>> The Bad Kind of Friend

I hurl myself into a painful, sideways, roll as something massive in the smoke puts an actual crater where I was. Its form boiled to nothing by our colour-coded supernova. A neon ring of spitting magnesium that roars from every one of our high-powered flares.

All Princess had to do stop this was put them out of reach.

To shove them in a backroom. A hole.

Instead, she dropped them right out in the rubble. Hiding them with illusions, for her own amusement. So we'd walk past them, unknowing. So she could pluck them up and dangle them in front of us.

That's just the kind of 'friend' she is.

And just how I remember her, too. Short sighted. Sadistic. Terrible aim.

It makes her predictable.

My body jerks into another roll, but I needn't have. The monstrous thing in the blinding, shadow-dancing, void of dust and light cannot see us. Its fury directed at random. At nothing. At where we might have been, or could have been. Quaking the ground with every slamming, thrashing, strike.

The air filled with chips of rock, and eye-scarring light.

And screaming, impotent, rage.

I see only in flashes. Stumbling. Tumbling. Grabbing up one of Demon's gold-tinted flares, and over the scree. Through a hole in the floor to land on virtually clear tiles.

Demon himself lands beside me. A Zipper-blue flare in one hand, Tufty under the other as Kami scrambles in behind. Herding Badger, and Gremlin - who whimpers horribly. Hiding her large red eyes, and thrashing her long scaly tail.

"SPOOKIESS!!!!!"

"I know it's bright!! I bloody know! Just deal with it!"

The world rumbles, and I realise I've made a critical error. Up there, we were shielded by a wall of light. Down here? We're picked out as a target. Like I did with the Hellcrawler.

And I'm yelling.

Beyond the rage of light, reflected in the windows, something truly massive lets out a roar from the age of the first apocalypse. A thundering sound more horn and horror than actual noise. And a symphony of tiny, cheerful, bells in the dark.

It lumps a heavy step. And then another. Tinkling all the way.

"Spook?" Zipper says in a tiny voice. "Maaaate?"

"RUN!"

I slap the flare to my armour, and we hare away on all fours. A tunnel of frosty glass wrapping the edge of - I assume - a balcony. Its surface sparking odd shades of blue and yellow as our spitting lights shift.

But what's beyond it? A sharp drop? A factory floor?

I shudder. Eyes widening. Images of something tearing down the wall. Collapsing the floor beneath me. Tipping me out into an unknown drop-

"Spook! We gotta shut these off!" Kami yells, shaking me out of it.

"We can't! Suit lights won't cut it!" I snarl back. "It's all cameras along here anyway! She knows where we are!"

Her eyes darken. Dancing with real fire. "Blow the power?"

"Can we find it?" I counter.

She scowls. "If the blueprints weren't bullshit-" Everything shudders violently beneath us, my claws clashing for grip on the tile as the windows rattle dust from the walls. My stuttering, failing, eyes jerking to glass that dances with brilliant colour.

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Clouds dust, behind us, scarred by wild and clashing colours.

And, in them, Princess flickers. Malevolent, and smiling. Her eyes furious, and wicked, and terrible to behold.

Yet barely visible in the violently too-bright light.

"If you don't Play Fair, I'm Telling Mummy!" Her head rocks, like a broke-necked doll. "She'll Make You Sorry you ever Ran Away! And then I'll make what's left into Happy Little Dollies!" Her breath shudders out, her mouth almost frothing. "And then we'll ALL be Best, Best, Friends!! FOREVER!"

"Oh, very reasonable." Kami snarks. Trying to undermine her.

"Yes." She giggles. "And then you'll do everything I say! Just like besties are supposed to!"

"Never." I whisper, but Princess doesn't even blink. Her smile sharper than ever before.

"I didn't say you could say no."

And the floor rattles again. Closer. Closer still.

"C'mon." I snarl, and we fly past rooms that flicker and go dark. Leaving only Princess within.

And her terrible smile.

Ahead, we have two choices. Hit the hallway breaking right, or blow past it. But if we do, that's it. We're stuck on a straight road to a hard left at the end. Which means looping the monster. Which means we're in deep shit.

And if it hits us on that corner, we'll be absolute paste.

Tufty screams as safety glass blasts inward behind us. Windows blowing inward as our unseen nightmare rips the balcony apart.

Nightmare.....?

The 'déjà vu' hits so hard I actually stumble. My mind flashing back to that darkened chase along the storm-soaked road, open on one side to oblivion. Hunted by a laughing monster that cannot be touched.

A demon who locks off our exits.

A demon who shuts off the lights.

Driving us on, and on, toward a right turn. Where it trapped us.

"Wait! A! Bloody! Second!" I snarl, right as the exit approaches.

"Moon!" Kami yells back. "She's pretending to be bloody Moon!"

"Holy shit! IGNORE THE TURN! IT'S A TRAP!!" I scream, and we hurl ourselves past it in a rush. The passage erupting in an infernal ROAR of flame that rolls its wash of fire and smoke across the windows.

Not an explosion. Not a bomb.

A scream of actual flamethrowers, singeing the tips of our tails.

And all the time the monster comes. Punching through window, after window, after window.

Faster than anything real.

I catch an almost-glance as it reaches into the still-spewing fire. A fat hand the size of all your worst dream, all coated in flame-fuel as it snatches at the ground.

Uncaring. Demented. And eager.

Covering its unseen body in fire.

And then it drags its massive, MASSIVE, arm through the glass wall behind us. Faster and faster. Too fast. Right behind us as we hammer into the turn. Shrinking the gap as we kick off the wall to round it.

Almost leaving Kami behind.

No secondary trap. Oh good. That means it's still ahead of us.

I focus on the path. Ears twisting from front to back as I calculate distance, and hunt the next danger.

Proxy mines? Turrets? Something new?

Depends if she needs us alive, dead, driven someplace, or she's just trying to torture us and doesn't really care. The tactical difference is massive, and could change her entire strategy.

Another junction.

Another passage.

And a sudden intake of giddy breath behind us. As if Princess is up on her toes, waiting to see what we do. And my mind flashes through her psycho calculations.

It won't be flames - twice is boring.

It won't be rats - she's running out.

And all her drones are supposedly dead.

Bomb is too quick - no time to gloat.

But what she really, really, would enjoy is making us run right past our only escape. That would keep her up all night in giggles and hysterics if she pulled it off.

And so, right as we hit the passage, I scream "STOP!" The other panicking as the massive, still burning, 'hand' implodes the windows behind us. Ripping through the one we literally just past.

But I feel an almost zen as I duck a quick flare-lit look down the hole. Kami and Demon skidding my heels as they try to shove me past.

But then I grin.

"IN! IN! GO! NOW!!!"

Cubes of glass explode against my back as we do. Bowling, and tumbling, and crying in horror as the burning fist of a monstrous god hammers past us. Ripping windows and railings from their fames, and casting them down into Hell.

And then, it turns.

A huge, white-toothed smile, stretching its face. Splitting at the seams at it tears open to reveal a vast plushy mouth lined with stabbing, serrated, saw-blade teeth. And a throat wide enough to swallow a freaking adult, whole.

Smoke and embers boil on its bright, polka-dotted, costume. Sizzling gently as rag-doll clown rattles its massive, overstuffed, head side-to side. Jangling a thousand merry little bells as it beams at us with demented, children's-TV, eyes.

"Oh my God." Kami whispers. "It's a Plaything."

And then it curls one great, squishy, paw of a fist. Flames melting the tight, cracked, fabric as it fires toward us like a ball from a cannon.

And it hits like one.

Like solid steel wrapped in fluff, as it crashes down on our little hallway. Its huge arms stretching hideously as they slamming through walls, through desks, through offices and pillars.

Shattering the windows into a billion glittering cubes.

"RUN!!" I scream, but I can't even hear the words as those arms curve like plushie snakes. Smashing through the sides of our passage, and covering us with glass. Wrapping the walls and strut around us, in a hug that crushes them inward.

Trapping us.

Tumbling the ceiling.

Breaking the building apart.

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