Can Can.

As one does.

Steve, never one to leave a weapon left untested, scooped up an Idiot Ball as he marched into the playground and set up near the slide. "Have we learned if they react to bullets yet?"

And hit me up here with a vague concept or idea for an NPC if you want one to fight! ETA: you can also ping here if you don't have any ideas, you'll just get an NPC that's probably a little more generic. ;)

Edited 2024-04-27 17:26 (UTC)

The Playground in the Park, Saturday Noon

FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!

Monsters v. Dean

Monsters v. Navaan

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Chicken Kickline!

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OOC