Chapter 76

Stolen Words

I brought out a beam sword and started swinging at the letters. When they weren't facing me and had all their attention on Stephen, they shattered easily. The others were joining me at the slicing away, all three of us a blur of motion. But nothing worked. Every letter that we destroyed another popped up to fill its spot. We had no hope of getting to Stephen if the ghost kept up his typing.

"Keep attacking!" I called to the others. "I'll stop him."

Big talk. I had no idea what I could do. The ghost was still circling around the room, surrounded by his own shield of letters. I hated to admit it but I thought that an explosive attack might actually be effective here... But I would suggest that as a last resort. All we really needed to do was make him stop typing.

So, my plan then was simple: get a grip on the typewriter. There was no way I was getting through the words with an attack or anywhere close to it to grab it so I needed to use my power. The only problem was the shield of letters lackeys he had. I couldn't see through the moving chaos to get at the typewriter.

This would be a nice moment to implement my long range attack but that was still yet to be perfected. But just thinking that gave me an idea. My failed attempts had been more like a shotgun blast... If I could increase the pressure of that and release it at just the right point...

I built up power in both hands, calling on so much that my hands rocked around with energy. I then funneled the power into all of my fingers until they were wiggling with energy.

I waited for the ghost to come back toward me, letting the power grow the whole time, and then I ran into our booth and shot into the air. The ghost was coming straight for me but he didn't even notice, the wall of words were too thick.

I put my hands into the midst of the words, feeling their icky green slime surrounding my hands, and then I released, pushing all the energy out as fast I could through each individual finger.

It had the desired effect, a wave of my energy shotgunned out, blasting the words clear enough to clear a path right for the typewriter. I kept sailing forward but the ghost had noticed me and hammered away at the keys, having his words wrap around my arms. But sucks for you, bastard, I wasn't ever going to touch you with those.

I reached out with my energy and latched onto the typewriter and yanked with all I had.

I know it was my plan and everything, but to my utter shock it actually worked: the typewriter came flying toward me. Oh my God, was it really that simple?

I caught it, with my real physical hands. It felt icky to touch but was mostly solid. I landed on the ground and all was still.

The ghost was still shocked, the letters were still circling me from above and over to my right they were still manhandling Stephen. But then that moment passed, as the ghost stared down at me, with a level of rage previously unseen. His face turned a little red and the letters... They turned boiling blood red.

Not good. I tried to run but too late. The ghost closed his hand into a fist and the letters above me dived, wrapping themselves around me like they had Stephen. But, as one bit of good news, I saw the ones surrounding Stephen break off and head straight for me. Getting the typewriter back was priority number one, it seemed.

And then all I could see was red as the letters bombarded me, trying to drive the typewriter up and out of my reach. I held it close to my chest and quickly realized I was not going to be able to keep this up for long.

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"Darcy!" Stephen shouted, and I could kind of see him through the onslaught of letters. "Hold on, we got you!"

Dowser's big muscled frame came into view, the two boys fighting to cull the letter's numbers. If it was just them then that meant Netta must be going straight for the unprotected ghost. Damn, we were really good at strategizing, huh?

But it would be all for naught if the letters got the typewriter from me and the ghost was back to producing more colorful language.

I did something I should have tried to start with: I tried to take the typewriter into my inventory.

[ Error! Infected item! ]

Fuck. I mean it still was glowing the ghostly green but it was worth a shot. That left me with another idea. I used enlargement on the fishbowl. I thought that, maybe, I could make it just big enough to fit the item inside.

[ This item can not be enlarged. ]

Fuck!

Some of the letters had gotten between me and the typewriter and were pushing out, trying to lift it right out of my arms. I had maybe thirty seconds to come up with a new way to keep it from them.

If Enlargement was an ability, then so must be Shrinking! Let's see what a +1 Shrink Stat could do for me.

[ Shrinking activated! Shrink: typewriter? ]

I activated it, with literal seconds to spare, and the typewriter shrunk, not a crazy amount, but it became a lot more manageable and, I thought, small enough to fit in the fishbowl. I yanked it off my head, stuffed it in, and flipped it over, throwing my full body weight over top of it to hold it down.

The letters REALLY didn't like that. They buzzed around angrily and crashed into me, again and again, trying to knock me off their target. And, shit, it was kind of working. I had bought some time, but not very much.

Stephen and Dowser were still there, for sure making progress but I didn't think they would make it to me in time.

I closed my eyes, focusing on holding the fishbowl down, praying that some miracle would get us through this. Maybe Netta would land the finishing blow on the ghost. Any second now. Any second...

It wasn't gonna happen. No last minute save would be coming my way. And as soon as this typewriter was returned to him our entire attack would have been for nothing. Would we have to retreat? Would the writing nook permanently be infested with words? Definitely fitting...

A letter bigger than the others slammed into my head and, with my eyes closed, I reflexively pushed back with my mind. And to my horror, my energy connected with it. The ghostly energy wrestled with my mental magic about to overpower it when I put a bit more into it. My energy absorbed the ghost's power and the letters turned blue before popping like a bubble, there and gone, just like that.

I grinned. No more playing defense. It was time to fight back.

#

"Stephen!" I called out through the onslaught, from the words side and ours. "Use Mind Link!!"

"What!?" He called back and not for the first time, I really wish we had learned how to read each other's minds.

Guess I would just have to show him.

I closed my eyes, built up my energy in the center of my mind, the words hammering, about to jostle me off target at any second... But then I flexed my mind, letting the energy explode out in a wave of blue that drowned the letters, washing away their angry red.

"Ohhh," Stephen said as he finally caught on and joined me.

His energy went out, a force of destructive yellow that charged the air with energy as the letters came under his control. I conquered mine from within and he captured the outer layer and, moving in perfect sync, we parted the letters and Stephen slid in beside me. I kicked the helmet up, caught the small typewriter, and tried to put my fishbowl on my head but I over shot it and Stephen caught it.

"Nice move," he said with a grin. "That discovery of yours just changed everything."

"Shall we wrap it up?" I pointed to my head. He didn't need any explanations then, he deposited the fishbowl onto me and fell in, back to back.

Our energy connected with ease, as if no time had passed at all. Did that make our feud over? I didn't think so. But wild and dangerous situations like this just made things meld a little easier. Adrenaline was a crazy drug.

"Hey, fucker!" Our voices were overlaid over each other, there was no longer a Darcy and Stephen just a singular mind with one goal: to fuck this ghost up.

The spector was in the middle of batting Netta aside with his ever dwindling letters. He landed a good blow that sent her flying into the wall and was likely about to gloat when he heard our eerie double voice threat. He whipped around, rage still in his eyes... for all of one second. The fight went completely out of him when he saw us standing there, his letters flying around us, blue and yellow mixed together, completely out of his control.

I tossed the shrunken typewriter a perfect middle distance between us. He looked at it, licking his lips, his mind racing with calculations.

"It's your only chance," we said. "You gonna take it?"

The words that were left to him, circled around, going faster and faster and glowing with an extra red intensity. The entire color screamed infection, a raging illness that would infect anything it touched.

We would see about that.