FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Chapter 3

Pizza Place of Death! Hello, is this the manager? I'd like to make a complaint.

"Sooo ..." they both said in union, unsure of where or how to continue talking.

'come on man, think' Timmy thought to himself 'the night's not over yet, and the sooner I head back home the sooner I have to worry about school tomorrow. Then there is that werewolf, I should probably be more worried about him than I am ... not easy to see pink and think deadly though. I could try to bring up Harry, er, no ... that's a rather long explanation. I could talk about the ultimate reality of existence and the slight degeneration of quantum theory as more and more "cat-box" technology puts strain on the time-space continuum. I could talk about why a non-virtual, self limiting hadron emitting reality generator is inexplicably called a "cat-box" ... but what if Roda's scared of cats?'

Roda blinked nervously, glancing across the small box for something, anything, clearly scrambling for ideas just as feverishly as Timmy was.

'Roda, scared of ... that's it! I'll talk about Roda, get her to talking and give a general direction of what I find potentially interesting. I know what her race is and we've already talked about deep, personal things ... what's left? I could ask if she has any friends perhaps. Nah, I don't have friends for a reason and it'd be rather rude of me to ask her. New Travelers aren't known for having a lot of emotional support, otherwise they wouldn't travel alone. I might try asking about her shoes, sh- ... oh wait, she doesn't have any. Her ... feet then? Wait a minute, I've got it, she mentioned something about her feet earlier!'

"Roda, um ..."

"Yes?!" she asked in a high pitched voice, she sounded both relieved and anxious somehow

"I was wondering about something you said a little earlier, about how you can tell you have more human than mouse DNA because of your feet. All I can see is that you don't have any shoes on ... just what is it about your feet that tells you your race has human ancestry?"

Roda smiled "Oh is that all? With most all anthro species, "anthro" by it's very definition meaning "human" or "human-like" the easiest and quickest way to tell weather they have more human or more of whatever they happened to mix wish is with the appendages. Hands, feet, hips, joints, and last of all facial features, they all give you some hint through knowledge of basic anatomy."

"So, an anthropologist could tell at a glance then"

"Well of course! Any good anthropologist at least. I said I'm sure I, and us Maggot-Mice as a whole, have more human ancestry than mouse (by a ratio of sixty to forty) is because we have human feet, not mice feet." Roda lifted her right leg up and set it down on the table. She was exposing quite a bit of her thighs thanks to such obviously short pants, but Timmy was too busy trying to find some hidden label or other such marker he'd been missing "Tell me, what strikes you about this foot?"

"You mean other than that it's as big as mine, covered in fur, and only has three toes?"

"Yes, other than that stuff"

"Well, it's ... got a flat bottom. I can see the blade of your foot on the outer side, but as you don't have a pinky toe I'm not sure if you can use it the same way human martial artists do. A slight indent in the middle, ending with a large puffed out area on the heel, sort of like a humans I think." He reached a finger out to poke the back of her heel "It's padded, I think ... but just with thick skin and calcification, more durable than silent really."

Roda giggled "H-hey s-stop! No tickling!" at the child's poke "And do you see how that padded area at the heel supports my entire weight? When I extend my leg completely it makes a perfectly strait line from that heel to my pelvis. See?" she bent her leg upward by way of demonstration. Though it really looked more like attempting the splits with one leg while sitting down ... and succeeding!

"Ok, I'll bite. What's so special about that?"

"In a pure, or at least earth spawned mouse, the legs are Digigrade. But these are Plantigrade" she

answered sweetly, taking her foot off the table.

"Er ... what? I'm really sorry but I don't know what your talking about"

"Digigrade is a term for things that walk on their toes with their heals raised, it's extremely well suited to organisms that walk on four legs because it acts like a loaded coil, a spring that absorbs and redirects downward energy into forward motion without putting much pressure on the ground. The Plantigrade form of locomotion humans use, save when one decides to where those high heel shoe thingies, is when your entire body weight is resting on the heal while the toes and such extending from your heel are only for quick or secondary balance. If I were more rodent than Anthropomorphic I would have the more traditional Digigrade leg and heel system."

Timmy blinked ...

"The same goes for my hands actually, what can you tell by looking at them?"

"Let's see, no pinky so only thee fingers, four if you count the thumb. All /but/ the thumb seem thin. Palms, no padding like a cats, the tips aren't oversized so you can see in between each finger. The entire hand is covered in fur just the rest of you, no markings no ..."

"Let me give you a hint Timmy" Roda whispered "Real mice don't have fur on their hands, it's kept hairless specifically so it's easy to clean."

Timmy blinked again "Oh ... but wait, humans don't have hair on their hands either, or at least not- ..."

"Timmy! Your smarter than that, the genes for my race, or at least one of the precursors to my particular race somewhere in a long, vast line of laboratory rodents our genes were spliced. We have hair on our fingers, as do all rodent races I'm related to, because the scientist who created the direct ancestors to us Anthro mice spliced rodent characteristics onto something humanoid. Because the DNA for rodent fur would not be very well suited for a body this large, that scientist must have figured he'd program hair to grow on his own, without taking it's cures from our feral ancestors. Because he or she didn't quite have the skills evolution is known for, we have this symmetrical fur that covers far more of the body than is really helpful."

"Wow ... so, is it just you rodents, or ..."

"You should know better than that, it depends on the history really. There have been so many idiots trying to build or modify the "perfect" life form for whatever purpose throughout the centuries it's ridiculous how often a new species turns up. Take foxes for example, I've personally met, and erm ... had to fight off ... two examples of Anthropomorphic, bipedal foxes this past year. One was male, called himself a Yawl or something to that effect, and was apparently a full fox! Left alone on an earth-like planet for long enough and feral foxes suddenly rise to sentience, AND start walking on two legs to boot! True it was from some alternate timeline, but the theory still stands."

"And the other?"

"The other was a female, I'm pretty sure their called Vixebs"

"Vixen actually" Timmy corrected

"Oh! Well if you say so. This one used a gun to try and hunt me rather than teeth and claws, but after I got her to calm down and we started talking I found out this one's ancestors had no fox DNA at all, every strand of hair, every aspect of the triangular ears, the protruding mouth, the bushy tail, everything! Was created from scratch and grafted onto a humanoid form over thirty thousand years ago! And apparently her race has been standing strong ever sense."

"Hmm ... so um, if you have hair in the wrong places thanks to faulty genetics, what sort of problems does it pose?"

"You wouldn't want to hear about them, trust me"

"I'm sitting next to rotting flesh on a pizza, what more could you say to gross me out?"

"I'm sure I could think of something" Roda glared. Timmy just looked confused "*Sigh* Ok fine, if it will satisfy your curiosity. You know how hard it is to get various stains out of hair? Bubblegum, paint, oil, things like that? Well combine this inherit problem of fur with attempting to wipe yourself after purging the body of excrim- ...

"OK! I've heard enough! THANK YOU!" Timmy called as soon as his head wrapped around that idea.

"I mean really, sometimes it takes hours just to ..."

"I don't want to hear it, stop talking Roda" Timmy called out in alarm.

"Awwww, you sure? There's even an entire industry for the abnormally small set up to cl- ..." Roda started teasingly, expecting to be cut off mid-sentence.

"LA-LA-LA, I'm not listening!" the human poked fingers into each ear to drown out her voice "I can't hear you, LA-LA-LA, I can't hear you!"

Roda, at this point, just burst into giggles.

"Are you done?"

"Are you going to trust me when I say you don't want to hear something?" She asked with a playful grin.

"Perhaps. Curiosity killed the cat ... but it made the human sing."

"And dance! If you count that thing with your fingers a dance" Roda chimed.

"Can we change the subject please?"

"Sure thing ... but to what?" Roda answered.

Frantically running through a number of thoughts, most of them involving questions about the 'abnormally small' he didn't want answered, Timmy had just settled on:

"Where do you plan to go after th- ...!!!" But a loud, grinding speech blasted it's way into his mind before he could finish asking.

"<How Dare You! What Kind Of Frap Hole Are You Running?!>"

The voice was like metal scraping across granite, painful, scratchy, loud and irritating. Roda balled her hands into a fist and stuffed them whole into her oversized ears while Timmy could only use one finger.

"I thought these walls were supposed to be soundproof!" Roda called in alarm.

"Th-they are s-sou ...Gyah! Th-That's not sound, it's an electron induced D-d-" Timmy collapsed to the floor in agony. The mouse at least seemed capable of staying in her chair "Delta wave, p-pattern" He managed to mumble under his breath.

"Wh- So then, what is ..."

"<I Ordered Live Micros, Do You Know What Alive Means You Incompetent Squid? It Means Their Still Moving When They Reach My Plate!>"

Timmy struggled to answer the girl's obvious question "It, It's Telepathy, he's speaking with - ... h-his, Gah!" The small human could little more than curl up into a fetal position and try to ignore the one-sided argument a very loud customer was having somewhere in the restaurant.

The mouse wondered why she wasn't effected as much (sure it was painful and annoying but it wasn't enough to paralyze someone ... was it?) before her focus was on the poor child and how to make this go away.

"<Well Then Don't Cook Your Suicidal Freaks With The Pizza! Duh! Of Course They Die If You Offer Then Quick Decapitation, That's Why These Frapin New Age Ovens Have Multiple Settings!>"

Roda ignored the thoughts blasting through her mind as best as she was able to, but she couldn't keep herself from trying to fill in the blanks. The thin walls around her and Timmy's table were soundproof so whatever the waiter or the owner was saying should be blocked. Carefully getting up from her chair, she crawled on her knees to the dark eyed human. His eyes were closed, his fingers were jammed tightly into his ears with no genuine effect, and his knees were locked tightly against his chest. Roda thought he looked so much like a balled up baby mouse right now it was impossible to not try and comfort him. So she took off her fluffy jacket, covered him up with it like a blanket, then laid down on top of him like she would have done another rodent. With rodents it was supposed to be fur on fur, just as with feral dogs or with infant birds, but humans had this taboo about uncovered or touching skin so the jacket served a useful purpose.

"<You Ingrate! Here I Come In A Respectful Customer And You Can't Even Handle A Simple Order?! No-No, Your Not Getting Off That Easy Sushi Butt, How About Instead Of One Free Meal I Take All Your Inventory, All Your Customers, Then Let You Leave With Your Life. Does That Sound Fair?>"

Roda Shivered, part of that was going from a fluff covered jacket to a thin tank top, but the rest was being included as 'inventory' in the eyes of whatever the Fell kept making so much ruckus. A store in this place couldn't really do that, right? They'd loose any hope of future customers if word ever got out!

"<You Don't Think It's Fair? Then You Need To Get A Dictionary 'Pall' Because I Thought I Made Myself Pretty Cl- ... OOOPH! Why You! Get Back Here So I Can Tear Your Spine Out! No One Hits Me With A Chair, You HEAR Me? NO ONE!>"

This was not going well, if luck holds out perhaps the store manager has a way of dealing with unruly customers. It wouldn't make sense not to on any hub world, no matter how small or rural. Right? She looked down to see Timmy Shivering as well, his eyes were still closed giving him that creepy ghost face look, but by comparison he didn't seem nearly as terrifying as that one 'voice' from somewhere in the room.

"Timmy! Timmy a fights starting, we have to get out of here, hide, something!"

In response he just mumbled, mostly to himself.

"Timmy! Please, come on! The-, there's a table right over there, we can hide under it." When still no response was forthcoming, she grabbed onto his shirt and dragged him over. Poor Roda didn't feel mildly secure until she'd angled the nearby chairs to block them off from view ... partially at least.

"<Oh Well Woop De Doo You Fraping Travelers! If It's A Fight You Want Then I Say Bring It!>"

That was all the two had gotten in warning before a green skinned humanoid with pointy ears and leaves in it's hair crashed through the soundproof walls, it shredded the thin material like paper, crashed nosily onto the table, then fell into the next wall over along with the remains of a cheese and muck covered pizza. The green thing was clearly female though with anything in relation to plants gender counts for little, and whether she was upset at having been tossed through a wall or having rotting meat stuck to her green, leafy gown it was hard to tell.

"I assure you Sir Gedel, if you continue with this course of action you will be removed from your current form of existence" Called out the clear, easy to understand voice of the tentacle using waiter. Timmy was in too much shock to look, and all Roda could see of him through the hole in their wall was how he kept trying to wrap his suction cups around the unruly customer. Despite a great effort, the piles of torn off squiggly limbs was a pretty good indicator of who was winning.

BANG! BANG!

Gunfire shot off from somewhere near the store entrance, each of the two bullets ripped through the creatures head plastering some grey matter and what looked like horns onto the wall and roof behind him, but underneath the squirming mass of tentacles he just reformed the missing head.

"Stupid Demons, I Hate you all! Do you!- ... oh, hello there you two. I didn't land on either of you did I?" asked the green skinned lady as she looked across to see Timmy and Roda hiding. "That's a good spot to hide if you've got nothing better, but unless you feel up to fighting I'd prefer to get you out of here safely."

"Y-yes please" Roda squeaked.

"Ok, are either of you hur- ... oh dear! What's happened to your friend there?"

"I don't know, he just collapsed as soon as that blasted telepathy started. I can carry him if I need to but I can't run while ..."

"Hush now, I know a little bit of healing magic and I can tell you right now it's mental not physical pain stopping him. That idiot demon Gedel is trying to force his emotions onto everyone around, and this ... human is it? Oh my, look at those eyes, he must get into fights a lot if he's got two shiners that big"

"NO! He doe- ..." But the mouse was cut off again.

"He'll be fine if we get him away from here, he's just oversensitive to Psionic energies and can't ha- ... Gah!" It was the plant lady's turn to be cut off as the creature himself smashed through the thin red walls, crumpling the support structure so that it all came down in a tangled heap rather than just tearing a hole in it. The red material and the table itself cut off most of Roda's view, but the wicked looking, blood covered claws she caught a glimpse of was enough to send shivers through her tail.

"<Now Your Making Me Angry, Want To Dance Little Man?>"

The creature slammed his fingers through the wooden table as easily as if it were clay, then swung his arm forward to toss it at whatever other customer happened to be playing Hero. Roda was too busy scooping her arms under Timmy's bundled up form and running in the opposite direction the very moment she sensed light on her back. Mouse instinct made for swift movements in such situations. The plant girl however was busy trying to subdue the monster, her fingers spreading and stretching in root-like tendrils to wrap around him much as the waiter had done.

"Yo Mama eats old people cause she's too stupid to catch the young ones" a cocky, teenaged sounding voice called from the direction Gedel had been thrown "You couldn't hit the side of a barn if handed you a planet buster"

"What the Fell are you doing! Idiot human" the plant girl called while struggling to keep things under wraps.

Roda just ran, ducking behind and around the maze of red walls, occasionally peaking inside to see if there was anyone else still hiding. But nope, every booth was empty and most had an assortment of supposedly edible pizzas on it. Looking ahead Roda saw a small crowd being directed through a five foot hole in the wall by an amazingly tall, dark skinned, and well armed human. Insects and Worms of various sizes and shapes were scrambling to get out, as were a number of snakes, a single Robot, some winged creature with what looked like rocket packs where it's hands should be and no feet to speak of ... the panic was such that they might have stampeded over each other if the human weren't guarding the hole and directing traffic.

"Come on people, hurry it up I don't care if you ave lost a leg or two, if yu don want to fight then get out of ere. Hey! No shovin peeps, ter's plenty o room for everyone while te fighters keep em distracted" the human called out with a thick accent and a deep but lighthearted voice. As Roda approached she had to stop carrying Timmy lest her arms get too tired, but she still had to prop him up. The human before her had dark brown skin, not pitch black like around Timmy's eyes but much, much darker than his white skin. There was no hair on this one's head to speak of, but being a little over three feet tall and looking up at something seven feet Roda could tell he had plenty of fur inside his nostrils. Not. A. Pleasant. Sight.

"Is this the evacuation?" Roda asked, the crowds to her left offering various answers in their own languages.

"Ya Mon, I'm jus ere to get all te non-coms out safely afor I ead in to fight myself. No pushin or shoving mis, I wan this clean and orderly" the human answered. In his right hand was a blue and silver gun of unknown type and damage potential, but still clearly a gun. His unarmed hand he used to point and aim the hordes of non-combatants as they flowed through the hole. Upon closer inspection the female mouse could see it was torn into the wall itself, and just recently. Did this guy blast a hole through the restaurant just to avoid using the front door? "Er, ey mis, is tat kid alright tere?" He asked as two more Insectoids exited in a hurried scamper.

"Can't handle telepathy I think, he can't walk on his own"

"Yes I can!" Timmy spoke up suddenly.

"Er, Timmy! Your awake, how are you? How's your head? Are you cut anywhere? Do you remember what happened? How did you- ..."

"Answers later, evac now." He answered harshly, almost growling in seething frustration. But on the first unaided step he took his knee-caps gave out and he fell forward. It was Roda that rushed to help him up.

"Hey mon, yu two betta get outa ere fast, groups almos gon now" The tall human gestured towards the hole as the last five creatures of assorted shapes and colors scampered out into daylight. "Yu'r friend is freaky wit those eyes mon, yu sure he ain't got no magic or somtin?"

"H-here Timmy, I'll prop you up" She whispered into his ear while helping the child to his feet. "No, he's just a human, a child at that. W-we'll be gone soon, thanks for the help." Roda answered in a much louder voice as Timmy leaned on her shoulder.

"Thanks for the ... help" Timmy growled to no one in particular as he was pushed forward. He wasn't sure why, but there was a newfound air of aggressiveness in all of his mannerisms ... and it was annoying.

"Ya, Ya, Whatever mon, jus be sure to git to safety." The adult stated before cocking his weapon and rushing past the small maze of red walls. Over the top of the enclosures Roda could see a dimly glowing angel with golden wings and a flaming sword flitter about while the sounds of carnage and bloodshed, bones snapping and screams of pain, emanated from the now distant part of the restaurant.

"Come on Timmy, almost th- ... wha, NO!" The walls all around the building started to glow, red brick shifted to a muddy white, and what should have been a solid wall swiftly melted and reformed, sealing off their escape completely.

"Someone stop him! The Flippards casting!" someone called out from the main fight.

With one hand holding up the human child, Roda punched the wall with her free hand ... and found it more solid than any brick wall should have been. "FELL!" She cursed, loudly enough to make Timmy cover his ears.

"Grrr, I guess that means were stuck until someone breaks the stupid spell." He growled while placing his palm to the material "It's ... It looks like it's just a layer plastered around the real walls. Listen" He tapped where the hole should have been to show it sounded hallow.

"Fat lot of good that does us if we can't get through it. Are you able to stand now?"

"Y-yeah, Yes I think so." He shoved off from her angrily, but to both of their releif was at least able to ballence.

"We have good enough cover thanks to the walls the restaurant uses, we could just hide out here until this blows over."

"We can't see the fighting through the red stuff either, save for ... hey wait, is that Harry!? Er, No, never mind. Harry doesn't have a sword like that and he glows a little brighter. Blasted Angels, bright as the sun I tell you"

"The angel is NOT that bright, take it from someone who lives in a burrow ... and erm, we really don't want to see the fighting remember? Mouse survival tactics 101, if your predators can't see you make sure it stays that way. And before you pop off that you're a primate not a rodent, I think it's more a size issue than a race issue, and your not much bigger than me."

Timmy grumped momentarily, then decided to change the subject "What if the Hero's loose? This monster thing has obviously tried to shut out the restaurant so none of us can escape and the massive hordes of combat worthy Travelers can't get in to join on the 'fun' so what if this Gedil, Gedel ... whatever you call him, kills off all challengers then looks around for stragglers? We'd be gambling on our survival if we don't get out of here before one side or the other wins."

"Do you know how to break through that inky black stuff? It's not a polycarbon I'll tell you that"

"Well, no ..." Timmy growled, walking forward to flip back some of the red material, reach in for a nearby chair, then walk back to the wall with it over his head "But I might work out some of this Flupid aggression trying."

Roda blushed at the increasing use of swear words, but smiled at the prospect of hitting something with a chair ... until the demon "spoke" out once again.

"<STOP Hitting Me With That Chair You Fluped Up Human! Oof, I Swear, If you Ouch! Knock it Off! Ach! CH-, Gha! Glgua!>"

Timmy shivered and dropped the chair "Um ... all of a sudden I don't feel as angry. You?" he asked nervously.

"Oh just ... *Sigh* ... are fights like these common?"

"On a hub world? Common enough to have countermeasures against them. You know Central's opinion on interplanetary government, if we want organization we have to choose to organize, if we want safety we have to ensure our safety. This hub world is actually one of the better ones because the fights are generally so one-sided.

"Yeah ... one-sided ... that's what we'll call this." Roda looked past the red panels to catch a glimpse of some white skinned human in a robe getting tossed fifteen feet in the air and smashing into the wall behind him.

"Hey, if it weren't for the

BANG!!! Gunfire sounded through the room and reverberated off the magically created walls.

PWSZZZZSS Laser fire of some sort shot off in a brilliant flash of colors and shrapnel.

Both of which were distracting as Fell.

"Gah! If it w-wasn't for this wall here, a hundred or more Travelers just itching for a fight would be swarming that demon. In a billion different varieties and skill-sets. I didn't even get to see what type of demon this guy is, but there are races out there who eat Demons for breakfast."

"Hmm ... we can't help with the fight."

"<I'm Not Falling For It you Blasted Free-Runner! We Settle This Here And Now So Stop Jumping Arou- .. GAH! Enough With The Pointy Sticks Woman! How Much Foliage Do You have?!>"

"Erg!" Roda tried to think past the sounds of combat "B-but if we can find a way through this stuff to get other fighters in here, the demon should be trapped right?"

"Unless he just takes down the walls and lets everyone in at once. I don't see any purple tentacles so I'm pretty sure that waiter decided to call for help ... the whole town might be waiting outside for the first chance at a real fight. But erm, It's not like we have anything explosive, or a lot of heavy things to use."

"True ... but what if the hole wasn't in the wall?" Roda asked.

"Excuse me?"

"Based on what you know about demon spells, how often do they think to extend the shield, barrier, wall, (whatever you happen to call it) bellow ground? Is that hard to do or something?"

Timmy busted out laughing "It's hard as Fell I'll tell you that, you'd have to cut through the cement and try to push aside all the dirt. Cutting through air to make a wall is easy, wet ground and stray, uneven rocks are not. This guys in the middle of a fight and he didn't cast until well after he had started, so I doubt he'd have to focus to defend against subterranean things."

"Perfect, I'm still worried he might be smarter than he sounds, but if not it means we can dig our way through."

"Er, WHAT?! Dig through? That isn't soil here, it's cement! You can't expect to dig through it!"

Roda bent down, placed her oversized ears to the floor (inadvertently showing more than intended thanks to very short pants) and tapped it with her knuckles "Yes it's cement under carpet, but there's soil just a foot or two down. If we can break past the cement then it'd only take me twenty seconds, tops, to dig my way through to the street."

"And just how do you prupose we, er ... get up please Roda, It's hard to take you seriously from that position" He tried to hand her back the pink fluffy jacket she'd used to wrap him up with, something to cover her similarly thin tank-top.

"No, you keep it. If I'm going to be digging I want as little on as possible, and nothing loose. Dirt stuck in your socks or shoes is bad enough, dirt stuck in your shorts or bra is worse"

"Ok, fine" Timmy grumped, putting his arms through the sleeves and zipping it on himself. 'best way to make sure I don't loose it' he told himself "But I still want to know how either of us are supposed to smash our way through, what was it, two feet? Of solid cement? It doesn't have to be that expensive polycarbon or hyper-adaptive resilient nano-structures to be tough you know."

"I dig past rocks! Of course I know there stuff you can't get through, but what if we weren't the ones to break through it? What if one of the travelers could help us, or heck, we could even trick the demon into punching this part of the ground by taunting him and leaping out of the way at the last second"

"<I Give Up! Stupid Free-Runner, Quit Pestering Me With Your Useless Taunts So I Can Slaughter The Real Fighters In Peace ... Er, WHAT?! I Did Not Rape A Lava Golem And I Can ... It's Not That Small! Ghyah! Stop Cutting Me Woman! I Shouldn't Need To Hit You More Than Once.>"

"Um ... I think he's already dealing with the type that taunts and flees at the last second. If it would work that Free-Runner should have already succeeded, from what I hear they don't like to fight directly either."

"Ok, so it's a far-fetched idea. We could try asking a traveler after they tossed from the fight? That seems to happen often enough."

"Maybe, but the fewer fighters are in there the more likely he'll start to move around and notice you while your digging. Besides, what happens if you get to the other side and have to dig your way up from the sidewalk?"

"Er, I hadn't thought of that" Roda blinked.

"Or worse, what happens if a slab of concrete from that sidewalk collapses on you when you try? I'm sure burrowing races are durable, but ... um ..."

"No getting hit with giant rocks, I get it. So what do we do then? Sit here and listen to the screams of carnage until something, by chance or design, happens to come barreling our way?"

"Perhaps ... or wait a minute, this is a restaurant isn't it?"

"Yeah" Roda answered "A Pizza place, why?"

"If it prepares food then that means it has to have a kitchen. A place with knifes, blenders, ovens, microwaves, shrink rays, lots of things we could convert to a weapon in a pinch."

"Yeah, but this guys been hit by an angel, I hear those flaming swords of their's are brutal."

"Only if they're one of the holy things, and not the Bio-creatures Earth-Force made a while back. But still I see your point ..."

Over the sounds of grunts and random things breaking, the two heard a female scream in utter Agony, along with:

"<Now You Finally Die!>"

"Oh man, who do you think it is?"

"The plant lady, only girl I saw ... And I'm not staying put, here, grab this chair" Roda stated with a bold determination. She grabbed one chair for herself then slid a second one in Timmy's direction.

"Er, wa? This is suicide! She's got partners in that fight, surely they'd ..."

But with a wooden chair held high over her head the tiny mouse in pink clothing rushed forward to the scene of the fight, just past the bright red panels that hid the regular seats. Only now did the mouse get to take a good look at the thing causing so much trouble.

He had dark red skin all along his body, bulging muscles that bore greater resemblance to a lump of bowling balls melted together than anything else. He still had the remains of a tail jutting out from behind, but most of it was cut off. There were these odd blue colored stumps running across the length of his back, each seeming to writhe and wriggle on their own. He had the face of an Oni, an ancient Japanese Demon with distorted grins, a bulldogs jaws, and upsidedown fangs that threatened to grow into his eyes. Their known for the ability to suck away souls and eat dragons, but Oni's were supposed to be giant floating heads. If this was Oni how did he get a body? The last two things for Roda to notice (thought the first for Timmy) were his size ... he was over fourteen feet tall and towered over everyone in the room, and his lack of clothing. Mice are used to everything being bigger than them, and she didn't notice clothing very much.

"Hey stupid-head, Catch!" She called out while tossing her chair at his face, allowing the lithe green form he was standing over to slip away.

"Stupid-head? That's the best you could come up with?" Timmy asked while hurling his chair at the demon's knee-caps.

"At least I'm insulting the monster and not the guy next to me!" She shouted in response.

"<What Is It With You Mortals And Throwing Chairs? Seriously!>"

The demon shouted in irritation as it swung it's fist through the air to hit an oponent who'd fled to the other side of the room.

"I'm NOT Mortal you prick!" Shouted the leaf covered maiden from earlier. Finally able to look at unfolding events, Timmy and Roda saw cracked floors, broken furniture, burned patches of carpet and the crumpled remains of several tables and chairs. Blood, some green slime, and a yellow, sticky, but strangely sweet smelling glop were splattered across just about everything. There were five Travelers fighting at the moment, three of them seemingly human, that angel from before with the flame covered sword, and the plant girl. The plant girl was covered in some thick wood shaped to resemble armor, not what she had when they'd first seen her, but she was also covered in ... was that sap? Her own most likely. Her breathing was labored but she had all four limbs so she still looked combat worthy.

One human was standing barefoot, perfectly balanced, on a pile of rubble. Some red fabric and the leg to a now broken chair were in his hands. He wore a thick, white, and impossibly loose robe that was either many sizes too large or made that way specifically so he could hide things in it. He had a thin layer of well trimmed hair on his head, but his face was clean shaven, and his expression was that of supreme, overbearing confidence ... or perhaps arrogance.

"Can't manage to fit your fat butt into one of them? I can see why you hate chairs so" it was hard to really tell a difference between those two words while he was flitting about easily and tossing insults as readily as trash.

The second human looked, for all intensive purposes, like a cowboy. Not some part cow crossbreed or something that might actually make sense, but a gunslinger from some recreation of California's "wild west" with an ancient six shooter to match. He had a large hat on, genuine cowhide pants and jacket, leather boots with spurs on them for some reason, and a rope coiled up and attached to his belt. He let his bullets do the talking each time he managed to reload, and while they didn't seem capable of permanent damage they were a far greater distraction than mere insults.

The third human was the dark skinned one from before, a gunslinger like the cowboy. Only this gun had much flashier, yet somehow quieter results. Timmy had a hard time seeing all of this thanks to that accursed angel and his ever-present spotlight, but Roda (who's eyes were ironically more sensitive) barely noticed the angel's glow at all. To her the flaming sword produced more light.

"<Gah! More Of Them? Now Where Could You Two Have ... OF COURSE! I Didn't Blast All The Tables Yet! How Silly Of Me To Forget Something So Important!>"

The demon called out in a cheery, but bone-chilling voice when he spotted the human and mouse. The darkness in his voice didn't quite compare to the chills he sent down Timmy's spine and Roda's tail as he clomped his way toward them.

"Run!" Timmy called, grabbing Roda by the arm and trying to pull her back into the maze of tables and panels. At least in there they might be able to hide and double back around.

"Oh NO you don't monster" The plant girl yelled out in a determined voice as she shot forward to stand between the demon and them "Don't hide in the flammable mess, this moron knows ma-oof!" Her words were cut off as he backhanded across her cheek. "That is IT!" She screeched, planting her feet (literally) and punching directly to his snout. On contact her fist exploded into seething mass of vines and leaves that wrapped around his face, into his throat, and a few sharpening to poke their way through his eye-sockets rather than a simple smack to the face. Her opposite hand stretched and sharpened into a long, thin, needle point, much like a giant rose thorn, which she then jabbed upward into his chest.

Roda and Timmy just stood there in shock as the battle unfolded, it had been going on for quite a while so could it really be this easy to end? And being told not to go into the only place that wasn't wide open really cut down their list of options for places to run.

BANG!!! Bullets ripped through the back of the demon's kneecaps, but in moments it was simply bubbling and reforming until it looked like a functioning leg again.

"I Shall save thee young one, fear not for the Lord has granted me power enough to vanquish such vile creatures of the underworld" the angel took time to pose while saying this, looking directly at Timmy as if the fourteen year old child was someone to impress. Sword in hand, a decent lift with powerful, glowing wings, he shot towards the struggling mass of the red demon from behind while the plant girl kept him preoccupied. The flaming sword stabbed right through the spine, a clean kill even, with the flaming tip poking out through the holes the girl's thorns had made in his front. Everything went still, silent, the demon was still on two legs but he wasn't moving.

He wasn't breathing.

"Aha! Now to finish him off so that no evil may spawn from his burning carcass, watch little ones, as hellfire consumes this sinner's soul for the glory of our Loooor ...!!!"

Mid-sentence, the demon gripped each of the plant girl's arms at the shoulders then gave a hearty kick to her chest ... the arms came off cleanly, and the sap covered body landed in a sticky, sweet smelling heap at Roda's feet. The vines that were digging their way through his skull via his multiple orifices began to shrivel up and fade away. With both of his hands free, his head slowly starting to reform, and an angel with a sword poking into his back, Gedel Slammed his arms behind him in a feat of elasticity few humanoids with a functioning internal skeleton could match. The angel's head was caught between both of the demon's elbows.

The plant girl started to get up even while still leaking sap, the angel, with his brains now splattered unto the walls and his decapitated form crumpled on the floor in a pool of reddish, silver blood ... did not get up.

"Dammit!" The bleeding plant before them screeched as she saw what happened. New arms seemed to be sprouting back where the old one's were at a sluggish pace. Timmy and Roda thought it polite to help her to her feet.

"Th-that could, could have been Harry" Timmy stuttered nervously, eyes wide in panic. Though he didn't want to mention anything, as the dieing angel's husk grew dimmer and dimmer, the halo vanishing as if it were nothing, the young human was finally able to see clearly.

The demon stood still while it's face reformed, some green slime still oozing from each of the stumps on his back and where his tail should be, the angel's blade was still jutting out of his chest but the flames seemed to burn his blood before it could drip. The demon's face was a complete mess, there is no way to understate just how badly those vines growing into and around his skull had messed him up, but it didn't take long for his face to reform just as quickly as when he recovered from bullet wounds.

"<Finally I Got One! Ooooh, And Look At This Little Gift He Gave Me ... Would This Count As An Item Drop Or Something? Haha! Yes, It's Just Like With Those Lame Video Games You Mortals Play>"

Gedel boasted as he gripped the hilt jutting out of his back, withdrew the sword, and watched as his wounds both internal and external repaired themselves. This guy was dangerous enough for the simple fact he was hard to kill, now he's armed as well?

"How many times do I have to say it before it sinks into that thick skull of yours! I am NOT a Mortal!" the plant girl shouted.

"<If You Can Die Then You're A Mortal, That's The Very Definition Of The Word.>"

The demon stated just before taking a stride forward.

"Run!" Timmy Called, he and Roda grabbing the plant girl by a fold in her wooden armor and attempted to drag her off, but she was on two legs now and not interested in fallowing them. In a flash Gedal with his fat cheeked, rounded head and oversized teeth was standing over the trio, his wounds completely healed, his right, sword wielding arm held high above his head, perfectly poised to strike.

And then the moment was gone, replaced by a bald man in a robe hanging from the demon's shoulders and rubbing a chair leg on it's face.

"Yo fatso, don't think I've forgotten about you, I've looted the corpse of that chair for my own weapon and soon mine shall be better. Whahahaha!"

The plant girl blinked as a thick, sturdy rope came out of nowhere, wrapped around her stomach, then dragged her away leaving a trail of a sap before her arms finally finished growing. Sneaky cowboys are sneaky. Just as Timmy and Roda made a break for the other side of the room a ball of flame exploded into the demon's back ... which he seemed to ignore completely. What did keep his attention was the robed human in his face.

"<Wraaaaaa!>"

"Well "rah" to you too" he responded as he jumped off, only to circle back around and smack the flat end of his chair leg into the demon's face again. The demon made a wide arc with his sword leaving a trail of flame as it passed, but the human just ducked and leaped in again, wasting a perfect opportunity to do real damage by rubbing the stick against his opponent. The demon's unarmed hand shot upward as the human pulled back, but the robed human just jumped on top of the fist mid-swing and used it as a stepping stone to reach that hideous face a little easier.

"Yo Mon! Watch Yu tink you doin wit tat stick?" the black skinned gunslinger yelled from a safe distance before shooting a ball of ice at the monster's feet.

"I'm tryin to make an ugly stick, I figure you produce them by taking an ordinary tree branch and rubbing it on somethin ugly." the robed one called back while executing yet another perfect dodge.

"Tat no ordinary tree branch, it been processed mon."

"<Wraaaaaa!>"

"Heh" the plant lady chuckled as a cowboy helped her to her feet, she was still oozing sap from various wounds but her arms had at least grown back. "Free-Runners, got to love it when they tank. There the only thing in these worlds more irritating than a monk."

"I ere ya miss, at least monks are supposed to be silent" the man agreed before firing off another round of fast moving iron slugs.

BANG!!!BANG!!!

Timmy and Roda were standing in the far back of the room, staring dumbly as they had no legitimate place to hide. They could try the jumbled mess of chairs, tables, and sound-proof fabric, but if they were buried under such things it would be hard to run if the fight got sour. With a spare moment to think the young child wondered to himself, 'why aren't I rolling on the floor in pain? Has he stopped transmitting or ... no, no that can't be it, he's still very much using telepathy' but a spare moment to think didn't come often with the sound of screams and gunfire from across the room.

"Ugh! I hate that stupid regeneration" the plant girl explained, ignoring the irony of how her arms had just recently grown back.

"H-how do you plan to get around it though? Is there some way to stop hi- ..." Roda started, but was cut off.

"Regeneration is supposed to be draining, you see those stumps of his? The guy used to have tentacles of his own but me and squid-face kept tearing them off. After a while he stopped growing them back, but it could be his choice not to because ..."

"I doubt that, see how he's handling that bald one?"

"They both bald miss" the cowboy stated as he took yet another shot "An they gonna have to carry on after I'm out of bullets, only got four left and they don seem to be doin much."

"There doing plenty of damage, he just repairs it. But that's not the point, see how badly he's struggling against that one in a robe?"

"Um, he's not bald hon, he's got that peach fuzz on it see?"

"WHATEVER! Just look at how hard it is to catch a single human using those arms and a sword, if he were able to don't you think he would have re-grown his tentacles and/or his tail just to make catching him easier?"

"Not necessarily, he wasn't able to catch that Free-Runner when he was in perfect form. That obnoxious human hasn't had so much as a scratch on him this entire time and he's been getting in even closer than me. He's been fighting, or well ... running really, trying to serve as a distraction, sense this whole thing started, and he seems to be having too much fun to even get tired. I highly doubt anything that demon does is going to have an effect."

"Oh" Roda blinked. "But then why would he ... I mean, if he realizes this and chooses not to re-grow his tentacles because of it, why is he even bothering to attack?" looking across the Free-Runner playing tank she saw him holding his finger, perfectly stable, right in front of the demon's nose while dodging, leaping, and twisting to avoid everything thrown at him.

"I'm not touching you, I'm not touching you."

"<Stop Not Touching ME! You Blasted Primate!>"

And the moment he said that the robed human punched one of his teeth out.

"I'm inclined to say that either this Gedel person is much dumber than you give him credit for, or that this Free-Runner is just that good at drawing attention." The plant girl commented "Now you three stay here while I go run him through a blender!" and with that she charged forward, spiky thorns sprouting from random parts of her body.

"Oh man, I never thought I'd actually see this" Timmy commented.

"See what?" the cowboy asked.

"Anything remotely resembling a fair fight outside of the arenas, this is the first time in my life a troublemaker has lasted more than three minutes and didn't get buried alive in all the hero's trying to kill him."

The plant girl, apparently doomed to remain nameless forever, had converted most of her body into a wriggling mass of spike covered vines and was giving Gedal a full on hug, meanwhile the black gunslinger kept covering the ground with ice to make it trip and the Free-Runner was busy "not touching" the demon's tail. It was all the monster could do to keep a grip on his angelic sword.

"Do- ... do you think that angel can be revived?" Roda whispered to while motioning to the decapitated, winged form in the center of the room.

"No ... he's not spawned by a god, otherwise that sword's aura would have burned the demon's hand off. Unless it's not actually a demon of course, Fell those Earth-force bio-copies of genuine one-dimensional entities, it's so hard to tell which one's holy and which one isn't!"

"Y-yeah, I get that but ..."

"If he's biological, as in he needs those organs to keep going, then that angel isn't going to get back up. There's nothing anyone can do for him without messing up reality."

"<GARRrhahAAA!!!>"

The demon screeched, he swung his unarmed fist aimed towards the Robed human ... the human dodged, and it landed hard onto the plant girl instead. It wasn't enough to dislodge her completely, but it was just enough to give the demon a little breathing room. To everyone's horror, that included room enough to swing his flaming sword.

"GAh! G-ge-, Get it off me! Help, HELP! Someone! Please!" The girl leapt away from her quarry, the smell of maple syrup filled the air as a gaping hole in her stomach caught fire and spread across her armor. "h-HELP!" she was clearly panicked, and with good reason. What could be more frightful to any plant than being set alight? The monk, worried for the safety of someone other than himself, instantly slipped off his shirt and rushed forward to put her out, but was caught off-guard with a backhand swing that sent him sprawling across the floor.

The black skinned man with his fancy gun rushed forward while his hands feverishly worked to change the settings, he ducked quickly to dodge the flaming sword as he passed Gedal, and as soon as he reached the plant girl he shot out some sticky, awful smelling goop from his gun that coated the poor girl whilst smothering the flames.

"<Oh No You Don't>"

The demon made a move to strike down on him, but the human turned too quickly and shot his goop at the sword, extinguishing the flames and blinding the demon. Not wasting any time lest the monster retaliate, he scooped his arm under the plant girl's shoulder and tried to carry her off.

"Com on girl, yu betta tan this, a little fire not goin to kill yu while I'm aroun" He tried to reassure her as sap mixed in with the flame retardant mush.

"Look out! The Bastards casting!" The robed human yelled as he charged the blind demon.

"Casting, casting what?" Roda squeaked while scanning for a place to hide.

"I, er, I can't. He's glowing too much, I can't see it!"

"What in Fell are you talking about!? The monster isn't glowing at all!"

"The human in white robes ducked down to his knees and slid forward as low to the ground as possible, he made his body as slim and un-obstructive as possible so as not to bump anything when he slid between the demon's legs. The view from down there looking up at a dangling piece of flesh and an unclean hole was not pleasant by anyone's definition.

"This ugly stick is about to get a whole lot uglier dude" he whispered before shoving the table leg up into that revolting sphincter, surely /that/ would be enough to distract a spell caster and break their conversation. Right? Fallowing through the motion the human slid his out, then circled around for a opening.

Timmy closed his eyes to block out the light, he was getting sick and tired of people glowing brighter than a lighthouse beacon and having to call to say it isn't much light. What is everyone here blind and just pretending they can see?

"I'm telling you, He's glowing! Now lets try to get behind som- ..."

"<Too Late Welps!>"

Gedel screeched to the children as his spell was completed, completely ignoring the robed one's attempts to stop him. No words, no taxing or silly gestures, he just focused his energy and aimed at the human child with an open palm. A second later, everything seemed to explode outward. A bright red glow, so light it was almost pink, blasted through the room emanating from the demon himself. Lines of dark energy crackled like lightning, shooting through the air in a rush of noise only to dissipate into the black, sealed walls. Every bit of furniture was shoved violently to the far end of the walls, then crushed on top of each other as the force kept pushing them. Red panel walls surrounding the untouched tables were torn asunder and sent trailing to the far wall like shrapnel, the tables cracked and splintered as if they were disintegrating in the middle of a hurricane.

"S-stop h-hi ..." the monk tried to call out before a dark beam of energy struck through his chest at random, sending him sprawling to back wall in a tangled heap along with the rest of the broken material. The plant girl tried to dig her roots into the ground so as to keep her and the gunslinger holding her up in place, but they both went flying as well when the force painfully tore her roots out of her feet, allowing yet more sap to spill onto the floor. The cowboy swung his rope forward to try and latch onto the demon himself, but the rope changed direction midair and wrapped around it's wielder instead. He didn't get to stand his ground either. The shattered body of the angel laying in a pool of it's own silvery blood went flying as well, one wing snapping off with an audible crack as it hit the pile of broken tables, but to everyone's relief it went to the opposite wall so at least no one had to touch it. Roda tried to keep a decent hold on Timmy, but when that failed she just hugged the ground to provide friction against her pink cloths and brown fur before gently tapping into the pile of broken things.

Timmy wasn't able to see any of it, he just stood his ground near the center of the room with his arms crossed over his eyes to block out more of that irritating light. As soon as it died down he looked around to see much more of the room was clear of obstruction, the maze of panels and tables was shoved aside, there was no way to find where that hole in the wall had been, and he was completely exposed. Timmy was the one thing in the room, person or otherwise, that wasn't sent flying. He wasn't even touched by the black energy.

"Um ..." He blinked fearfully, it took him a moment to realize he was now the closest thing for Gedel to smash. The fact Gedel still had a stick poking out under his stump of a tail did little to bring any levity to the situation.

"<Oh My, Now Aren't You The Powerful One>"

The demon stated as he walked towards the much smaller child, he help up one finger and let it glow purple for just a moment as if to complete another spell. As soon as he saw the light Timmy went from too scared to wet himself to having a raging headache and seething anger. 'why IS that?' he wondered to himself. The poor child was barely knee height to this demon, yet he was just called powerful? Confusion mixed with anger is not a fun emotion.

"<That Should Calm You Down While I Think, No Running Away Pitiful Mortal. Ah I Do Love This Hypnosis spell.>"

' Hypnosis?'

"<So Lets See, No Magic About You, No Hidden Or Even Temporary Strength That Would Account For it, Not Even A Robotic Or Bio Upgrade To Speak Of. So Just How DID You Resist My Spell?>"

"You leave him alone!" Roda called out angrily as she struggled to her feet. She'd taken the least damage from that spell out of everyone in the room save for Timmy himself.

"<Now, Now, The Big People Are Talking. So What To Do, What To Do ... I Want To See Just What You Can Do Because I'm Curious, But I Also Really Want To Kill You. OH! I've Got An Entertaining Idea, Lets Just Hypnotize You To Fight That Greasy Pest While I Finnish Off The Rest. If You Have Any Useful Skills I Could Keep You As A Mind-Slave, But If Not It's Always Fun To Watch As Heroes Are Forced Into Killing A Child.>"

Roda blinked with tears in her eyes as she head this, standing shakily on two legs, she walked closer and closer "N-no! L- ... I Said leave h-him alone!" but the demon just laughed as his hands started to glow again. The other fighters stirred, watching as he wormed his way into the mind of a human that looked more bored and tired than anything else, and knowing it would be impossible to stop him in time. Gedel hasn't even taken the stick out of his bum, what could they try that might stop his casting? Roda was the only one not inclined to give up.

"<You Will Use Everything In Your Power, Through It's Entireity, To Destroy The Pitiful Mortals Around You.>"

The demon stated as his spell took effect.

"No, I WONT! What's It to You anyway butt-face?" was Timmy's irritable response. Though for the most part he looked bored, Roda at least could tell there was a fierceness to his eyes, some resentment that could easily turn explosive. Gedel however, was just stunned into disbeleif.

"<I Er, Wha? ... You WILL Fight That Mouse, I COMMAND THEE!"

The demon took to yelling in the hopes it might get through.

"Well I Command thee to SHOVE IT!" Timmy screeched in reply, his face twisted in blind rage while his arms shot forward and upward to grab that chair leg handing out ... and push forward on one end so that it ripped through flesh from the inside.

"<GYAAAAAHHH!!!.>"

Gedel Screamed at the pain near his genitals, he gave Timmy a hard shove but it just sent him sprawling to the floor near Roda. All said and done Timmy got the better end of that deal.

PWSSSHH!!! The sound of laser fire filled the room as the black man aimed his gun on the lone target.

"Yo mon, tis guy don go down so easily, any suggestions on ow to take em out?"

Timmy was still reeling from a massive headache, but Roda was up to answering "I've been thinking about it, what if his regeneration can were down after a while? If you cut off a body part too much or something it eventually stops growing back?"

The man took another blast while the plant girl was trying to re-grow from her burn wounds.

"Tat sounds nice in theory mis, but if he got a breakin point it goin to be a while afore these weps can take im to it"

"That, that's just it, what if we had more damaging but less lethal weapons? Something to destroy as much flesh as quickly as possible"

"R-Roda, he', hes got the d-door ..." his anger was gone, and with that went Timmy's drive.

"The Doors blocked, yes I know. But what if we could get into the kitchen? All sorts of blenders, knives, ovens, particle beam projectors, shrink rays, things that aren't quite as lethal as a plasma cannon but can deal damage faster than he repairs it."

"Y-you know, I did try to run him through a blender made out of my vines, it worked up until he got me off of him" The plant girl chimed in.

"y-know, if tat Free-Runner over there had a portable blender with the cap removed I'm sure he coulda shredded this bastard in no time flat."

"Bu-but the door? H-how will you ..." Timmy tried to ask.

"I can't see the door to the kitchen from here, theres nothing in the way anymore but now all this junk is blocking the walls. You guys keep him busy, I'll creep around and try to find it." the plant girl stated "I've lost too much blood as it is, can't tank anymore." and with that she deformed into a mass of writing roots and vines and slipped through the piled up mess with silent ease.

"Yu eard te lady, Lets keep ta fat guy busy" the black man said while cocking his fun and charging forward. It wasn't laser fire that came out, but the foam from before. He must have figured a blind demon is a distracted demon. During that whole conversation Gedel had been pulling the chair leg out of a certain orifice and trying to re-grow the internal structure of his manhood, so he didn't appreciate having to repair a sensitive area while blinded.

"Ok, so now we need to clear your ... eep!"

"A little elp mis?" the cowboy called from under a piled of splintered wood and shredded fabric.

"I'm coming, my names Roda, where are you? Are you trapped? Just what are you even, I've never seen someone use a rope so ... er, um ... well" she started talking just as she and Timmy started digging (Roda was much faster at it) but found the poor cowhide wearing gunslinger tied up in his own rope under some broken equipment. Hard to call someone skilled with a rope while their asking for help getting untied.

"Just quit yer yappin and cut me loose! ... er, um ... please? I'd be grateful if ye did it quickly ma'am" he answered with some irritation at her, and a lot of irritation at his situation.

"Sorry" Roda apologized as she leaned her mouth forward. Two incredibly sharp incisors snipped through the thick rope with a sound much like scissors, and the human was glad to get back up on two legs.

"Now to finally git rid of this varmit, you got some nice set of ..." he towered over the mouse girl, an average sized human was about twice as tall as she was, but her breasts weren't shaped in proportion. Combine that with her tight, thin clothing over soft looking fur and you get a lot of human males turning pinker in the face than normal. "Nice set of ... a set of teeth, yeah teeth you got there. Can you bite through the moron's neck?"

"I haven't tried, I'm just trying to keep as many people alive for as long as possible. Especially Timmy, I shouldn't have tried to get him into this."

"Hey! I'm the one who wanted to keep talking" the fourteen year old interjected just as the cowboy aimed and fired yet another useless bullet. It ripped through the demon's shoulder and send bone fragments flying outward, but the battered flesh just repaired itself.

"Now aint the time tiny little peeps" the cowboy growled, just before a section of the piled rubble to the far left exploded in a shower of green shrubbery and vines.

"I Found it! This way everyone!"

"<This Way To What?!>"

The blinded demon stumbled around in flame retardant muck, dropping the now mundane looking sword as he tried to fling the stuff off of him. The gunslinger rushed into the kitchen through a newly cleared out doorway, exactly how he knew what the plan was without anyone telling him Roda had no idea. The plant girl reformed legs, a head and arms then fallowed through herself. The Robed human was busy tossing things at the demon and otherwise getting back at him for that backhand to the face. The Cowboy, Timmy, and Roda each charged past the hulking Gedel to get to the relatively safe kitchen as soon as possible. Timmy even thought to pick up the blackened angel sword as he ran past.

"Erk! God this thing is heavy!" he cursed, to God this time instead of Fell. Fell had nothing to do with the weight of this sword and thus shouldn't take any blame.

"Wait, what about th- ..." Roda started to say before the black skinned gunslinger cut her off.

"He gona be fine girl, tat tere's a Free-Runner, and aint nothin in te world at can keep one o them down" his accent as thick as ever.

Entering the room, what had surprised her most was just how many plates of pizza there were and just how many different kinds of toppings were on each, most of them barely eaten. Silver plates were piled everywhere, covering the counters, the sinks, one of the ovens, and several sections of the walkway.

"Wha?" Roda blinked

"Hey, what did you think happened to all the food when the customers left? Leftovers teleported back into here to be processed into garbage for you scavenging races. Didn't you wonder why there wasn't any pizza or silver plates flying around the room during all that fighting?" The plant girl retorted.

"Um, no. I highly doubt us NON-COMBS were thinking about pizza when a rampaging demon started to trash the restaurant." Timmy answered smarted back with a glare.

"Hey peeps, quit fightin each other till after moron back there decides to aim for people he can hit. Start looking for weapons already!" the cowboy shouted as he hopped one counter to sort through a collection of knives. Roda bend down, ducked under the cupboard, and true to her mouse form started crawling through old dusty things in dark places that may or may not have been used recently. The plant girl eyed the oven fearfully, but boldly extended her tendrils through every other section of the kitchen. Timmy eyed a garbage shoot and wondered curiously if the way out through there was blocked as well ... then decided he'd rather not try and just pressed random buttons on the biggest oven he could find.

"This place is clean ... very clean." Roda called up from somewhere under the floorboard. "I didn't even know you could /get/ pipes with this little rust!"

"Well it is the kitchen to a restaurant, just be sure to watch for mouse traps if your going to keep crawling through where mice like to sneak into." Timmy called back as he controlled the color and intensity of a roaring flame, exactly fuel one uses to get a pink fire he had no idea.

"Mousetraps?! Haha! Only if you call these prices a trap, he's got little tables, menus and seats down here! It's like a mini restaurant for people two inches tall."

"Ey, It's an omnivore pizza parlor, figures the guy'd try to expand his business and get rats outa the kitchen in one swoop." the gunslinger stated as he stood watch by the doorway.

"Aha! Found a stash of smoothie blenders!" the plant girl called out just before the sound of pla-glass breaking rung through the kitchen as she shattered the safety covers. "I left the ones that needed plugging in behind, but here's three so far" she tossed one to Timmy, one to the gunslinger, and kept one for herself. She turned it on and off playfully as if fantasizing about it's use. Timmy looked his over carefully, for the most part it looked like an ordinary blender. White-grey on the bottom, black buttons with various settings and a red on/off switch, the blades were stainless steal and bend upwards for a better angle. But without that safety cover, just turn the thing on and it's easy to call them dangerous.

'Wait a minute, if it's that easy to turn an appliance into a weapon then shouldn't there be an internal safeguard? Something that keeps it from working if it encounters too much resistance, or if the seal is removed at all?' but his thoughts were interrupted by a LOUD smashing at the kitchen door.

"<Your Tank Is Dead, Now I'm Coming For YOU!>"

The demon shouted while pounding his fists into the door. It cracked on the first hit, splintered outward on the second, and by the third punch Gedel let his fist go all the way through ... only to retract it quickly as the gunslinger let his wireless, unsafe blender shred through the red flesh, bone and tendons of that clawed hand.

'So much for a redundant failsafe ... it really is that easy' Timmy thought to himself in alarm, wondering if he should be relieved or nervous about such an oversight. As soon as it sank in that the Free-Runner was dead, his emotions decided on nervous, definitely nervous! No way to stay bored in a time like this, and definitely not the time to get tired!

"Yu ain't leavin in peace ten mon, we gonna tear you apart and use yer blood in our jello shots for tat" the gunslinger stated casually as he waited at the door for the hand to reach back through. And waited ... and kept waiting. Just as he was about to look Gedel punched another hole in the doorway a little higher than the first, smacking the dark skinned gunslinger directly to the side of the head. He went down in a heap, and seconds later Gedel was ripping the door in half so he could fit through. Earily, he didn't say anything.

"Eat lead!" The cowboy called before shooting the demon directly in the face, point blank range, with all three of his last bullets. The demon's face shattered in on itself as one would expect, but before it could recovered the cowboy was all over him, a knife in each hand was slicing and shredding through demonic flesh, a green bubbling slime spraying across an otherwise clean room all the while, at about the same rate Gedel's face could grow back. The ferocity was short-lived however, as the demon just swung his arms randomly to knock the cowboy off, and recovered fully before anyone could reach him. The gunslinger was still face-down on the clean, tiled floor from that first punch, but if he didn't have a concussion before he most certainly got one after Gedel stomped on his head while walking past.

For the cowboy, getting tossed into a pile of knives is never fun, but at least his leather clothing kept a now bleeding human from cutting an artery. The plant girl stared at the strangely silent demon as if considering her options while Timmy hid behind the side of the oven and turned the heat down low. He kept whispering to himself, praying the leaf, vine thing might hear.

'Don't charge him, whatever you do, do not charge. Please, oh please just have some sense, do not charge him' Roda was safe under the floorboard. At least. How she to there from the cupboard will forever remain one of the many mysteries concerning rodent stealth, but for now at least Timmy could count it a blessing. Too bad it was the only blessing.

The plant girl charged.

To her credit, she actually looked like she could pull off some real damage, if the demon's pained look was any indicator. She had her right hand strapped to his face, doing the usual routine of grinding, slicing, and growing into every soft orifice, her left "hand" of sorts was pressing the spinning blades of her wireless blender directly between Gedel's legs ... to the demon's growing horror, she didn't stop after his privates were removed.

Meanwhile Timmy took the time, the combatants distraction, and the combined noise of both howling screams and a running blender to shove that large black and white oven away from the wall and angle it so that the doorway remained open and facing the demon. Now he just needed the beast to fall forward, and hope at least one person here was fast enough to close the door on him and be strong enough to hold him there. No way his entire body would fit, but his head and some of his shoulders might.

CHOMP!!!

"Gyahh!" A loud crunching sound came from the demon's face, fallowed by the plant girl's screams in panic. Timmy clambered over the top of the oven, stood near the controls, and looked up to see Gedel eating the vines around his head like spaghetti! The blender dropped the floor and continued running, shredding the empty air with it's distinct wirrring sound, allowing the demon to recover all over again. Meanwhile he reached both hands around to grab the plant girl by her shoulders, it offered him leverage to pull her the rest of the way into his mouth.

'oh Fell just how much can this guy take?!' he thought to himself

"NAOOO! Help! HELP! DON'T let him eat me, PLEASE!" the girl screamed, almost exactly as if she were on fire again. How one could go from the tough guy to the damsel in distress so fluidly in the span of ten minutes was simply astounding. Timmy reached up to grab part of the seething, wriggling mass of green vines that might soon end up as a demon snack. Touching and griping her in this shifting form felt an awful lot like running your hand through a bowl of snakes.

"H-HEY! You can save me without putting your hand on my ass YOU KNOW!" she screeched before letting loose with a series of interesting curse words. Timmy was having a hard time telling what was where, it was all shifting and crinkling, then there was that constant slurping noise as Gedel consumed more and more of her stretchy arm-vines.

"Ok, fine, so where do I grab? I can't see a donkey anywhere in this mess!" Timmy responded, but didn't let go of his grip ... Not that his puny arms were doing much to drag her out, but at least it was something.

"No! You insignificant dope, my ass! My Rear end, my Butt! Keep your hormones in check and your grubby little monkey paws off!"

"Your, what? So you didn't hide a miniature donkey in here somewhere? Sense when the fell does the word 'Ass' mean 'butt'?"

"Sense the invention of the English language you creep!" she screeched like a harpy as her elbows slipped in past the monsters red lips, the sweet smell of sap filling the air whenever he felt like chewing.

"Isn't that an insult to donkeys everywhere?" the child asked as he took one of her vines, strung it loose, then started to tie it around the oven's control panel so his 'monkey paws' wouldn't be touching her.

"I DON'T CARE!" was her panicked response, her head just inches away from a tooth-filled maw and a whole new world of pain.

Slice!

And then she was free, the demon fell over backwards, unfortunately landing his read end on the dark skinned gunslinger (poor guy can't seem to get a break) the plant girl oozed sap where her arms were cut off, yet another set of limbs she'd have to re-grow, and the cowboy was standing in the center with a sap covered knife.

"Hows that for help ma'am, I figured if those things grow back it's better to cut em off rather than fish you out of a toilet."

"Gahhhhhh!!!!" Was all he got in thanks while Timmy tried to crawl out from under her. He hadn't even finished tying her to the oven yet. Meanwhile the demon was getting to his feet.

"Anyone else notice that he hasn't said anything sense he killed the Free-Runner?" Timmy asked nervously.

"Let us hope that means he's running low on energy, he's not showin off or swing around recklessly either." the cowboy answered, a determined expression on his face as he held the knife in one hand. Red blood was soaked across his thighs and the right side of his ribs, and his left hand was bleeding through what looked like leather gloves ... odd, he wasn't using any gloves before. As Gedel clomped forward, apparently oblivious or uncaring of the conversation going on around him, the cowboy stood his ground with the six inch long kitchen knife as his only weapon. No bullets in the gun, (plenty of powder though) his rope had mouse bites in it, and he clearly did not have to strength to go anywhere with fisticuffs, he was all that stood between Timmy and the plant girl.

As Gedel charged, standing in the way simply meant hiding the oven. A quick slash to Gedel's ribs as he sidestepped out of the way, the rough cowboy spun to get behind this demon and shove forward with all the might his adrenal glands and the certainty of death could muster. The plant girl let her legs convert into a bundled mass of vines, gripped one edge of the oven with the vines in her face, and used to rest of her body to grip and pull Gedel's head. Even as he resisted by pulling back, the open oven went with him. Timmy leapt off, shifted to the left, and tried to stay out of the way. The cowboy's fingers made odd squishing sounds as they pressed into the goop covered stumps of what used to be tentacles, but otherwise the worst their combined force could do was hold him still ... and not even all of him! His arms were still swinging wildly to each side.

"Oh man, were dead, were dead I just know it" Timmy mumbled to himself as he thought about those who were already killed, he didn't even know the names of anywhere here except Roda! Well, he overheard Gedel's name, but the name of his murderer didn't count. Help was most likely just a few inches away, blast that barrier spell! Why the Fell did he have to know how to cast too?! The guy in the robes was dead, that angel was killed off early and his sword left on the floor in this kitchen rather disgracefully, the black guy could possibly still live through this but he sure looked dead. The broken blender, still left on, wirred noisily where it fell.

"H-hey kid, don't talk like that! You'll psyche yourself out" the cowboy ordered as he struggled to get a handhold.

"Y-you know, you could try, I don't know, HELPING!" the plant lady screeched, she'd been torn apart more times than Timmy cared to count so it was rather easy to forgive her harsh tone. The child stepped forward, maybe if he got the monster to trip while they were pulling ...

"Wha! Kid no! Don't listen to her!" the human called as soon as Timmy stepped within reach, but by then it was too late, Gedel's waving arms had latched onto the child and were squeezing tightly.

"Ow, ow, oh yes because this was a, ow! Good idea. I mean I really wanted to ..." Timmy started to complain sarcastically at first, but his tone and expression changed when Gedel tilted him to one side and started pressing his face to the floor near that wirring sound "Meeep!"

Thank Fell, or perhaps the plant girl wrapped around his head, that the demon was blinded at the moment and couldn't actually aim well. But in many ways that just made his effort that much scarier! Wirring soon mixed with dripping, and then witch a scratching or gnawing sound as the kid wet himself. Er wait, peeing his pants wouldn't make a gnawing sound would it?

CRACK!

The floorboard exploded in a shower of splinters and thin metal pipes as Roda burst from her bellow ground hiding spot, she gripped the blender with one hand and shoved it into the demon's foot, only to drop it completely as she pounced the hand that held Timmy at bay.

"No, NO, NO!!!-Your-NOT-Getting-Timmy!" She squeaked in a very high pitched and rather fast moving voice, her arms wrapped around Gedel's arm for good leverage, her mouth opened an impressive two feet wide to show one nasty set of incisors in a light Timmy had never seen before, and then came the shower of green ooze as she bit into the joint. No loud chomp, no battle cry was given, it was just a quick:

SNIP!

As if someone was fooling around with a set of scissors, her upper jaw seemed to hold her 'catch' in place while her much sharper lower jaw scooped upward to gouge out massive chunks of flesh. She'd bitten through two feet of muscle in less than ten seconds! Timmy fell to the ground with a 'wump!' and scrambled out from under a now detached hand, his mind suddenly flashing to images of his earlier conversation with Roda. It was now a heck of a lot easier to picture that little girl biting off someone's head and swallowing it whole, with those teeth she was certainly up for the task!

"wh, whsad, wknspp, whaha!" she tried to say something, reminding Timmy that she can't puke and can't spit. Now probably wasn't the best time to ask if she could digest demon muck. So instead he reached into her mouth and carefully pulled out the oozing mass of red, spit covered ... stuff ... gouging it to shreds when it turned out her teeth angling inward meant they had a solid grip on anything trying to come out.

"Uhg, thanks Timmy, now grab the blender quick! We have to stop him before he recovers!" And she was on to biting through his knee-caps in much the same way. There was a noticeable lack of screaming and jerking around as Timmy shredded through one knee, shielding his eyes from the constant spray of 'blood' and occasionally turning to pull something out of Roda's oversized mouth. It didn't help that the still recovering arm she'd town off was dripping ooze down on them from above. One would think with all the yelling he'd done before Gedel would be panicking now. A quick glance upward, and nope ... very hard to shout when you have vines pulling your jaw the wrong way.

Just a few more snips, they just had to work a little bit faster, always make sure to reopen an old wound so that the body parts didn't grow back while they were making knew holes, and all the cowboy had to worry about was how hard he pushed.

WAM!

It came out of nowhere, just a 'thunk' from behind and Gedel fell right into the oven face first. He would normally be too big, but with so much of his flesh missing all the plant girl had to do was get out quickly and they could shove half his body mass in. His face, chest and shoulders were trying to repair, but they had two things going against them now. Lack of room to grow, and as soon as the plant girl turned a little knob, fire. Lots and lots of fire.

"Gah!" looking up from their pools of fleshy chunks and green ooze Timmy and Roda saw the white man in robes, the guy who was supposed to be dead, standing next to the cowboy "That's how you push someone, now come on! Rip out his spine, don't let the bastard recover!" He shouted visciously, picking up a blender the gunslinger had left behind and making little smiley faces out of blood patterns ... unless, was it really blood? Or we call it ooze patterns?

"B-, I er ... I thought you were dead?!" Timmy exclaimed as he worked his way through the thigh. This was starting to feel less like a fight for one's life and more like a joint butchery.

Roda would have shared the same sentiments, but she couldn't talk with her mouth so full of snipped off demon-flesh.

"Haven't you suckers eva heard of 'feign death' before? I'm not that strong and I don't recover man, so I'm smart enough to know that when a guy like this hits you upside the head you don't get back up and tell him to try again."

"If it was just feigning death then what took you SO DAMMED LONG!"

"What part of 'hit upside the head' did you not get? I was pretending to be dead, the part about being too injured to move wasn't an act."

"Ah, arguing while we run a demon through a meat-grinder to save our lives. What a joy this will be to tell over a bonfire" the cowboy commented sarcastically as he stripped off chunks of flesh with his kitchen knife. Blood, or at least the green slime where blood was supposed to be, went everywhere and covered everything. They couldn't close the oven, so the smell of charred demon brains filled the room in rather short notice. The act was slow going because this guy just kept re-growing almost as quickly as the combatants tore him apart, and in no time at all there was more flesh piled up around the monster than there was on his original body! But at least it was shrinking.

Roda made another neat little snip through a two inch thick bone near the spine, and to everyone's surprise the whole mass just melted away,

"huh?" Timmy blinked, the fire from the oven was turned off once they could be certain nothing was left inside to cook.

"So ... um ... is it over?" Timmy asked with a pleading expression, the goop and lots of flesh chunks were stacked up around them, but somehow the room seemed lighter.

"I'll go ch- ... yah!" the robed man said something as he walked to the kitchen door, but shouted once he saw the crowds of people standing outside the window just staring in awe at the carnage "You people need to get out here, lets go see if there's a healer in that crowd."

The plant lady carefully formed a humanoid body and staggered out past the doorway, Roda and Timmy walked carefully through the slime, the cowboy reached down to pick up a fellow gunslinger and carry him into the crowd, while what looked like a human in a blue uniform with deer horns was asking non-stop questions to the first person she could get a hold of. Thankfully for Timmy and Roda, it wasn't them. The hole in the wall was still there, no longer covered by any mystical demonic barrier, though it was covered by a pile of chairs and broken tables.

"I ... I think I'm ready to ... to go back to boring, polite conversations ... how about you Roda? No more of this combat Frap."

"I ... urp! I wish I could puke! There isn't any potion nearby that can, erp! Force me to right? Ulgh!" she tried sticking her tongue out and rubbing her hands across it to wipe off the taste of demon she'd chewed on, but her hands were still covered in his blood so it didn't work too well.

Timmy turned his attention to the roaring crowd, hundreds of voices in billions of dialects all buzzing, chirping, or howling at once in an effort to take in as much of the event as possible. The waiter was standing to one side with a megaphone in one tentacle ... it was interesting to see how much his face resembled a balloon, but discomforting to see just how many of his arms were missing. Odd ... there wasn't a huge pile of purple octopus tentacles in the middle of the room when he and Roda saw the fight, what happened to them?

"Alright people, the survivors are coming out, I want everyone to be quite" a booming, male voice shouted over the crowds. "Healers go see that angel, if you can scrape up enough brain matter we might be able to cyborg the poor bastard."

"No, too much sap and ectoplasm has mixed with his own translucent bodily fluids, we don't have any means of sorting out which bit of DNA is which" another nameless voice called back, this one female.

"Now I want everyone to ..." yet another voice.

"Lets get started repairing that ..." another irritating voice added into the massive chorus

"How did all these chairs get ..." Ugh! Everyone was talking! Timmy closed his eyes and tried to imagine the voices dieing down. What he heard instead were girlish screams.

EEEEEEEEK!!!

He bolted upright and opened his eyes again "Hey! My face is /not/ that freaky!" he called to several random strangers as their terrified squeals died down.

"Not you, you dope! That! Him! THAT THING!" one red haired female with sharp claws jutting from her fingertips pointed to the back of the battered pizza place ... and to Gedel, who was standing in the doorway.

"No ... no it can't be ..."

"<Thought You'd Gotten Rid Of Me Huh? Well It Turns Out I'm A Pretty Good Listener, I Listened To How That Free-Runner Tricked Me By Playing Dead>"

"Frap!" someone yelled, it was impossible to tell who.

"Stand back everyone, keep him in my line of sight"

"eye-eye sir!"

Random voices from random people filled the air, it was hard to filter out which words were the most important, but the one bending onto one knee to aim a gun twice as long as he was tall probably deserved a bit more attention than the half fly/half skunk who kept smacking into the building.

"Ready, Aim, FIRE!" He shouted as he squeezed the trigger. At first nothing happened, just a quick, inaudible flash and the demon staggered in place ... Roda stared, Timmy stared, the plant girl and cowboy were standing in place, the Free-Runner was leaping from roof-top to roof-top in what looked like an extra long dash for cover, and the crowds watching were stunned into silence. Then everything changed.

MASSIVE sounds, as if a giant vacuum or a hurricane were having a pleasant conversation, the sheer wind gushing towards the demon's form was enough to cut off any and all sounds. Like a freight train, a particle accelerator without the protective sheet of metal, or a chemical rocket going off three feet from your face, it was /loud/ to the point of insanity.

The demon, who should have been at the epicenter of it, screamed to no avail as a tiny black dot burst from his chest and seemed to suck his body inside of it, no matter that he didn't fit and had his skin pop, his flesh and organs squeezing out, and his bones grinding into dust before it managed to get him in. The last piece of red to disappear into that loud little ball of chaos were his hands. The body of the nearby angel flipped off the ground and was sucked in soon after, the glass windows shattered and all the fragments fed the greedy little hole, random papers from across the street rushed, fallowing the wind's heed, in an effort to fill an insatiable pit. The slime covering Timmy's clothing and Roda's fur flew off in the wind and was sucked down into it like green die in slowly draining bathtub water. The various fluids lining the restaurant's walls were sucked in with a noisy slurp.

Portable black holes.

Fell those things were annoying.

Roda tried to say something but it came out as nothing more than moving her lips in that blasted wind. Timmy tried to say something back, but he couldn't even hear himself. His eyes started to get blurry, his mouth grew dry, before the child knew it his lungs were gasping for air that simple wouldn't come, it was moving too fast for his tiny lungs to pull in. Looking Roda in the eyes as he fell forward into her chest, his eyes closed slowly ...

And then there was darkness.