In a distance way Juka remained aware of the battle going on around him. On some level he knew there was still a monster out there trying to kill everyone and he knew that there were a dozen mutants trying to stop the monster, most of them children. He heard the the screams and commands of battle and saw those dealing damage to the monster and the monster dealing damage to them. But he wasn't truly conscious of what was happening around him, his entire focus had tunnelled to one person, the Mirror he believed to be Aura. Her suffering for what she had done to him and so many others was all that mattered. And he was the only one who could stop her.

Juka sped towards his target, weapons spiralling around him. He would stop her this time, he had to stop her. The world outside his tunnel of perception passed in a blur and with every second he moved closer to his target. Odd that she had yet to put her aura up, having clearly spotted him. Odder still that she had yet to form a pink aura blade. His shattered mind decided she must have been wounded during the battle, it was the only logical explanation for her lack of visible powers.

“HEY! Bubbles!”

An unfamiliar voice called out to him and, for just an instant, Juka stopped and looked around. Was there danger he wasn't aware of? Had his sworn enemy done something hideous? Or perhaps the lack of her aura was some sort of evil ploy to try and trick him and the voice he heard was trying to warn him of such. Yes, that must be it.

Properly warned, Juka continued speeding towards Mirror Aura with a newfound awareness. He was prepared for anything. The two anvils and one of the branches he continued spinning protectively around himself. Upon getting within 10 feet of his target, the second branch he sent out towards her his/her head, intending to knock her out cold.

Like a redneck with his F250 stuck in a pond, Koga set there spinning the busses tires. All and all it didn’t seem to bother Cthulhu much, if at all the thing still had time for laughter after all…. It did however have a bus stuck in its right leg. He blinked as he watched his foot press down the pedal.

Blam went the roof, maybe he’d earned a bit of octoface’s attention after all, or was that just a person sized dent in the roof? His mind could tell, his body and brain were still brushing away the dazed feeling one got from playing destruction derby with giants.

Still Koga held down the gas pedal, partially wanting to insist that Cthulhu lay down and get run over as was proper when being hit by a bus. He let off of the gas in frustration and unbuckled his safety belt.



"Okay fellas GET OFF THE BUS NOW now so we can fry this motherf***!"


"YOU TOO!"

"TWYLA! WAIT..."

Fireworks, neat!

"Its time you suffered like you made me suffer," "Its time you learned that you can't just kill people for no reason. Humans are people too and I have to stop you."

“HEY! Bubbles!”

“We need to work together, meet up by that tree. If we work as a team we can do it.”

“C’mon, we have to try and get everyone to that tree so we can figure out what to do.”

"This thing go to Xavier mansion?"

Koga finally snapped out of his daze, there was the Australian…he really needed to get out and meet more people in the school. After the bit of shock and he had a little bit more sense of humor put in him even though he didn’t think the situation warranted joking, though if you were going to die at the hands of play doh…I guess getting in a last laugh or two couldn’t hurt.

“Sssorry mate last ssstop, crazy town. And” and he was going to offer his wounded friend a hand off the bus but there was only time for action…he was tired. No rest for the wicked no rest for the weary.

He took three steps two on the floor and one on the windshield. He leapt out of the bus and swung his katana hard at branch that was going towards…Galahad? And instead of the foe being a Cthulhu Tentacle as he expected it was Juka, with a much disoriented look on his face.

Koga burst into Japanese knowing that sometimes speaking and hearing in ones native tongue helped the mind process things more quickly. Man his lisp butcher his Japanese. “Juka! What the hell? The enemy is the giant monster not, the playboy with the horse. Hurry up and get some of these gas cans on the enemy!” Koga spoke with a weary yet commanding tone while he stood in a protective stance. All the while Cthulhu raged above them….in a show of traditional evil tentacle fashion the monster seemed to give the males a reprieve and went for the women folk. Verdi and Andrea …at the same time a hand groped around for the women that were behind him, Repunzel and Twyla look out.

They all had fire. If they could just get the fuel distributed… this monster was toast! Burnt toast.

Tension hung in the air he almost wanted to take a second swing at it…Cafas was wounded in the bus, Saph was ontop of it swining away.. Koga Gawain and my little Calley were waiting to see what the traumatized Juka would do, with those anvils that, Koga didn’t have a hope of slicing in half. Verdi and Andrea, were still trying to rally the troops… the plan was right here though…so close. Twyla and Repunzel were setting up a forth of july show and Carrick and Kat were still in the sky…he was pretty sure.

A minute or two ago
I thought I'd take a ride
And soon Make Cthuy fight
With all the X’s by my side
The plan was well in place
Misfortune seemed our lot
a team mate seemed to space
And then we got upsot

In her clambering, Katrina had completely forgotten that she was holding onto the griffin boy's clothing. Until a clay tentacle reached up to grab at the stack, twisting its way blindly around the folds of the cloth. Katrina pulled at the same time the griffin lurched up into the sky. The tentacle kept the shirt. Katrina kept the pants. The goggles hung by the strap around her wrist as she threw her arms around the feathery neck in front of her and hung on for dear life.

The rhythmic movements of wing muscles beneath her and the deafening, logic defying, voiceboxless roars of the clay beast were all she was aware of for those few moments as they climbed higher into the sky. Tightly she gripped with her hands and her knees. Tightly closed were her eyes. As the moments of not falling to her death grew longer, she eventually dared to peek again. All she could see was dark clouds. She leaned just a hair to the side to survey the scene below, but raindrops stung her eyes and she couldn't see through all the blinking.

Goggles. She had goggles wrapped around her wrist. Katrina decided that they might help with the visibility and the griffin didn't seem to need them at the moment, so he probably wouldn't mind if she borrowed them for awhile. Somehow she managed to maneuver the goggles over her eyes and get the strap stretched around her head with one hand while the other remained firmly embedded in the feathery fur on the griffin's neck. With her red ninja scarf streaming out behind her like a banner and the borrowed goggles protecting her eyes, Aviator Kat surveyed the scene down below.

“Chaos” barely began to describe everything that was happening on the ground. “Mayhem” failed to depict the scope of the crashing bus, exploding firework, flying anvil, flashing katana, shopping cart, branch dodging knight, ninjaing lizard, floating drag queen, and slimy, grey, groping tentacle action that all seemed to be occurring simultaneously down on the ground. “Bedlam” did not measure up, nor did “Pandemonium”.

“Look out,” she tried to yell at the girls who were in imminent danger of being grabbed by the blindly flailing tentacles. Her voice was whipped away by the wind and the only person who could possibly have heard her was the griffin boy. Her tried to turn to look at her and click some sort of message through his beak, but she couldn't understand what he meant by it.

They circled, and Aviator Kat could see the damage done by the bus to the monster's leg. She could also see as a new clay leg squished and squelched its way out of the stump to form an entirely new appendage. The old leg, or what was left of it, seemed to disintegrate where it was splattered across the bus and raindrops washed it away as Koga dashed out of the bus and slashed a brach out of the air like a real hero. The little aviator illusionist wished that she could be so heroic and actually be helpful in a situation like this.

Cthulhu, for the first time, seemed to notice that something had damaged it when the bus had hit. It let out another impossible bellow and grabbed at the bus with both hands. Tree trunk fingers squeezed metal until the public transportation vehicle started to crumple, then twisted until it ripped down the middle. Aviator Kat could only watch as the clay abhorrence hurled the twisted pieces toward the chain of three shopping carts.

“Run!” She yelled, both out loud with her wind stolen voice and a more steady illusion voice that would seem like it was yelling directly in the ears of everyone down below. There were too many people. Her vision seemed to go grey, her grip automatically loosened as her consciousness wavered, and she began to slip.

It came upon a midnight drear
to a land both dark and cold
The Old One stalks the earth this night
And strikes at heroes bold
“Hell on the earth, and death to all
From Vhoorl's dark unholy king”
Seemed to cry the unholy monster
As his roar through the night did ring!

With all the woes of sin and strife
The world has suffered long
But its nothing compared to the agony
of those who hear Cthulhu's song!
Look out! Ye lowly mortals there
The ancient horror flings
a bus to-wards your shopping carts
Filled with explosive things!

(Attn skimmers: imminent bus hitting gasoline filled shopping carts explosion. Also, Kat's voice yelling as if she's right next to you when she is really up in the air.)

Saphirus stumbled as something bumped into him, and he felt the sword get yanked from his grasp, followed by the telltale rush of air that hinted a large object had just missed them... Aussie was back up, and from the brief glance that Saph had managed back at him before he had to jerk away to avoid the firework that whizzed past his head, he wasn't looking so good. He felt and heard the large boom from the firework as it went off behind him, and figured it probably didn't do a lot of damage; he used to try to blow things up with m80's when he was a kid, and earth, which this monster was comprised of, was one of the hardest things to break. It was a good thought, though... Saphirus nodded to the injured Aussie, who, admirably, was still shouting orders and moving around, and turned to survey the situation real quick, ducking a tentacle that sweeped about over his head... He had to get off of this bus, both because of the attention it was attracting from the monster, and because of the sight of the gasoline gathered by the horse-riding boy coupled with the sparks that fireworks often flung about...

"Aw crap." To make matters worse, the floating dress boygirlboy was charging into battle... The wrong way... The boy had that look in his eyes; Saph had seen it before in old war veterans/homelessalleymates. It was usually followed by them freaking, diving under a table, or doing something violent to a friend because they were somewhere very frightening at the moment... It was shell shock. He watched as the kid lashed out with a branch toward the horse and its rider, and knew what he needed to do... He jumped down from the bus just as the monster's hlking claws wrapped arounf it, landing on his right foot, and boosting his energy stores with the impact from the fall... One of the kids was probably trying to talk some sense into the boy, but by the time that kinda stuff worked it was almost always too late... The older mutant hobbled as quick as he could, leaning down to scoop up a muddy rock in his left hand, and launch it at the back of Juka's head with enough kinetic force added to knock someone out...
"Run!
"Doin that!" He screamed back at the unexplainable voice that popped right into his ear as used the rest of the energy from the bus jump to charge forward in order to be under the boy by the time the rock hit... If all went according to plan, the rock would hit with a 'Thuck', and the boy would fall right into his arms so he could drag him to safety. If all didn't go to plan, he figured he might find out what anvils taste like.

He heard the crushing of metal, and another impossibly loud roar behind him, and realized as he ran that he really didn't want to know what was gonig on behind him.

Hands and verbal requests: not the most effective at stopping a reporter-in-training.

A mutant doing the same: slllliiightly more worrisome.

Maxine stepped back with all due humble chagrin, clutching the little handycam to her chest. She closed the screen. “Sorry,” she replied, to the teenager who could easily hurt her just as much—or more—than Rex could hurt him. The teenager who, right now, was probably assuming she was a human. She knew how some mutants thought of humans, and the relative value of their lives. She banked on it every week for her news segment.

She also knew something else. Something she was banking on this kid not knowing: when you close a handycam’s viewing screen, it doesn’t stop recording. And her model didn’t have any tell-tale lights to give it away. She’d missed a few seconds of the scene: really, though, the aggressive hand-action would be quite nice. Nothing like reminding the viewers of just how much danger their favorite red-headed intern had been in, when she recorded their news.

In any case, the kid ran back into battle. Glorious. In that case: with a grin, Maxine didn’t even bother pretending anymore: she reopened the screen, and—

—was that a hijacked bus? And an anvil dance with Cthulhu that met a tragic end, and a shopping cart sleigh train of gasoline cans, and the tentacles keeping themselves inside of the park and safely away from her, and cute teenage girls with fireworks, and teammates attacking teammates, and—

Thank you, Santa. Maxine had no clue what she’d done this year that qualified as ‘good’, but whatever it was, Mr. Claus clearly hadn’t floccinaucinihilipilificated it.

My Little Calley was very, very worried.

Tentacles wriggling? Yes.

Anvils attacking? Most assuredly.

Cafas shouting regroup orders that might or might not make the most sense? Yep.

Metal sword hot enough to glow dropping into cart full of kerosene? Ooooohcrapyes.

As a ninja leapt towards Juka, the black stallion pushed his way back to the carts. This might have involved gallantly pushing his rider out of an incoming anvil’s path. Less gallantly, it may have also involved a warhorse hoof coming into quick and crushing contact with a brave knight’s foot. But that, friends, was not important. Because there was a glowing sword next to absurd amounts of kerosene. Also, a crashed bus. With fireworks going off over their heads. Crap crap R****** ***e crap—

The horse sunk his teeth into the glowing blade, and tossed it out onto the distinctly less flammable ground. Not before he’d gotten burns all through his mouth, though. He shrieked a (manly) whinny of pain. A tentacle was coming for him—gratefully, he bit into it. Oh muddy coolness on his tongue and teeth. Thank you, dark lord. A round about and a bucking kick put a temporary end to the rest of its wiggling. And now? Now, the horse wanted to go home.

Quickly, please and thank you.

And that meant getting this kerosene on Cthulhu, getting it lit, and getting the heck out of here. They seemed fine with the ‘getting it lit’ part—there were a dangerous number of volunteers, in fact. Now, they just needed to get the kerosene in its proper place. Ie: not next to the brave defenders. He reared up, hooves kicking at the sky. Another (entirely masculine) whinny escaped him, as he tried to hail down Katrina and her winged bird-cat steed.

What he got instead was a bus.

>> “Run!”

Yeah.

He was on that. He was on that as quickly as was horsely possible. If Sir Gawain was fast enough, he might be able to hitch a ride. If not? Noble steeds, like rapidly descending buses of death, wait for no man.

Gawain didn't think he would die. Not for a second, no.
At least not from the branch flung at him.
Hurt? Most probably. Broken ribs? Definitely an option. Knocked out? Maybe.
The fact that he wasn't about to be killed by a teammate, however, didn't help much with the situation.

The mini ninja appeared out of nowhere, a sword flashed, and the two pieces of wood landed on both sides of him, hitting the mud with one single splash. Gawain staggered back from the momentum he was building to run for it. Two distinct thoughts emerged in his mind.
No. 1: I owe this ninja guy one.
No. 2: F*ck that was close.
In that order.

He regained his balance just in time to be knocked over by Guingalet. Very gallantly and heroically. Landing on the ground also included getting out of an anvil's way, which was good, very good. Getting kicked in the shin by a hoof was slightly less good. Gawain bit back a cry and several curses. It was not the horse's fault.

Scrambling to his feet he looked up just in time to see the bus turn into scrap metal. He did the math in a second, just like everyone else. Bus, kerosine, fire, Chtulhu equals...

>>"Run!"

Yeah. That.

Guingalet galloped past him. It would have been really heroic (not to mention awesome) to just swing into the saddle and be off. Unfortunately Sir Gawain's training so far didn't even include basic horse riding, let alone acrobatics.
So he had to settle for the second best option: he turned around, and ran.
And hoped the others did too.

The first thing that almost managed to force Juka back into the world of present reality was the explosion. The second thing, and the one that finally snapped him back for good, was the little ninja kid. The explosion provided distraction from his target, reminding him that there was more danger here than simply Aura, as evil as Aura was. In that moment of distraction his branch was cut in two with a katana and Juka turned his head to angirly confront whoever it was that had thwarted him from his goal. He was confronted by a ninja speaking to him in his own native language, all be it with a strange lisp.

“Juka! What the hell? The enemy is the giant monster not, the playboy with the horse. Hurry up and get some of these gas cans on the enemy!"

It was enough to break him out of the trance he had been in. A glance towards his target showed him a male stranger and not the Aura he had thought it was. Juka felt sick to his stomach. What was a matter with him? He could have seriously hurt the poor guy and he hadn't even realized it.

Out of the corner of his eye Juka spotted a rock hurtling towards him, presumedly thrown from one of the mutants below. He barely manged to spin one of his remaining 2 anvils in front of the rock, saving his head from untold damage and resulting in a rather loud "bang". He had deserved that and if not for the ninja boy he might not even be consious still. Nor would his unfortunate target, for that matter.

“Run!”

Another call yelled out from below, this one Juka managed to both hear and register. He spotted the horse (why was there a horse on a battlefield anyway) and his previous target running and really, that seemed the smart thing to do. Unfortunately, it wasn't something the new purposeful Juka was able to do, especially not after the horrible act he had almost just committed. Instead of running in the opposite direction of the monster, he dropped the remaining branch still in his possession, zoomed down to where his other two anvils were, and once again bubbled them returning his total anvil count to four.

That's when Juka saw the bus being hurled at the chain of shopping carts. That was scary. He wished he could run. He wished desperately that he could just float out of the park and far away from the horrible evil monster that was Clay Cthulu. Oh how he wanted to float away and save himself the pain that was sure to result in something strong enough to throw a bus. But he just couldn't do it. Much to his dismay and horror he coudln't bring himself to leave. Not when there were innocent people that he needed to protect. Not that he had the least idea how, exactly, he was going to go about doing so. What could his tiny anvils do against something like that?

So instead of trying to figure out on his own what to do, he decided to listen to the little ninja boy that had saved his mind and saved the stranger he thought was Aura as well and floated himself, as quickly as he could, towards the tree line indicated by his yelled demands. He sounded like he knew what he was doing and Juka hoped he was right because otherwise he and everyone else were screwed.

Cafas noticed the lizard ninja thing leave the bus. That didn't seem intelligent to him. Not in the least because there was a crazy Juka out there. Then crazy Juka became decidedly uncrazy and a rock barely avoided the back of his head, a horse knocked a guy to the ground and his saviour who had turned into his saved was running. Why was he running? Then Cafas noticed a shriek of tearing metal. Metal shrieking tended to be bad in his experience. The bus lifted and Cafas dropped as fast as he could through the metal floor, leaving a person width hole in the bottom of it. Be had almost no energy left for mutation using, it was growing tiresome. Then the bus was flying for him and the tins that smelled like petrol next to him. The remaining fuel from the bus was leaking onto the monster before him. then a spark from the twisted metal caught it and it became flaming twisted metal. Cafas twitched in the storm of water as the fireball drew closer, then crawled, stood and, following the instruction of a disembodied voice, ran as fast as he could in the most sensible direction, straight at Cthulhu. Again.

'These charges are yet to end well.'

His scrambling had taken him right past the trolleys, as his jump and fall from the bus had carried him the very few feet to the other side of them. He grabbed the handle and dragged them along, then gave up on the idea. A flaming bus smashed into the ground behind him, like a meteor from Ifrit, and the earth shook from the force. It remained on fire. Part of Cthulhu was also on fire, the appendage which had crushed the bus, an its fuel tank. Cafas remembered something his school bus driver had told him. Busses had multiple fuel tanks in some cases. He was on the ground as fast as gravity would take him. He was not a moment too late. There was a big boom and very hot somethings flew above him, and then more flew into the sky above. Cthulhu was dealing with his flaming limb like any good clay monster, he absorbed the flames into his body, replacing the old dry clay with fresh clay. He also noted that there was a larger second boom and more hot stuff. This time liquid. It was all over the place like sunburn on an inattentive sunbather. It happened to be on Alchemist. Alchemist did not like this fiery fuel on him. He toon off his top layer, which happened to be his only layer, both top and bottom, and disposed of them. His boots had escaped unscathed. Cthulhu was for the most part on fire at his front. His fiery fiery front. They were out of fuel too. Bummer. He was now dressed only in drenched boxers and boots. He thanked his lucky stars for baggy jeans, or they wouldn't have come off at all.

'HOT! COLD! HELP!'

He followed his previous plan of action, the opposite direction, as shrapnel fell around him in a very potentially fatal shower, having streaked dozens of feet into the air, possibly even a hundred. What hit him melted to him, luckily cooled enough by the rain to be bearable. His sword lay no longer glowing in his path. He grabbed it and stopped channelling in his hand, which instantly received a cut for his troubles. Right across the back, barely missing some veins. He knew, because he could see them pretty well. His torso seemed fully covered in metal, as was his head. He had to solidify what came too close to his face in order to keep breathing. His boxers were patchily covered and his legs remained untouched by metallic pain, which was good because he liked his boots. He was getting very tired from the constant energy flow, and stumbled more than necessary in his running. He could see multiple others ahead of him.

'To the tree line then.'

Blue and grey eyes surveyed the scene below as the apocalyptic events continued to unfold below him. Buses, trees and anvils, where they had all came from he did not know nor did he care. He was more worried about the voice of the girl behind him. Her grip had become loose as they circled above and he was worried she was going to fall. Sure enough as the voice of the girl echoed around him she had fallen from his back, if he could talk he would had called out to her most likely calling her ‘stupid’ or something along the lines of that for letting go, it was in his eyes counter productive to let go of the one thing that was keeping you afloat a hundred feet or so off of the ground.

All he could do was screech as his ears lowered to the back of his head in hopes that he could dull out the echo of the girls voice that played in his brain for a moment before slipping away as she seemed to slip from his back. Tail turning before his wings Carrick circled around to spot the girl falling at a steady rate towards the creature and the seen below.

Watching the tentacles wrapping around the bus and everything within reach he had a feeling an explosion was about to happen that was after all what happened in the movies a bus gets destroyed and an explosion soon follows there was gasoline in the bus right? Only made sense.

Turning completely into a dive Carrick aimed himself towards his fallen hereon extending his claws in the process. Never before has he tried a save like this before, catching food was one thing, he didn’t have to worry about impaling them with his sharp talons however he wished not to do it to her. Her lading on his back could have been possible but then they would just end up in the same spot they were now. Reaching her falling body Carrick reached out with his first claw attempting to grab her by the arm but failed at his first attempt scratching her in the process and pushing her down further away from him.

Again he tried and had far more luck with the second grab, screw what they say second time was the charm! Pulling her body close to his underbelly Carrick’s other front leg found it’s way to her other arm as he quickly extended his wings slowing their decent away from the cataclysmic events behind them. Turning his back on something that scary went against everything he was ever taught but it seemed that the girl in his clutches was more of his concern for the time being.

Aiming their trajectory away from the beastie with the tentacles of doom Carrick looked for a safe spot to land or attempt to land seeing as his front two limbs were latched onto the girls arms making sure she wouldn’t fall to her untimely death.

Saphirus winced as he saw and heard his rock bounce off of the anvil that dress boy had raised to block it, but then he had a moment of relief when he saw that the shell shock-look had faded from his eyes... Maybe these little X-men where better with words than he first thought! He slid to a stop for a moment, and then heard a boom that was too loud and close for comfort. The older mutant quickly, and reflexively turned his right side toward the blast, and was greeted by a hail of shrapnel, some of which stuck just barely into his skin, despite the kinetic drain that side of his body presented. He winced as he picked a bit of metal from his cheek, and continued hobbling toward the tree line, making it there in good time before he turned to see the damage the explosions had done.

Instead the half naked Aussie caught his attention. He stifled a laugh, and then pulled of his coat, wincing as his burnt finger touched the fabric... God, that was going to sting for a good month. He then tossed the somewhat holey(from the shrapnel) coat toward the neked would-be leader, figuring he would need it more than him. "Y'dun good, kid, but I think you should rest." It was pretty clear the kid was the most beat up of all on him, though Saph admitted to himself that he was a close second, though all of his many wounds were superficial.

After he was done, he took in his surroundings... A few people had made it here, or were on their way, including a familiar green girl, and dress boy... Saph's eyes widened as he realized something. Dress boy flung around anvils and stuff as his power, right? He could use that... He Moved to get closer, and half yelled as he approached "Hey you with the dress! I need you to hit me... here! As hard and as many times as you can... Trust me!" He pointed to his right arm, and nodded as if to give him the go ahead, not really giving much room to object... If he had enough power, he could cause such massive destruction to the monster that it might take a while to recover, if at all... Couple that with the fact that it was covered in flames... that might be enough to end this thing...

((OOC: please ignore any typos/epic fails, PM me if they're aweful or if I'm god-modding and I'll fix, just is late and am falling asleep at the keyboard.))

Verdigris was not a brilliant leader. In fact this was probably the first time that any responsibility had been placed on her shoulders for around three years. It was tough. The others didn’t seem to hear her, or seemed to ignore her, with attacks continuing on the giant beast with little to no direction. Her shout to the boy in the bubble hadn’t seemed to work to cease his attack on the rider boy at all, although he acknowledged her shout by looking around.

Faithful Andrea was still following her and as they reached the line of trees Verdigris turned to her.

“We have to figure out some kind of plan. Pool our resources.”

She paused at the mention of the first aid kid and glanced around, she could see the purple haired boy semi-naked and seemingly coated in roughly welded metal shrapnel from the tearing bus.

“Do you have anything for burns? That may be our biggest issue. That and shrapnel cuts.”

She placed the brazier on a steady patch of earth and threw in some of the dead wood that had been blasted over when the monster had thrown the first tree. Soon the flames leapt up and above the edges of the brazier, working as a beacon to guide the other mutant teens and young people to the clearing so they could re-group and re-assess. She was fairly sure that the clay beast was either deaf or indifferent to the screams of the creatures below it so she called out again.

“Heeeey! To me, we have to fight it together!”

Ineffectual words to those who would not listen, but her voice was backed up by another in her ear.

~~ “Run!”

She was not going to run. She was the beacon. The rally point. She just hoped that others heard the voice and would heed the other instructions yelled through the rainy night.

“Meet up here, by the clearing!”

One more try wouldn’t hurt and perhaps some of the others would hear and join her, at least in the calling for more of the others or formulating a plan of action. The boy with purple hair was stumbling towards him and after a particularly worrying wobble Verdigris rushed over to him, offering an arm for him to lean on for the last hundred meters or so.

“You OK boss? What’s the plan?”

She threw a glance over his exposed flesh and winced at the bruises and a particularly bad gash across the back of his hand. She fought the urge to dry retch and instead waved at Andrea, trying to draw her attention.

“You got a bandage in that bag of tricks?”

She looked at the purple haired boy again, he didn’t look quite right, apart from the metallic coating of course. His wrists looked swollen, and he was walking a little weird.

“Just be careful kay? Don’t bend his wrists too much.”

She pointed to a decorative rock that stood about waist high on her.

“You should sit on that and let Andrea fix you up. Don’t overdo yourself.”

She turned her attention to the young man who had first attended the purple haired boy and who was now joining them at the safety of the clearing. The man was asking, no, demanding, that Bubbles hit him as hard as possible. She knew that sometimes people were affected strangely by battles, but this was a little different. Bubbles seemed to be displaying the turn-on-your-team-mates reaction, which she had heard of, but she had never come across asking-your-team-mates-to-turn-on-you before. The responsibility was weighing hard on her and she turned towards where the fireworks had come from.

“HOY! Come here! We need to stick together!”

She wasn’t sure if the people had heard, or even if they were still there, but the rain was starting to get in her face and make it hard to see. She tipped her face upwards, the rain and the dark made it impossible to see anything more than silver droplets moments before they crashed into her face but she was sure that the winged-boy and the young girl with him were somewhere up there. She turned her eyes on the purple haired boy again. This was like truth and dare where she had to make up the dare. She hated having to decide what to do.

“What can we do as a whole? Smashing at him individually is doing nothing.” She glanced at the beast that was squishing semi-dry burning clay back into itself. “Almost nothing rather. We need to hit him all together instead of just bashing away. We’re hurting each other more than it!”

She glanced at Bubbles and the purple haired boy. There was no way for them to beak it separately. She just hoped someone else could figure out how to destroy it.

She had barely made it off the log behind her roommate when the explosion sounded behind her. She was thankful to be out of its war zone, but felt compelled to charge back in for those who might not have been so lucky. A glance at Verdi sent her feet moving after the girl. She would have to stick to the plan. While her eyes were foucused on the small gathering of people who staggered and or floated in, she was busy fighting off a nice little ringing in her ears, courtesy of the explosion- when she spotted Verdigris on the move. After waggling a finger around in her ear for a moment, the ringing seemed to dull, but remained stubbornly. She would have to live with it for now. She moved slowly after, her eyes flashing from one person to the next to survey the scene. She had never been any good at things like this, taking the lead and coming up with plans. In a way she almost served better as a follower... or a Tag along.

>>“You got a bandage in that bag of tricks?”

She was being waved for again. Her steps quickened into a light jog while her hands reached to open the Medical pack, diving in to scour and search for any sort of salve or cream that would help a burn victim.

What she found was a couple of rolls of white bandages and a hand full of burn cream packets. Much more than she had expected really. She was quick to unroll the bandages, and to tear off the corner of one of the packages. With the packet clamped between her teeth, she moved forward until she was within arms length of the purple haired guy, waiting for his consent before she started to patch him up.

In the meantime, her eyes rose, landing on another familiar face. "...Saph?" With a blink, she shook her head and glanced back to cafas. There were to many things going on at the moment, to many odd... wacky, things. She couldn't afford to concentrate on just one man asking another to physically wail on him with what appeared to be Anvils.

"Verdigris..." Her voice rose so that the other might hear her better, her eyes rising to fix on the girl. "Do you wish me to stay here and help those who need it, or will i join in this attack plan?" Her waiting hands twitched a bit. She was unsure what she could do, in a fight anyway, but she would do what she could, even if that required her to run around in front of the beast to serve as a distraction, however poor of a distraction she would make.

“You have got to be kidding me.” Firecracker #1 didn’t even put a dent in the claymation nightmare. Twyla’s tone was exasperated and more than a little annoyed.

So not only was the firework a big waste of energy, it also upstarted a cacophony of cries screaming things along the lines of ‘don’t do that again’. Oops. That was fine, Twyla could live with that considering her attention was somewhat diverted because of the fact that one of the yellers (even from her vantage point she knew him to be Gawain based on the voice and dark hair) was seemingly being attacked by someone whom Twyla had thought was an ally. What the heck was happening by that bus?

Without really thinking about it the girl shot out from behind the park bench and was heading at a dazed half-run towards the bus and most of the action. Random moves she’d been practicing in her room earlier that day filled her mind. If she could just get past the swirling anvil a–giant nasty tentacle could snake out and grab her.

Wait. Something was wrong with that picture.

That was a giant nasty tentacle and it was heading towards her (or what she running towards it?) at an alarming rate. Apparently Cthulhu wasn’t a big fan of the early New Year’s display. For the second time that night Twyla Ashby was caught unawares. Although, this time she didn’t need a princess to save her. She knew what to do when a giant nasty tentacle of nastiness was shooting for her–she ran. She just turned tail (ponytail, pink and blonde ponytail) and ran in the opposite direction realizing as she headed back towards the park bench that she was leading the limb that was pursing her right back to where her friend, the one who’d saved her from a flying tree, was still crouched. That certainly wouldn’t do, at least not so long as Henri was still there.

“Henri, run!” She screamed as loud as she could between her gasps. Her call coincided with several other calls to run that came from behind her, she assumed near the bus. Really, what was happening with that bus? Whatever it was, it would wait. Twyla’s main concern was that she was being sought out by Something Scary and she was running out of steam–and fast.

Curse the day in Middle School that she’d tried out for Dance Team instead of Track. Twyla was many, many, many things, but a runner she was defiantly not. A long distance runner she would never be–no matter how many mornings she got up early to run around the Mansion grounds, which she did several times a week mind you. Since the girl was not a runner had been running at a very fast pace she was also getting tired just as fast as she was running. Apparently adrenaline didn’t change the Laws of Twyla Nature and regardless of her chemicals her legs were cramping and there was a mean stitch in her side.

Luckily, the beautiful sanctuary of the park bench was close at hand and the girl dove behind it–totally oblivious to everything but the beauty in the slats of the seat and the fact that she landed on something that wasn’t cold, packed earth.

((OOC: Hope I didn't miss anything or mess anything up. let me know and I'll fix it. ))

Seeing Twyla shooting by her, Henri turned to watch where the girl was heading. She was afraid that she was being abandoned, but the girl was running with purpose. It was toward the boy that had been on the horse. Realizing she wasn’t going to make it, the blonde girl had begun to run back towards her. The 16-year old was relieved to see her friend returning to her. Twyla was yelling something at her.

“Henri, run!”

Knowing that she probably SHOULD be running from the giant tentacle, she stood up. Henri was getting in her sprinting position. Henrietta had taken track and knew how she could start at her fastest. She took a few running steps, but then fell. Taking a moment to check what had tripped her, Henri glared down angrily. It was Twyla's bag. It was suppose to be helping, but here she was tripping on it. She was getting ready to get up, but something prevented it. All of a sudden, something landed on the long-haired girl. “Twyla!”

“Hurry! Get up!” Henrietta lied still as Twyla got up. She then got up after the other girl had gotten off of her. Henrietta picked up Twyla’s pack and handed it to her. While that was happening, neither girl noticed the huge, writhing tentacle heading towards them. When the realization that they were being surrounded by a limb struck them, it was already too late. Both girls were lifted into the air.

Henrietta’s hair began to move wildly. It was obvious that Henri was in a panic, because her hair was as well. She looked down at the ground and swung her legs rapidly. It was so far away and the girl felt that she was going to be sick.

((Permission to get Twyla captured was given by Twyla herself. No god-modding here! ))