>> Towering Abomination

My heartrate jerks again, and I feel the world tip. Crashing me into the towering machines. But I can't stop. I can't. I don't have time to be unconscious. Not when Princess has Badger, and the entire mission is falling the Hell apart-

An army. She hid an army in a factory by not building it yet.

What the Hell did she need it for?

NO! No time! I have to-

Pain flashes through me again, and one leg crashes out from under me. My breath gasping, so hard. If not for the battleStim overdose, I would be out already. Even as it is....

This could kill me.

The damage is just too much.

I can feel it. It's burning me out, inside.

Straining my heart. My muscles. My everything.

I pull myself up. A demented, Hellfire, glare flashing across a reflected face in a glassy window. A face too wild and distorted to be mine.

"THEY. WILL. NOT. TAKE. BADGER."

Not to kill him. Not to send him back to The School.

And not to-

"-ook! SPOOK! COME IN, YOU IDIOT!" My SMG crackles in Kami's voice. "SHIT! SHIT! What the fu-!?"

"Princess! Got Badger!" I choke out. "No time!"

"SHIT!!! You better hurry! There's more than one bear!!"

My hand hits the side of a machine, smearing it with blackened blood. "What.....?"

"Spook! You dumb shit! Your vitals are fricked! It's insane!!" She takes a breath. "If you don't get him NOW you'll never-"

I almost catch something. Like there's more. Like there's another voice on the line. Like something is wrong.

Or there are two Kamis speaking at once.

"WHERE IS HE!?" I scream. "Y'SAW WHERE HE WENT!?"

"Shit. You yanked the pin, didn't you? You know how often that kills-"

"BADGER!" I scrape along the machine. My last clear shred of vision decaying, even as I slug another step. "Where.... is....."

Three minutes. Maybe four. I'll be blind.

"I don't KNOW! SHIT-! HE MUST BE UP THE STAIRS!" She screams at me in frustration. Her breath shakes. Her pistols popping, raw and fast. "I've got nothing left in the rifle! All I saw was Badger on the floor! But I stopped Tufty, when he tried to-"

"FORGET THE BLOODY CAT!!" I cough, hard, and there's blood specking the wall. "KILL HER COMAND CENTRE!! RIGHT NOW!!"

"SHIT! I've got enough to deal with! And don't even know where it is-!?"

"Factory layout analysis indicates a major sever node near Spook's location. Likely on an upper floor."

I skid to a bloodied stop. Eyes snapping to walls of pale glass ringing the factory.

Fixating on the spot where I felt that.... thing..... watching me.

No. That isn't..... That isn't possible.

That was a bloody hallucination.

Right?

"What if....." I breathe. "Oh Hell."

The Mission Target. The Left Hand Of The Devil.

It's originTek. And really weird shit happens around originTek. That's how you know it's real to begin with.

I swallow. A pill of sudden dread in my throat.

Is it watching me? Even now?

I chew one hand, fretfully and angrily. Fighting just to think through the decaying haze of MURDER and panic hammering inside me.

But the demon Princess who taunts me won't give me time. Or breath. Or an instant to think.

"I'm gonna die. Isn't that fun?" A ghostly Badger whispers. "Or maybe I already am? Wanna come see?"

I take a step. And another. Kami's voice jittering from my SMG, telling me to go and not to go. To hurry and to come back. The twinned voices of chaos meshing into a crazed mass of noise as I charge to the edge of the Factory. Ripping open the doors to a flickering stairwell.

And stop.

The distant sent of something sweet and otherworldly presses warmth against my face. The alluring promise of a Princess's perfume.

Beguiling. Ensnaring. Goading me on.

I could KILL her now, and stop all of this.

But something is wrong. Even through the haze, I can feel it. Things don't make sense, and I can't pin down why.

I bite my hand harder to focus. Shaking. Stumbling. Fighting the endless rage that beats against my heart.

"Spook!!!" Badger screams, from high above. "Spook! Help!"

Another step.

Was it really him?

The server room. It makes sense to hit her there. I could jack Polybius directly into her core. Wipe her from existence, or send her to burn in digital Hell.

And it's right in front of me.

Oh so convenient.

A nice quick run up the stairs, right into whatever trap she has set.

Bombs? No. No, Princess wants it to be personal. Which means......

Maybe he's really up there. With her. Waiting.

It would be the ultimate bait: Princess. Badger. And maybe The Hand as well.

Which means her trap is something subtle. Something deadly, and guaranteed. Something I won't see coming.

But that's the allure to begin with: The promise that if I bite, like a good pet, I'll get an opening to kill her.

"No." I snarl, snapping away from the door. "I do this on my terms. Not hers."

"Hey! Wait!" Kami yells. But everything else is lost as I stumble and stagger to a stop.

Staring upwards in absolute horror.

In realisation.

In dread.

Because it turns out Mister bloody Tickles moves like a massive freaking predator.

Not simply quiet, but fast. Its endless arms snapping out, with impossible speed, to snatch Demon and Zipper right out of the air. Crushing their armour into their bodies as it brings their terrified faces up towards its own. Which looms with awful, unholy, darkness above the fizzing globes of some unknowable device.

As if Tickles never really had any trouble moving or aiming at all.

As if robots aren't limited to human-like eyes stuck in human-like faces.

As if they're not covered in cameras, radar, and sensors galore. With gyros, and movement AIs, and anti-gravity cheats to make a machine the size of a truck move like a matchstick doll.

And it's so obvious now.

Tickles was never blind.

"Holy shit. That little bitch." I whisper, as the first chills of the battleStim Crash start eating my veins.

And I start to run. Bounding towards it, even as the gears in my head finally turn.

The stumbling. The clumsy act. The funny faces.

It was all a freaking clown show.

And, as I replay the damn fight in my head, it's so obvious. The clown was a freaking monster at the start. But then I blew its damned head to smithereens. Revealing the core is somewhere in the chest.

I was one call to Kami away from killing the biggest piece on the board.

And Princess knew that. I bet I actually scared her with that one.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

So she kept me alone. Kept me defensive as Hell, and away from my team.

Put metal between me and the others to shut off my comms.

Dropped an army on me, and pulled Tickles back.

Bought herself time, and attention, by picking on Tufty. Attacking his trauma. Forcing me to babysit. Forcing me to defend, as her army grows around me.

Kept me busy, and basically alone. Kept me away from her monster.

Kept it way, way, down on my priority kill-list.

Just a big, slow, waste of space struggling to even walk.

A secondary threat, off chasing some bastard who doesn't even exist.

It worked so freaking well I forgot how Tickles was hunting us down and punching through walls just minutes before. Threatening not just me, but my entire bloody team at once.

I started thinking the damn stupid knockoff bear was the real threat.

And when I killed that, I stopped thinking about..... anything.

Anything at all. Except the RAGE. And Badger. And-

And that is right when Princess found her moment.

Leading me away from the REAL fight, right as her main piece attacked.

She played me masterfully.

And more than that.....

"Kami." I choke through a thickening throat. "Kami. Did I bloody order you NOT to shoot the clown?"

Kami's voice rolls with ticklish giggles and bubbles of glee. Her face flickering bright above my gun. Impish and wild of eye, as if Princess were wearing her skin. "Oh. Somebody told her! Try to guess whooooo!"

I snap my hand out, and there.

A shadow of fingers in the holo. It's not coming from my SMG.

She's projecting it from the machines around me.

She's been giving orders to my team. On my behalf. Using moments of chaos, and the metal around us. Maybe even actual comms blockers, buried in the cables.

She's been talking to me. As if she were my team.

Holy shit.

Kami. Polybius. Two voices I trust, leading me right into her trap.

How many times did I talk to the others, and have Princess reply?

I almost fall to my knees. I can't even breathe.

If I can't stop this, we've lost.

We've freaking lost.

People are gonna die because I thought I could stick my head in Moon's mantrap, and grab the stinking bait with my teeth.

I need to get better. I need to.

I rip my hand from my mouth, spitting bits of skin on the floor.

Fixing my breather to cut off the sudden, savage, urge to hurt myself. To make myself pay for this damned catastrophe.

"Okay." I choke. "Bloody. Dokie. Let's go."

I enter the battle like a bomb from Hell. Pushing ever last drop of stim into a single, massive, charge. Leaping a machine, like a cluster of orbs, to kick a Raggedy Doll square in the back of its circular head.

Rolling over it, and leaping again. Twisting myself flat, in mid air, as I sail between Tickle's massive legs. Kicking my pad off a curly clown-shoe, and flowing into roll.

Slamming, hard, into Tufty as he comes raring across the road.

The cat squeaks, and tumbles back. But I scream a "COME ON!!" and he chases right after me.

"YEEEK! Spook! Um! Demon! He-"

"I KNOW! HE'LL BE FINE!!!"

"YEEP! And you're- You're-!"

"I KNOW!!" My foot slams floor, toes flick, and I rocked up into the air. Right over the factory. Demon snarling and struggling as he's lifted toward what once were jolly red lips. Now melted, and burnt, and blackened, and mangled into a sneer like nothing a human face could make.

Claws squeaking on glove, like a great big balloon, as that murderous mouth clatters wider and wider.

Kami's face flashes above my gun. "SPOOK! SHIT! THERE YOU ARE! WHERE THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN!?!?"

It wasn't her. At the door. I know for sure, now.

Is it her now?

"NO TIME!" I roar back. Leaping to fire my grapple at the arm of the clown.

No time to think. No time to talk.

No time to be terrified of heights.

Because Princess is half way to killing at least three of my team.

"WHY ARE YOU FIGHTING THE DAMN CLOWN!?! YOU IDIOTS ARE IN THE WAY!?" She shrieks in pure frustration, as I kick off the knee of the clown. "I've just lined up the shot! But I can't stay here!"

Is it her?

I reel myself up to the 'elbow', with Tufty right beside me. Shining blue nails. A hand and a foot sticking from the side of a stupid, comedy, glove that isn't so funny right now. Jammed between massive, fat, fingers.

"HOLD ON!" I roar.

"Mate, lik-"

"HOLD ON!"

I run up the cold, pale, plastic of arm. Hard metal bands giving grip to my steps, as I fly. Another grapple onto the stupid, thick, glove. My eyes striking those of the terrified boy shaking and glitching within.

His scream multiplied as the grinning monster crushes him. Slowly.

The Playthings. They aren't just about fear.

They're designed for humiliation.

To kill you in ways that are funny to people like Princess.

"I've got..... four shots left." Kami yells as I kick off the mushy hand. "One kinetic. Three guided explosive."

My grapple snaps out. My clawed foot hitting, slap, against the arm holding Demon.

The face of the Clown tilts toward me. Big as a planet. Burnt, and scarred, as a thing from plastic Hell.

"TICKLE TICKLE!!"

I run up the arm. Air roaring around me. The grapple screaming. My mind a silent thunder of focus.

I almost make it.

And then the other arm crashes into me. Shattering armour.

"I guess you'll fall to your death, after all." Princess titters, floating on a happy cloud beside me.

And then the arms part, and I swing loose on my line. Choking. Bleary. The ground a dizzy blur between my toes.

All the way down. A million miles.

Tufty lands on me. Swinging me into the arm, and kicking off to one side. Spinning me around it as the second arm crashes the first once more.

"If only you had a little pin to pull." The fairy girl adds. Kicking her legs in the marshmallow fluff. "That would get you up there."

I hit the fast reel on my gauntlet. Wind whistling through fingers and toes as I kick off the arms. Again and again. Fighting them both. Ignoring the height.

Ignoring the hot, soft, weight of Tufty on my back. His hand on my neck, under the armour.

The darkness. The terror. A little cat in a little box, snatched away by blackened hands.

I can't handle them both. Both phobias at once.

I grab at Tufty, and hurl him upward. The cat's rappel spiking flesh as he chases around the body of the clown. A hammer-wave of spikes and knives chasing his run.

Cleaving for armour. Hunting for flesh.

It's absolute chaos.

One of Zipper's Guardian Orbs is above us. Unleashing a screaming cascade of metal at the hand of the clown. Chopping at its fingers. Peeling it away from the metal beneath.

Demon is right at the mouth, but humiliating death will not be his.

The instant the hand releases, he flips himself from its grip. Landing on the back, and leaping - directly through a hole.

Into Tickle's head.

I follow at speed. The clown's hand already slapping around to snatch at me. Clutching the air as I trail from it on a shortening line.

Toes find cable and metal, and I accelerate upward.

Leaping off its side. Releasing my grapple.

For half a heartbeat, I'm floating on nothing. Driven only by adrenaline, and terror, and the knowledge that one little slip and we could be worse than dead.

We could be Sent Back To School.

My hand reached out toward the dark hole, on the side of Tickles. Hope warring horror as nothingness speeds beneath me.

And then the entire head of the monster slams half a turn to the left.

"WHATNO-"

I impact a grid of raw, burnt, metal scattered with knife holes. My hand notched by a blade as I skid it to one side. Fighting for grip. Skittering and panicking as the head starts to spin. And stop. And spin.

Shaking my legs wild.

I pump a grapple into the head, and shove myself up. Right as the thing starts beating its face with one hand.

Shit. If it realises it can hit me with Zipper, his head is gonna go splat-

I tumble, scream, and fall into the head. My arm caught short. Leaving me dangling, right above an open pit into a happy-bright playroom. A boiling caldera of colourful balls, and sweets, and.....

I choke. I shudder.

....and things I don't want to talk about.

Ever.

Demon grabs me, and tears me away from it. My grapple line reeling as I collapse into the edge of the pit. Scooting away from it. Grabbing at cables. Fighting the urge to just break down and cry.

I won't. I will never.

Instead, I snap a look at Demon. Or what little I can still see of him through massing cracks and shattered vision. My stuttering implant rebooting in the middle of what he says. Gremlin nothing but a spiking mass of red on his shoulder.

Save Badger, or grab the Plaything.

God. If I chose wrong.... I won't get a second try.

But everything is out of position.

Demon doesn't have a freaking neuroLink port. Tufty can't fight the damned clown. Shit, he can barely keep it occupied.

I can see him now. A green blur spitting across the ruptured holes in the head of the clown.

Painting the air, as if frozen in time, as he fights a monster one thousand times his size.

"TRADE OUT! KEEP ZIP SAFE!" I scream, and the beside me nods - just once - and is gone. Leaving me to sink against the burnt and ticking machine.

No! I can't stop! If I stop, I won't move again!

I've got.... Seconds. Seconds until my goddamned vision is darkness.

I haul in my grapple, locking my belt's rappel line to a wall. Then I yank my combat knife from behind me. "Stabby stabby, Mister Tickles." I snarl, as it takes a thundering step. Jamming my blade into the cover of a bent-up machine, and popping it open.

A jack port, but it's mangled. Burnt.

I scoot around. Another box. Too broken. Too burnt.

Another-

Tufty lands beside me with a soft pat. Gasping for breath through his breather. He reaches to rip it off, but I grab him first.

"Get me to the core!"

"R-right! Right!" He panics. Head spinning. Green eye shattered into thousands. Wrecking my vision with green-haired glitches.

They settle on the throat-pit.

He gulps.

"Badger." I state, as he starts to shiver. "She has Badger."

"R-right." He nods, resolve tightening inside him. Like jelly turning into slightly firmer, less wibbly, jelly - but still.

And if he can do it.....

No time for half measures. I grab his nape, and stuff his head toward the hole. "SEND THIS TO ZIPPER! HIS GUARDIAN! NOW! CUT US A DOOR!"

"Nya!!! Right!!!"

It takes barely a second. The orb smashing down into the hollow neck of the monster. Blades ripping orbits as it slashes through stiff, wire-enforced, fabric. Then, through the steel grid beneath.

Two cuts and it hammers itself sideways, knocking a long section free of the throat.

And in we go.

Swinging ourselves down, over the mouth of that candy-coloured Hell.

Everything jerks as the head rotates the tunnel, and my rappel line. Skidding the wire along the inside of the neck, as we drop into a world of bubblegum balls and plastic cogs. Zany coloured wires. Blinking lights.

And dead rat-children vacuum-sealed into neat plastic baggies.

Still screaming. Wide eyed. Clawing to get out.

Forever.

My hands shake. Heartrate dipping. My vision blacking, for just a moment. Exploding back, worse than before. An instant of stark and terrible clarity, before everything fails again.

Princess probably told her drone operators she was 'keeping them safe'.

And, in a way, she was.

Tufty bumps my side, and huddles into me. The dying RAGE rekindling from just barely a spark.

I ram my way forward.

Grabbing at cables. At boxes. At a world of dim shapes, carved to death by red and purple lines. Trying to ignore the slick, plasti-coated, legs swaying against the side of my head.

I am death. I am the reaper.

The bringer of vengeance.

My fist punches deep into the clacking cassette machines wired into every wall. One spins up. Rewinds. And then the engine of death screams "TICKLE TICKLE!!!" yet again.

I silence it, with a fist. Tufty a terrified shadow, behind me, as I tear the Hellish room apart.

It's a goddamned nightmare machine.

It's going to be in mine.

It's going to BE MINE.

"THERE!" I scream feeling the edges of a blurry black box. My eyes failing to focus on any one distance. "Get ya tail in there. Do it!"

Tufty freezes, suddenly. A little breath, as he jitters. And glitches. One eye a mess of static. One hand touching his fringe, held tight to his face by the helmet.

"I won't see." I say. In a far quieter voice. "An I won't look."

He nods. And his helmet peels back.

We both turn our backs, and I hear the whisper of hair.

The sharp, thick, click of a triangular cable.

Silence. The sway of bodies.

And then.....

"Toytown Anti-Citizen Sentry Unit: Accessed." Screams the static of an eerie old speaker. "Unit Classification: Mister Tickles. Role: Meat Packing Plant. Daily Quota-"

"Give Zipper full control!" I scream, not trusting my implant. A crude haze of a screen forming before us. My finger stabbing through it. "THERE!! GO! GO! TARGET THAT WALL!!"

Tufty latches onto my leg as the rappel sucks me up, and out of that terrible place. Sobbing, quietly, and trailing a thick cable from under his hair.

I grip the broken edge of the clown's skull, and fight my urge to shove him off.

I lose.

But there's no time to even hate myself as the whole monstrous engine thunders itself forward. Two massive, thickly gloved, hands moving beneath us. Dropping off Zipper and Demon as Tickles wades through the factory, with no concern for the machines it shatters.

Reaching out to push its fingers directly through the pale glass wall surrounding the factory. Raining cubes of crystal as it parts the entire freaking wall like a single massive curtain.

The ground a twisting, bludgeoning, pit I can't even see.

My vision nothing but a crazed mass of lines, as Tickles plucks me directly from its own skull. Setting my street-hardened soles onto that glittering carpet.

I step forward, whisper quiet.

Reams of pinkish smoke billowing up and around me.

Clearing, by breaths, to reveal the shadow of a table and the haze of three chairs.

Badger, tied to one of them. His brown eyes huge.

And on the other side.....

A very familiar figure.

"Look who is bloody is." Spook grins at me. Sharp fangs mirroring my own. "And she thought that neuroToxin was gonna kill your ass first....."

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