Agatha was stressing out. The ritual was almost done but she was being pursued, rather relentlessly, by individuals who should have known better. The ritual needed to be completed but the fact that she was beset upon so much only proved she was in danger. Their plan had been found out and the forces of Earth were trying to stop them. Even as she thought this, her panicked thoughts shifted towards her sister, Abigail, who was confronting a man on the roof of the hotel. He was a hulking figure and while Agatha didn’t sense any godhood from him, they couldn’t take any chances.

>> "Excuse me, miss, are you alright?"

”We are more than ‘alright’,” she hissed at her invisible interloper, seeing through her sister’s eyes. ”We are are about to open the tear. You shall bear witness to the Old Ones, finally claiming what is theirs. But their visage comes at a price…” she whispered. ”What do you fear most?” Another arch of her back and woman opened her mouth in a silent scream as she looked skyward. ”No more games. We unleash the full might of the Old Powers!”

Agatha raised her arms, willing the power of her two other sisters to course through her and add to her own. It was here that another voice attempted to interrupt her…

>>"I want to go to the other world!"

The witch only grinned, her eyes wide as she unleashed the full force of her and her sisters’ powers. ”You shall see it soon enough…”

Something lashed out towards her but Agatha was more than prepared. One of the maddening minions jumped forward, protecting the wyrd sister’s body, but was suddenly snagged away by the invisible tether. Agatha paid no attention to the gnashing, biting man dressed like a guinea pig as he was launched directly at the interloping woman. As soon as he landed on her, he would eat the fingers from her hands. Agatha, meanwhile, had other matters to tend to. Even the sudden appearance of another storm mattered little. She braced herself against the tempest and pushed on.

The dark smoke increased in strength and speed. A maelstrom ripped through the parking structure, shaking the equipment and rattling the trees on all sides. Agnes seemed unscathed, though, her eyes drifting over the parking structure. She could already hear the sounds of battle occurring. Her insane minions would surely rip these would-be heroes into shreds. And if these people wanted to challenge fear, then they would see it at full force.

Unseen by all except those within the influence of the darkness, the sky high above the city cracked open. A psychedelic array of colors, patterns, and nightmarish designs stood in contrast against the inky black sky around the split in reality. And from this gap in space and time, the universe moved an dizzying speeds, so fast that the human eye could barely look at it without keeling over in a seizure. The headache-inducing display was muted though, but by something far more horrible. In the sky above New York, eclipsing the dazzling spectacle there were the darkened silhouettes of horrors that the mind could not grasp. Undulating masses with far too many limbs or no discernable shape, while some were of such geometrical perfection that it seemed impossible, and then those people of vague, monstrous yet humanoid shape that looked ready the pluck the very sun out of the sky.

Anyone within the aura of these three girls, anyone slightly affected, will look up and see the most horrible of things imaginable...the realization of just how small and insignificant they truly were.

FEAR GAUGE

Ahagl's soth l' ah'lloigshogg mgng nilgh'ri!

DICE ROLL

X #1 Tempest 5/5
#2 Celestina De Ward 4/5
#3 Raine 1/5
#4 Mirror Grey-Morris 4/5

✿

> ”You shall see it soon enough…”

That voice, three in one, told her the one thing she'd been doubting the whole time she held out hope for a portal home: Wherever this chick was opening a portal to? Raine didn't want to go there.

Raine had never had better reason to jump off the side of a building.

She did her best to bring down the woman so they could get some straight answers from her, but what came flinging around the parking lot structure was not at all the creepy lady. It was creepy, though. Raine would give it that. She let her tether go as soon as she saw it and the momentum of getting flung around multiple points of gravity, only to be released back into Earth's gravity meant that it swung down and around after raine and then shot past her in a drooping arc. It reached up and caught her shoe as it passed, wrenching the boring black sneaker from her foot.

The person... creature... golem-thing continued past into the buffeting winds and crashed into a car back toward the space where the light was better and the thick choking dark wasn't so claustrophobic.

> "HEY! You on the ceiling... little help here?"

"I guess you do sound a little like Jesse." Of course, Jesse tended to look different every day. Raine couldn't be blamed for not recognizing him.

Right. It was time to get to work. Raine let herself go from the ceiling and turned mid drop in order to catch herself on her feet. That was a bit trickier with all the wind and noise. Somehow the noise made it all so much worse.

She had to throw herself to the side in order to avoid a full on tackle-lunge from one of the... people.

"Somebody get that bad weather mutant under control!" The flash of lights and wind were disorienting in an already bad situation. She went from the pure night of upstairs to a nightvision-ruining strobe effect of lightning. He needed a chill pill like whoah.

Raine readied tethers, stuck one to an already smashed up car and one to a still pristinely parked vehicle. She couldn't win them all. She threw the tethers as far as she could straight back past the crowd so that the cars would fall toward the largest group of people (insane or gnawing or others or not). The cars skidded with screeching tires as they slid and acted as two big scoops to just push everything way the heck back.

There. That was helping, right? The sane people would dodge... right? Right?

As the sky cracked open, a prismatic cacophony of powerful patterns perhaps psychic in origin, the slippery shadows whipped through the air of the parking garage. The dark umbral void tried to eclipse all in their wake as it flooded through them, a tidal wave of semi-solid pitch. The shadowstuff crept into their minds and licked their bodies with maddening touches. Many cried out even as their bloodied, cracked fingernails raked at one another.

Tempest’s eyes flew open as the raging storm suddenly ceased. The thunder stopped. The lightning ceased crashing. The winds around him died. The cool, crisp air hung in seemingly distended stillness as the void of his sight gazed outward. The eye at the center of the hurricane, the raw rage of nature developed immediately on his face. His head lolled over to one side, a wicked snarl bending his lips and narrowing his brow like a spurned lover’s glare.

A tornado like gust whipped him from the ground as he screamed in thunderous echo. Lightning cracked in the heavens, spiraling and forking over the floor and up to his arm as he lashed out at the mad freaks who stood in the way of his. Nature’s primal evolution did not bow in the storm; they rode upon it into the heavens. He said nothing as their bodies spasmed and they could no longer scream. With rocketing speed, Tempest flew, the wind in his wake tossing cars aside as he neared Celeste.

Winds whipped again at the seeming of the mother and father, though the Tempest saw them as animals sure to fall under Nature’s law. The rains were nourishing, the sun strengthening, but the storm was damning. Certainly the gust likely caught Celeste as well, but Tempest’s maddened attack was following by another stroke of lightning and booming thunder as he sent a bolt straight into the two that tumbled away from the girl. Tempest, twisted and floating, remained hauntingly silent.

Overhead the garage a very real storm emerged: hot, moist air pushed up and colliding with the cool air that streamed in from below and above. Dark, gray clouds churned as the dangerous feedback loop of power, emotion, and storm began to churn.

Everything was sliding out of control. Faster that it usually did, even on the messed-up Halloween occasions that kept occurring every year; faster than it would have made sense, and not much was making sense anymore. Gawain was mobbed by figures that might have been people, or demons, or a combination of both, while the sky was covered in colors above, and everything was descending into insanity.

The girl on the ceiling came to help him. She landed, and then somehow launched two cars into the mob, clearing some space. Wind and lightning tore through the parking garage, and with them, something else, that made Gawain's head reel and his stomach turn.

This was not a fight they were going to win.

"It's her" he pointed in the direction of a girl's form, backlit by lightning and the celestial color show "We need to get... to her."

She was not far away... but might as well have been miles. There were still twisted figures between them. Gawain pulled the dagger from his boot, and decided to make a dash. It was now or never.

The next few moments happened so fast, Celeste didn't even process it entirely. She glared towards Tempest as she herad him snarl. What was he doing? Why was he interfering in her dream, with her parents? She watched as he threw cars around and then she glanced back to her 'parents' - who turned out to be horribly deformed freaks. Celeste let out a piercing scream. It was a nightmare, she was asleep. She'd wake up any moment - at least, that is what she thought before her body was smashed into a car nearby.

When her body impacted the car, she blacked out for a moment. In those moments, part of her body sparkled in the light. The car's radio went funky and the lights on the right side of the car flashed before going out completely along with the radio. She groaned as she woke up and saw the two figures splattered against the concrete column beside her. Dang, she was lucky. She was seriously sore, though. That was going to leave a nasty bruise, at best.  

Celeste saw Gawain point towards some type of figure - maybe a girl? She couldn't really see. She slowly got off the dented car hood. At least it was quiet here, now. The rest of the garage was full of screams, yelling, laughter, radios and flashing lights from overhead and cars. If she had a blanket, she'd probably pass out again. She did feel like she got hit by... Well... A car.

She could see some of the sparkles floating off and around her body as the light flashed onto her. The fear that had been momentarily lost due to the hit with the car creeped back into her, paralyzing her for a moment and she noticed the sparkles intensifying. She wasn't actively releasing any flares but the radiation was emitting out of her body in steady streams. That couldn't be good, for her or anyone else. She tried to regain control but she couldn't. She was terrified. She wasn't sure if this was a dream or real. She clearly got hurt, painfully so, but she was pretty sure she usually felt pain when she dreamed. But was it this bad? She couldn't tell. She just needed to wake up or get out of here. She couldn't leave Devon or Mirror or even the other girl, though.

Her entire body looked like it had a charge and she began to limp towards the figure, ignoring the floating Devon. Or she thought it was Devon. She pulled out her taser, which no longer worked, so she grabbed a throwing knife she had in her purse. She was going to have to get a new purse, too. Sheesh... She took a deep breath. She kept seeing shadows, people from Regina, her parents around her. It was like they were all trying to get her, catch her. Why? To get rid of her? After all, that is what they wanted to begin with. 

She stopped moving and put her hands on her face, trying to ignore the voices that were whispering into her ears, trying to ignore the hallucinations that kept propping up around her. She couldn't handle this, how could anyone handle this? Why? She saw people dancing around her, one person asleep in the arms of a man dancing about. She even saw herself dancing around a couple times. She took a few steps forward as the radiation slowly spilled out of her, occasionally flaring out of her arms every few minutes in random directions. 

"I can't do this, I can't do this," she whispered to herself. She couldn't breathe. She tried to take deep breaths as she fell to her knees. She had to block the voices, the visions. She had too, but how? She had no control. She had to wake up. 

The great rift was happening, or at least in the eyes of everyone affected by the smoke it was. Looking up, Agatha licked her chapped lips at the vision of what she and her sisters have been holding onto for years. This was exactly what they wanted, what they believed would be coming. It was a blessing to share this vision with the rest of the world, or at least those people now enlightened by their presence. Truly it would be a bone-chilling sight, but that was what this world needed, a reminder of just exactly how small they were.

Though she could see that her sister was interrupted by a new individual, one brave enough to stand up to her and the horrors from beyond the darkness, Agatha had her own problems to deal with. The people in the parking garage, those resisting her influence, or at least trying to, were coming more and more dangerous. She could hear the storm forming in the parking garage and the sounds of madness coming from all around her. Lightning flashed, the winds picked up, cars were hurled about like toys. The cacophony was quite annoying now.

Pest.

She narrowed her eyes at the advancing group. They were crumbling. All they needed was one more push to ensure that they would no longer pose a problem. So called out to them. ”Are you a god?” she shouted in defiance. ”If not, then die!”

Another pulse of her terrible power and suddenly the smoke began to take shape in front of the gathered individuals. The beast was terrible. The creature barely seemed to fit inside of the structure, but it moved with such ethereal fluidity that it seemed to faze in and out of existence. It was large, globular, and stood on twenty, thirty squant trunks it used for legs. Each one slammed down into the concrete, shaking the floor. Hundreds of eyes covered its body, all bloodshot and malevolent as tendrils whipped and lashed on all sides. The most terrifying feature, however, was the massive, singular, humanoid face that leered out at all the would-be heroes. Its mouth open, revealing a slithering, massive tongue with another eye at the end, and the beast moved forward.

The weather manipulator was busy causing extreme havoc and even as he sent a wave of lighting to all areas, nearly killed several of his comrades, the winds and lightning didn’t touch Agatha. Her behemoth guardian, a creature born of nightmares took the brunt of the attack. It hissed wildly, spittle and sludge spewing from its mouth, as it roared at the offensive strike. Another stomp and the beast stepped forward, pushing through the maddening people still thrashing about, most singed and burned to a crisp. It was going to take more than a storm to stop it...

FEAR GAUGE

Ahagl's soth l' ah'lloigshogg mgng nilgh'ri!

DICE ROLL

X Tempest 5/5
X #1 Celestina De Ward 5/5
#2 Raine 3/5
#3 Mirror Grey-Morris 4/5

✿

Raine hadn't really seen what things were like on this level. She'd been focused forward. Focused on going home. Focused on moving away.

Her jaw dropped open at the cacophony of it all and she got goosebumps despite the persistent noise, when the weather man first let all the weather show die, and then kicked it into 5th gear. Was he trying to kill that girl!? And the girl... Raine didn't mean to hit her with the car. She was supposed to move. Watching that happen was one of Raine's worst fears realized. She made a mistake. A big one. Maybe one that cost a girl her life.

> "It's... her."

Raine turned and did her best to ignore that nagging voice in her head that said the girl would die, the girl's blood was on her hands. Behind her, the witch hovered behind a wall of twisted and tormented souls. Had they been that bad moments ago? Were they really here for blood and not some dumb Halloween prank?

> "We need to get... to her."

The Well, DUH died on Raine's lips when the witch spoke. She spoke three in one asking if they were gods. Why? This whole thing was getting creepier by the minute. Jesse's dopple dashed into the crowd. He wasn't going to make it alone. She rolled her shoulders and shook her hands out before following at a run. This was what heroes did.

Raine threw a tether up and one down, tapped herself with both back ends and pushed off after the man in perfect zero gravity. She was lucky to be in the perfect environment for her power to shine. She was luckier not to be close to the swirling mists as they manifested into... into... her brain could not compute. The f***!? It had eyes and mouths and trunks? and, and, and- it was totally gross! THAT was NOT from her world.

She had to shake herself to bring it back to focus. Eyes on the witch prize. Raine jumped up over the reach of one crabwalking twisted horror and kicked out to wreck the one that was making a grab at Jesse-in-the-flesh.

Oh Jeez. What if this was THE REAL JESSE and they in their world had only ever gotten to see him through the mirror? What if he'd never been in their world to start? Raine grabbed another thing by the (oh god, was that a foot? WHY WAS A FOOT THERE!?!) appendage One of its friends grabbed her hair and Raine knew she was caught, but maybe, just maybe, she could let Jesse through.

"Go get her, Jesse!"

Raine slapped him on the back and threw the end of the tether she connected upwards, even as she was dragged down by hands and feet and teeth and— no, she had to make sure Jesse made it! She dropped the bottom tether on herself and she, too started to fall toward the ceiling. This time with a handsy twisted horror of a person gnawing at her as she fell.

>>”Are you a god? If not, then die!”

There was a weather mutant completely out of control. There was some creepy Wednesday Addams turned evil type girl wonder in the middle of some psychic attack on New York City, some twisted human bodies frolicking around, Celeste losing control of her powers, cars flying every which was, and now, like a very disgusting cherry on top, there was a goddamn monster summoned straight out of some geek club's Bestiary.

"SERIOUSLY?!?!" Gawain yelled at no one in particular and all of the above in general. The girl was clearly the center, but he was probably not going to make it to her. Still, he tried.

>>"Go get her, Jesse!"

"I'm not..." there was a tap on he back, and suddenly everything was upside down, launching Gawain forward head over heels, over the advancing monster that was grabbing a hold of the X-girl, and then within view of the girl-witch. "WHOA!"

Don't throw up don't throw up don't throw up it would be very very unheroic if you threw up now

He was above her. She looked. Wind milled around them, throwing lights and shadows. He could not get close enough, and he could not throw the dagger. Too much movement. Too much ow. Too much debr...

A gust of wind, or maybe some invisible hand, threw Gawain off track and to the side. He could see the girl smile, and it wasn't pretty. He fell towards a nearby car, with a window miraculously intact... and then, a moment later, focusing every fiber of his will on not throwing up while trying to save the city, Gawain emerged from a large glass shard, directly behind the girl-witch. He was not entirely sure if he was about to stab the actual bad guy, or stab the girl from the ceiling, or maybe Celeste, or any of the million female figures that danced before his eyes. He was also not entirely sure he was not Jesse. Was he trapped in a mirror? Should he just break it?...

It was, quite literally, a stab in the dark.

The Tempest watched as the girl from earlier, who’d tossed cars with a wave of her hand. Gawain, whose name was familiar though not in a personal way, was leading that girl toward Celeste, who went flying with his angry gust. His lightning coursed through the monsters that attacked her and they ceased. Celeste rose, drawing a knife and approaching his direction as she started to glow with the hum of a roadside flare. It was white though and brought a luminescence to the darkness that his lightning only aided by throwing shadows.

That girl, that doppleganger – he had to keep her away from Celeste. She was in trouble- But all that focus turned sharply to the little girl, the triplicate threatening tone behind him. She mocked them and their power.

>> ”Are you a god? If not, then die!”

No. The darkness surged but it merely rolled over him and across the cacophony of shifting winds that put him at the center of his storm. If he’d been more rational his mind would have rolled over the idea that perhaps the Greek Gods had been mutants, venerated for their abilities. Instead, the skies and storm were with him and that’s all he needed. It would wipe out what threatened them like any rolling thunder would rock, like any lightning would strike, like any tornado would destroy from its path.

The sky far above the parking garage swirled, stirring the clouds as the pressure in the garage grew higher. Howling began from the very real stirring around Tempest and beyond the garage. While others may not have seen the foul vision the girls were creating, the storm was real. Of course, Tempest had no idea it wasn’t, nor that the beast the girl summoned wasn’t pulled from beyond space and time.

Or perhaps, only they had so been able to view the truth beyond the veil of the cold void.

It was an abberative abomination with eyes and tendrils of eyes blinking and focusing, seeing and uncaring. It trampled over the minor monsters like a treant’s trunk grinding through a humanity it felt nothing for. Darkness and gray-black slime oozed from it. Tempest bowed his chin and stared.

The howling winds rocked with tornado like force from around Tempest, surging as he flung out his arms like a crazed, hungry zombie. They threw cars and the flesh-torn monsters aside as he pushed against the thing. He was vaguely aware of the girl and the man flying up at the ceiling, like he had felt once more. Things were flying besides him but in his maddened state, only the monster and its master mattered.

From the center of the small eye of his building tornado, Tempest’s arms flailed to either side calling and pulling terrific forks of blue-white electricity. They gathered around him and spidered across the floor to the foul couple while also flying from the brewing heavens to them as well. All the Tempest sent an area of Mother Nature’s destruction upon the two.

And still, the sharply contorted features of the one who had been Devon said nothing.

>> "Are you a god? If not, then die!"

Celeste was somehow able to tell that was not in her mind. Or was it? She didn't think it was. But, she knew she wasn't no god. She wasn't even that strong. All she could do make people puke. It was really a gross power, to be honest. At least there was a reason behind the vomitting that sounded cool. 

She shook her head, no. This was a dream. She was trapped in one of her nightmares - it finally happened. She couldn't get out. The feeling of claustrophobia tightened around her throat and chest as she tried to calm herself down, unsuccessfully. Small, uncontrolled flares shot from her body, getting caught in Devon's winds, unknown to where they eventually land.

>> "WHOA!"

 

She heard a familiar voice yell and she looked around, trying to spot the location of the sound. Was Gawain okay? It wasn't until then that she saw the terrifying beast, a face that seemed to be staring into her soul. The large mouth, the little tentacles with teeth, the red, glowing eyes made Celeste heart drop. She had never had a dream like this before, this had to be real... If this was real, then there was no way they were going to make it out of here.

She stood up, shaking. She had to help. She had to do something. The visions of death, seeing people run towards her but vanish, and not to mention the voices that were whispering into her mind was almost too much to bear. The whisperings of 'give up,' and 'die' seemed to permeate in her mind constanstly. She turned her body towards the monster and tried to charge, but she realized she was charged. She couldn't send anything out, though. It was like it was stuck in her.

Another panic, another gasp of air that she couldn't quite get. She limped over to a car, to try to get a better vantage point. She leaned her side agaisnt the back passenger door. The front passenger door was open, for some reason, and she faced towards the window. Maybe she could throw one of her knives? No, no, she needed them for the horrors that kept dancing across her vision. Eventually, one of them would get her. She had to be ready for them. 

She tried to clear her mind, but she couldn't. Even when she closed her eyes, she could still see them. Those visions. Her parents. Her sister, dead because of them. Her friends here in trouble, but she could do nothing. 

A few moments later, it looked like a shadow had emerged but Celeste couldn't really tell. It was only a few seconds later that she felt a sharp, gut wrenching punch in her lower, left side. She immediately moved her hand to the spot and felt the hilt of a dagger. She gasped and stared up towards the figure, seeing her father. She should have woken up. Was she still in Regina? Maybe her time in NY didn't even exist and now, her father finally decided to get rid of her. She leanead against the car. She kept her hand at the entrance of the blade and she could feel the blood pouring out of her, but she kept her eyes closed. Maybe this was the end? Maybe it was time for her to pass on. At least, she'd see Norma again.

She slowly slinked down to her knees.

What she didn't see was the flood of dazzling, sparkling radiation that was supercharging out of her wound and over her body. If a light could be held directly on her, it would almost look like a fog had covered her in just a few minutes, excpet after a few feet, it seemed as if it disappeared. Of course, it hadn't - it was twirling with Tempest's wind or was simply floating in the air. She felt her nose tickle as a pretty bad nose bleed began and massive cramps shot through her body. 

Her body wasn't quite ready to release this supercharge. It needed more, it had to keep pulling more radiation into it before it was ready. But she could feel it coming - and honestly, she had no reason not to let it go. She was relinquishing control to her instincts. It was time to give up, like the voices were saying. 

If she was going to go, she was at least going to take out her f**king piece of sh*t father, too. 

Agatha snarled, watching the few people who attempted to approach her from across the garage. She didn’t care who they were, but they would fall. Each of them were ragged, twitching, shaking, already the fear was seeping deeper and deeper into them. They weren’t going to make it much farther. All they needed was one more little push and any opposition against the arrival of her masters would finally topple. The world would be opened and free for them to enter and take root within the wasteland of this planet. The end would come and it would all be because of these three sisters.

The protector surged forward, a blight upon this world. No one would be able to stand against it, or at least that was what Agatha thought. Watching as her guardian threatened the last shreds of sanity for the gathered troop, it didn’t escape her attention that each of these people were exhibiting power that not only threatened the area, but herself as well. Lightning crackled, objects flew, people disappeared too and fro. It was becoming too much to keep up with.

Her guardian lurched forward as Agatha watched. One which vanished in and out of sight appeared near again, driving a knife into her side. The one who wanted a way home was slowly being overtaken by her minions, mindless husks which only wanted to spill blood. The last, the most powerful seeming, was away, winds and light encircling him threateningly. It was him that Agatha needed to knock out of the sky before it was too late. Agnes put as much force into her fear generation as she could, delving deep into everyones’ mind, seeking out those last little morsels of hope he held onto and extinguishing them with a flick of her fingers and hoping to drive them out of the structure. Sadly, it would seem that the action itself would result in a rather unexpected surprise.

Agnes gasped, feeling the air suddenly taste electrified. There was a crack of ozone as lightning flashed through the open air, towards her. A thunder boom shook too close to home. She stumbled, her guardian flickered. Her guardian roared in anger as perceived pain ripped through out its body due to the bolt of lightning. Of course the creature was only an extension of Agatha and made of little more than smoke and mirrors. Once the bolt collided with concrete, Agatha shouted, feeling the explosion knock her off her feet and sending her backwards, into a parked car.

”OMPH! NO!!” she shouted. She cringed, grabbing her leg which was spider-veined from electricity. Her eyes flared brighter as her beast began to vanish from sight. ”WE CANNOT FAIL!!!” Her eyes as bright as miniature suns, Agatha mentally reached out to her sisters, pulling and adding their power to her own and vice versa, making their abilities threefold. They would show these people true horrors with One. Last. Push!

Silence filled the air that is until the psychedelic rip in space high above the city ripped wide and open. From the heavens (now hell) the cosmic horrors descended upon the earth. The end had come.

FEAR GAUGE

Ahagl's soth l' ah'lloigshogg mgng nilgh'ri!

DICE ROLL

X Tempest 5/5
X Celestina De Ward 5/5
#1 Raine 3/5
#2 X Mirror Grey-Morris 5/5

✿

Oh god. Oh no. Oh s***.

Raine squirmed and slapped at herself and the grabby hands or trunks or tentacles or whatever things were touching her that she did not want to touch her. She flailed and fought until she fell hard on her butt on the ceiling. She only just managed to catch herself before the back of her head smacked against the concrete.

The things had been grabbing her and she'd managed to make Jesse go toward the witch, but now... now she just felt incredibly sick.

The wind tugged and plucked at her clothes and hair, sparkles flew by and their light was punctuated by lingering flashes of electricity. The parking garage was well beyond property damage now. The world was a psychedelic twist of-- oh god. There it was. Nacho Alert was a bad choice and even worse revisited.

Raine threw up, which went about a foot down and then turned around and fell the other way. Trembling and nauseated, she flopped against a rafter beam and tried to weather the storm.

Everything had gone fully upside down. Gawain's dagger had stuck, sinking deep into the side of the female figure in front of him. Victory! The witch had been vanquished! The day had been saved! One for all and all for one! The world was...

... the world was exactly as f**** as it had been ten seconds earlier.

Damn.

The musketeer struggled to get to his feet, except he was not entirely sure where 'up' was anymore. He was hit with a belated wave of nausea, which was no wonder after the flying and the tripping and the mirrorwalking and the... whatever it was that made him so darn nauseous in the first place. Stumbling, he sank back to one knee, and then fell back, resting his back against a car in relative cover, as the female figure struggled at the edge of his field of vision. She was not gonna last long, and then all the crazy would be over. Lotsa crazy. Halloween crazy.

Why was she glowing?...

"Oh. Sh*t." Gawain threw himself in the general direction of what he hoped was cover. Under a car, or maybe over it, it was hard to tell at this point. The world was about to end with a bang. It was unclear if that was a victory or not. Indeed.

Devon was lost in the throes of crazed shadow and the building tempest above. While the small girl conjured up her psychedelic rip in space, allowing denizens from the darkest places of the mind to race forth and torment them, the gray black clouds of the sky collided and spun. Thunder boomed, lightning flashed, winds raced, and so too did the potent air as rain suddenly erupted down upon the garage and out a mile.

Devon was transfixed. Winds whipped around him as lightning continued to crackle out, over, and around him. His hair was a tangled, dancing mess, the close breezes stirring them at conflict with the maelstrom of doom and dire disaster feet beyond. He watched at the seeming X-Man stabbed the young NYU student he knew and trusted. He watched the girl from above wrestle with imagined evil, perhaps made true by their very insanity, and then grow sick as she flailed along the ceiling. The student - Celeste sounded right. It was a word that someone was screaming but he could barely hear. She was trembling, falling, but brilliant and sparking.

Devon was vaguely aware that something was off physically. Some of those flashes, motes of light in the darkness flung through the garage and sailed errantly on the gusts of his power. They and the lightning continued to spark over flashing, screaming cars that erupted in fire Concrete burnt and shattered. The mad, bleeding animals ran and fought, tossed about and vomiting. He wasn’t yet at the eye of his power, but currents carried even traces of the cell damaging irradiation.

The girl’s eyes shone brightly. Her beast was turning invisible, but others had flown or slithered down from the hell within the heavens. And now it was clear, the girl had been but an emissary to the end. Mutants had risen from the dredges to stop this monstrosity from inheriting the earth. They had to stop the chant of the sisters and close their gate.

The air popped as winds snapped about Tempest, flinging him forward. Such pressured had built within him, his head pounded, but the thunder was little cause of it. Lightning still raced over around him as he sailed through the river of Lovecraft’s echoes and sent forks of electricity out from both arms at all before him. He didn’t stop, soon a blue-white blur in the darkness as he flew out of the garage and marvelled at the truly horrid sight above.

Black eyes watered as unnoticed tears flew away from him. Devon may have hesitated, but Tempest did not. A voice continued to scream at the back of his mind, warning and pleading for him to turn back and help all those in jeopardy. It ranted and railed against him, but the Tempest was spurred on by the building force and power of the storm. Up into the sky he flew with disturbing force, cars near the edge of the higher levels flung as he passed. Tempest thrashed about with wind, ice, and lightning at the malevolent mental horrors of the sky. He screamed at the creatures assaulting his mind and body.

Alone, the young man flailed in the quickly churning clouds, a series of brilliant myriad flashes in an unseen war.

Celeste kept her hand on her wound. She couldn't feel the pain anymore - she wasn't sure if it was because of the blood loss, because she had lost all control of her powers, or maybe she was just dreaming. She honestly had no idea. That made this entire situation of hers even more terrifying. Was it a dream? Was it not? She felt pain and she didn't wake up - was she trapped in one? That was something someone in a dream would freak out about. But, maybe, maybe if this wasn't a dream and she was about to die - well, sh*t. She glanced a increasingly weak eye towards her 'father' but he kept disappearing and pictures of Gawain randomly would pop up. Was it Gawain or her father? It had to be her father. 

Her family wanted her dead, after all. They had stabbed her and now they were running away. Maybe... What if it was Gawain though? She had no idea how much radiation was about to expel from her body. It couldn't be Gawain though. She saw him. She felt the fear inside her. There was no way she could control this. 

She groaned and curled into fetal position as her knife wound continued to bleed and her body continued to prepare for a large flare. She wasn't sure why it hadn't triggered yet. She wanted it out of her, she could tell it was pushing her already weakened body to the extreme. She could feel the pain trigger through her - the extreme cramps felt like her bones were breaking. Maybe they were cracking under the cramps? She couldn't breath out of her nose due to the massive nosebleed and... Suddenly, her eyes rolled back into her head and her body began to seize up. It lasted only a few seconds and she gasped as she finally regained some semblence of conciousness. She couldn't do this anymore. It was time to just... Let go.

And her body obeyed. She felt the radiation shoot out of her fingers, hands, arms, legs, feet, torso, back, and she could feel it shoot out in all the cardinal directions. A scream emitted from her lips, piercing the air as her body had even worse cramps, she couldn't breath, and finally, more seizures hit. They would come and go for a few seconds. After one last excruiating scream, the last of her radiation had exitted her body and the fine mist around her body vanished. It was no longer connected to her - it was in the air. Her eyes rolled into the back of her head and her body went limp - she immediately fell into a deep coma as her nose, wound, and body continued to bleed.

The radiation from her poured out over the level of the garage she was on and began to pour into the other levels of the garage. It was swept up by Tempest's winds, swirling it throughout the garage. The radiation swept through the other levels fairly quickly due to his winds and the natural air that went through the garage. It coated the walls, doors, cars, the hordes of humans who had lost their minds. It covered the garage in a mist only seen in front of the flashing lights of cars and the overheads. 

For a few hours, the garage would be irradiated and anyone in it would feel it's effects.