//------------------------------// // Bend You 'Till You Break // Story: The Multiverse in a Nutshell // by Pennington Inkwell //------------------------------// Sunset took a deep breath, trying not to let her anxiety get the better of her. This wasn't Aperture. Not only was Aperture hundreds of miles away, this place was clearly made by the ink demon, judging by the sepia tone and thick black outlines around all the wall panels and other objects... Still, aside from that, it was a VERY convincing fake. All the panels, symbols, and other details were nearly flawless. She and Clara had been deposited in the same room she'd arrived in during their first stay at the facility, just outside the glass room where she'd woken up the first time. If this ink demon is in Penn's head, it must know that this place is a free ticket to get under my skin... she shuddered. With a grunt, she pushed herself up to her feet and offered a hand to Clara. "So, what exactly do you mean by 'trouble?'" she asked, looking curiously at the room around them. "Well, the first time we were here, or at least, the place that thing is trying to re-create, Penn and I nearly died..." Sunset stepped up to the wall and ran her fingers along one of the cracks between wall panels, confirming that it was perfectly smooth and flush, just like the floorboards in the animation studio. "They used us for their scientific tests, and didn't take it well when we wanted to leave. He was shot and I was... almost sliced open like a biology lesson..." she shuddered. "That was a bad day." She glanced around until she spotted the security camera, hanging from the same spot on the wall that it had been watching her the first time. She raised an eyebrow as she noticed that it had yet to move, staring blankly into empty space instead. Clara's eyes widened and she looked around with new eyes. "Okay, so this place isn't as pleasant as it looks, which really wasn't much to start with. If you've been here before then you know the way out, yeah?" Sunset shook her head again. "This was where we met Isis. She had the map, we just followed her directions." "Then Isis would still know the way out! She doesn't forget anything, right?" Sunset sighed and held up her phone. "Except that it says that Isis is offline... I don't really know what to make of that. We've lost her signal before, but she's never been completely offline." Clara pondered the situation for a moment before clearing her throat and starting to walk towards the exit of the room. "Alright, then it looks like we're on our own! I'm sure if we start walking, the way out will come back to you!" "Let's hope so." Sunset took a deep breath, trying to steady her nerves. As much as this looked like Aperture, it wasn't. The stakes weren't the same this time, and she wasn't alone. "We need to get back as fast as we can." The next room was just as Sunset remembered: a locked door, a big button, and a big block to set on it. Again, Sunset didn't wait for instructions, picking up the block and setting it on the button. "I'm guessing not all the tests are this easy?" Clara asked, folding her arms over her chest as they both stared expectantly at the door. "No, they get harder..." Sunset sighed. "And the AI running this place isn't afraid to set you up with impossible tests just to watch you fail." "Oh, brilliant..." They both stood in silence as the door refused to budge. Sunset quickly ran out of patience, walking up to the circular door and rapping her knuckles against it. "HELLO? We solved the dumb puzzle, this is the part where you're supposed to let us out!" On cue, the doors slid open, and Sunset rapidly wished that they hadn't. Waiting on the other side was the tall, emaciated-looking figure of the ink demon. Its painted-on smile widened, stretching its teeth wider before it lashed out, aiming to grab at her. "LOOK OUT!" Sunset felt Clara grab the back of her jumpsuit, pulling her out of the monster's grasp just in time. Together, the two of them turned tail and sprinted back where they had come from. Their escape was cut off a few seconds later when they ran out of room to run, having returned to the original room they'd come from. Sunset felt chills running up her spine as the lurching, splattering footsteps of the ink demon following them, clearly in no hurry. "What do we do?" Sunset looked around them for something, anything that they could use as a weapon. We could try to break the glass and use a sharp piece to attack it, but... would that even do anything? It'd be more likely to cut our hands than- "Sunset! Over here!" Sunset's head snapped in Clara's direction, where she was standing halfway through an open panel in the wall. It's no promise of freedom, but it's gotta be better than this! The two of them slid through the opening into the walkway beyond, and the mechanical arm holding it began to whirr and grind. They both watched as the ink demon continued to advance on them, its long claws wrapping around the edge of the panel and only slipping back out of sight just before it became flush with the wall again. Both of them stood and watched the panel carefully, waiting for any sign that the monster was going to break through to get at them. BANG! BANG! BANG! Every blow made them both jump, but the wall held fast. After the third attempt, the ink demon seemed to finally give up, and silence fell. The two of them waited in pure darkness, the only sign of the other's presence being a tight grip on the arm. "Do you think it's gone?" Clara whispered. "I think it's looking for another way around." Sunset muttered, her hand drifting to her pocket. A few seconds later, she'd managed to switch her phone on, and the screen provided a soft glow that did nothing to illuminate the area around them. She could feel herself shifting gears. Without Penn around, somebody had to be pragmatic, and as much as she hated to admit it, she knew more about what was happening than anybody. "We should get moving... Isis? Can you help us find the way out?" There was a pause before the screen flickered several times, eventually settling on a soft purple glow. "Yo, Isis isn't here. Stop calling." Sunset and Clara both looked at each other in the dim light, neither seeming to understand what was happening. "Then... can I ask whom I'm speaking to?" "Somebody with their own problems!" With that declaration, the screen shifted to the manual menu Sunset was accustomed to from before Isis had taken over her phone. "That's... odd." Clara said. "If Isis isn't there... who was that?" "Clearly, nobody helpful..." she muttered. Sunset took a deep breath, trying to steady the tremble in her hand as she moved through her apps and turned on her phone's flashlight. The bright white light bounced and glistened off of the walls, revealing that, rather than the lengthy catwalks of Aperture Science, the two of them were standing in a long black tunnel. The walls were damp with ink, looking as though they'd been chiseled out of the darkness with some blunt instrument. There was a spark of recognition at the back of her mind, and she reached out her hand to it. It was definitely ink, thick and gummy and congealed, but still ink. She could feel it sucking at her fingers, trying to draw her in, but there was something further in. Something solid, smooth, but uneven... glassy. She pulled her hand away, shaking off a few flecks of ink from her fingers. Her next step was to feel at her geode, slipping a pair of fingers underneath its smooth back. It was warm, just above her own body's temperature. Not glowing, but humming enough to be certain it wasn't idle. "Interesting..." she whispered under her breath. "Well, right or left?" Clara licked her finger and held it up. After a moment's thought, she pointed over her shoulder and further down the hall. "Wind's coming from this way." "Then that's the way we'll go." Sunset turned her light in the direction Clara was pointing and began to walk. "I want to put as much distance between me and Aperture Science as possible." "Well, I'm not going to argue with you there. The sooner we get back to our friends, the better!" ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Clara was lost, and not just because she and Sunset had been shoved into a cartoon recreation of a secret lab by some kind of reality-twisting demon. This wasn't the Sunset Shimmer she knew. Yes, this was clearly the first time that they'd met from Sunset's perspective, but... When it had been the other way around, when Clara had been meeting Sunset for the first time, she had been so... happy. Cheerful, glad to help, just... overall healthy and happy and open. Chatty, even. Yes, she'd been unafraid to step up and fight when she needed to, but this felt backwards. Going into the past was supposed to reveal someone with fewer worries, less weight on their shoulders. She needed to lighten the mood, walking silently AND in the dark was too much. "So... is this the day I finally get the story?" "What story?" Sunset asked. "Of how you guys got started on this crazy adventure!" Clara chuckled. "I mean, like I said, future you never wanted to talk about the early days." Sunset considered the question for a moment. "Well, when my friends and I accidentally blew up the portal we were trying to shut, I woke up in his town. He was the first person I stopped to ask where I was. It was a hot day, so he offered to buy me a milkshake, and when we sat down to drink them..." Sunset paused for a moment, though her feet didn't so much as stutter in their pace. "The town was attacked by dalek." Clara's eyes widened. "Wait, a dalek dalek? Really angry? Looks like a spray-painted rubbish bin and shouts 'exterminate' a lot?" "That's the one." Sunset declared casually. "Chased us into a hardware store. He seemed to have more of an idea of what was going on than I did, even if we were both completely terrified. So even if he hadn't been dragging me by the hand, I would have stuck with him. Penn had a sledgehammer, I wound up in the paint aisle. Once we killed it, well, there was no separating us after that kind of near-death experience together... Once he was done throwing up, that is." She gave a mirthless chuckle. "He did NOT start out with a disposition for adventure! Fainted completely when we saw the battleships ready to invade!" "Wait, you beat a dalek with a sledgehammer and paint? Battleships?" "No, with a mirror, his freaky knowledge, and a complete lack of self preservation," Sunset's voice held an edge of irritation, making it clear that the latter was an ongoing problem. "But that's beside the point." "Okay... I feel like I'm going to need some more details about how that story got from point A to point-" Both of them were cut off when a third voice came echoing down the tunnel. "Help me! Somebody! Help me!" That was enough to stop them in their tracks, but only long enough for them to look and confirm that they'd both heard the same thing. Without a word, they took off running in the direction of the voice. Clara nearly missed it when they ran past a branching tunnel, but the shine on the walls worked to their advantage. She barely spotted the perpendicular tunnel when Sunset sprinted past with the light, but she managed to slide to a stop right in front of it. "Sunset! Over here!" She waited just long enough for Sunset to be behind her with the light before starting to run down the new path. The stranger's voice continued growing louder, affirming that they were on the right path. "Help! Please, help me!" Finally, Clara could make out a light up ahead outside of Sunset's phone, growing brighter by the second. When they burst into the room the tunnel had led them to, Clara was braced to be ready for anything. She was no stranger to danger. Breathtaking sights both beautiful and horrible were a part of traveling with the Doctor, as natural as anything. Still, what was waiting for them was enough to make her cover her mouth to hold back the urge to either scream or vomit. It was an operating room. The walls and floor were like the first room they had arrived in, but at the center was a large table with a body strapped down onto it. Descending from the ceiling was a pair of mechanical arms, one holding a scalpel and the other a hacksaw. On the table was... Sunset. A cartoonish version made in black-and-white, but still quite recognizably her. Her chest had been ripped open, with her ribs broken and pulled aside for easy access to her internal organs. Her eyes had been reduced to a pair of Xs, a childish representation of death. The only other sign of life was a scrawled note in blocky letters painted onto the wall. NEVER MAKING IT OUT OF HERE. Sunset, the REAL Sunset, stepped up beside her and examined the situation with a grim expression on her face. "It's..." she started to speak, only to trail off into a long pause. "Trying to scare us?" Clara finished. "...trying to make me break." Sunset muttered, reaching down to examine her doppelganger's hair more closely. "This almost happened. Penn and I got separated, and they tried to dissect me alive. I got lucky, got part of it to self-destruct and the shrapnel sliced one of the restraints. If it hadn't..." she gestured to the dead body. "It was the first time I ever really snapped. Once I was out of here, I just... cried." Clara felt a chill run down the back of her spine. Separated from her friends, far from home, and almost dying in the most excruciating way imaginable... If it's trying to pick out an unsettling memory for her, this is a doozy. "Do you need a minute?" Sunset huffed to herself before letting go of her double's hair. "I... I've been trying to digest THIS particular bit of trauma for a while. A minute won't make a difference. Let's just... go..." for a moment, she came to a stop, still staring at her double. In spite of her words, she was clearly becoming lost in thought. "Well, I could use a second to catch my breath, sooo..." Clara leaned against the wall, trying to look anywhere but at the operating table. "So... This demon can warp us into places from your past, force us into weird tunnels, seems like it can warp reality itself and then... it tries to scare us? How does that make sense?" She gestured to the scrawl on the wall. "Why leave a threatening note when you're much scarier in person?" What would the Doctor think here? Clara tended to ask that question a lot. Sure, he could be abrasive and infuriating and often VERY stupid when it came to people, but he was usually smart enough to know what was going on. "Unless... it can't?" "That, or it just likes scaring us," Sunset mumbled, "But-" Whatever her comment was, it was cut off by a loud rumble passing over their heads, sounding almost like it was just on the other side of the ceiling. Both of them froze, waiting for any signs of more danger. Their worries were met with more rumbling, this time less consistent and more of a heavy pounding moving in the same direction. A few seconds later, the pounding and rumbling was gone as quickly as it had come, and they were back to standing in total silence. "That second one sounded like something big chasing the first one..." Clara muttered. Sunset nodded. "And the first one sounded like... tires." "What, you think somebody brought a car into the TARDIS?" Clara mused. "I've seen the Doctor drive motorcycles in here before, but a car would never make it through the front doors!" "I've got a theory, but it needs a little more proof before I'm willing to tell it..." Sunset shook her head, finally stepping away from the operating table and over to the wall. She kept one hand on her geode, gently brushing her hand over the white until she seemed to recognize something Clara couldn't see. She began trying to dig her fingernails into the black seam between the panels. "For now, the only thing we can do is... keep... moving!" With a grunt, the panel hissed and began to move, pushing out and aside until it had exposed an opening to another inky tunnel. "How did you know that was there?" "All the panels in Aperture move or articulate or something like that, it all takes itself apart and rearranges to keep making new tests. You just have to figure out how to make them..." Sunset said cryptically, dusting off her hands for a moment before retrieving her flashlight. "Ready to prove that note wrong?" "More than ready." Clara stretched her neck before stepping up to the entrance alongside her. Together, the two of them left the gruesome scene behind, and stepped back into the darkness. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "We... made... it!" Missy panted, splayed across one of the chairs in the TARDIS's control room. Her wings felt like they were on fire, but they had managed to make it back in one piece. "Yes, but that doesn't mean this is over..." The Doctor worked furiously at the control panel, pressing buttons and pulling levers seemingly at random. "But we're safe here... right? This room isn't going to get reconfigured or anything, right?" "No, not the main control room." The Doctor grabbed a screen and swung it around to stare at the readings on display. "But that doesn't mean we're safe, either..." As he continued glaring at the screen with intense focus, Missy felt a worry creeping in. "You're... not going to hurt him, are you?" That question was enough to draw his attention to her completely. "What? Why would I do that?" "W-Well, you seem mad... and he's messing up your spaceship..." Missy suddenly felt much more intimidated now that his furious-looking gaze was on her. "He isn't doing it on purpose, I promise! Penn's practically your biggest fan!" "Oh, don't mind the sour face, it's all in the eyebrows! I've yet to find the 'off' switch." The Doctor shook his head. "And don't worry about the TARDIS..." he took a moment to stroke the edge of the console. "She's been through worse at much more malicious hands. She'll be fine." He turned back to the screen, pointing at the readings in a way that urged her to look alongside him. "More importantly, take a look at this!" Missy floated up to the screen. It was a mess of numbers and diagrams and some kind of circular writing, completely incomprehensible. "Uhhhhm... you lost me." "Can't you see? The architectural reconfiguration system, it's not just reshaping the TARDIS's normal rooms, it's connecting to places that don't even exist in this space! Pocket dimensions inside THIS pocket dimension!" Missy blinked, still trying to get a grip on what she was being told. "So... the ink demon isn't just messing around with portals, he's making his own pocket dimensions?" "Hard to say, but I don't think so..." The Doctor tapped his chin. "Not all of them, at least. Some of them are ones it made, but there's at least a couple that it's drawing in, instead..." "So... It's like how things are outside? With portals showing up to other places?" "No, nothing so chaotic! The TARDIS's systems are trying to compensate, connecting everything as best she can. Actually... including the area Sunset and Clara disappeared in!" He reached into his pocket, putting on the sunglasses from earlier and pressing on the bridge between the lenses. With a soft buzz, the screen switched itself off. "And now, I've got a map!" "You do?" Missy floated up out of her seat, her excitement making her completely forget her exhaustion. "Then let's get going!" ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Sunset?" "Yes?" "When was the last time that you guys just went somewhere for fun?" That seemed to bring Sunset to a complete stop, as if Clara had asked her some deeply personal question. Stopping felt awkward in the small tunnel, but at the very least it was refreshing after the rhythmic plopping of their feet squelching in the ink for so long. "I... don't think we have." "What, seriously?" Clara stepped around to get a better look at Sunset's surprised expression. "You guys have been on a road trip for this long, with the whole multiverse out there, and you haven't taken the time for a trip to someplace you've always wanted to go? Just because your geode compass thing didn't tell you to?" Sunset's face flushed slightly in embarrassment. "I guess I've been so focused on finding my friends before anything happens to them, I never really thought about taking the time for a pleasure trip." "I understand being in a hurry to find them, but it's a big multiverse... Heck, it's a big universe! You're not going to be able to sprint from one side to the other!" Sunset fidgeted slightly. "I know, but I just... worry about them. What if they didn't wind up someplace as friendly as I did? It seems like everywhere we've gone, things try to kill us! Every day we go without finding them is another day they could be getting hurt or worse!" "Sunset, didn't you say it's been months you guys have been on the road?" Clara raised an eyebrow. "I understand being worried, but you're going to worry yourself into an early grave if you don't slow down! If your friends are out there and they've survived this long on their own, I doubt that taking a little time for yourself will be a death sentence." "But-" "PLUS..." Clara interrupted her. "Think about Penn and Missy. Missy's a child... don't you remember how exciting it was to go new places when you were a kid?" "I guess I never thought about it like that..." Sunset mumbled. "And Penn... If he's the same Penn I met in the future, all of this stuff he knows about, he knows because he LOVES them!" "I know." Sunset sighed. "A while ago, we were joking around, and he said meeting me was the best thing to over happen to him." She gave a mirthless chuckle. "Right..." Clara considered arguing that he was telling the truth. She had her own share of experience with meeting a stranger who got her caught up in a never-ending adventure to other worlds, and it WAS what she would consider one of the best days of her life. Maybe not the absolute best, but at least in the top five. "Well, if you think he's having a bad time, why not stop to let him enjoy some of it?" Clara put a hand on Sunset's shoulder. "What I'm saying is that running yourself ragged like this clearly isn't working." There was another long pause between them, standing in the dark together. "You need to learn to enjoy the journey just as much as the destination, Sunset!" A pulse ran through the congealed ink around them, causing them to move closer to one another as shapes began to form and pull away from the walls. They looked like veins at first, but the longer Clara stared, the more she could make out thorns and leaves. "Vines?" "No.... No, don't you dare..." Sunset whispered. "Don't you DARE bring that thing back..." "I'm guessing this is another ghost of your past?" Clara muttered. "You've got that right!" a squeaky voice cried. "GRAH!" Sunset lashed out in the direction of the voice without hesitation. Clara cringed as Sunset's fist splattered one of the flowers growing out and buried itself several inches into the wall. Sunset hissed through clenched teeth and pulled her hand tight against her body in pain. "Oof! Another one like that and you're gonna break something!" The voice taunted. "Do it again!" One of the flowers on the inky vines stretch out and away from the wall, growing until the section in the center was large enough to accommodate a simple drawn-on face. It grinned sadistically at Sunset. "Oh, look at that! You're as useless as ever!" the flower jeered. "Still a complete idiot! Can't even get revenge properly!" "OI!" Clara stepped in front of Sunset, slapping at the flower and turning it into a spray of black droplets. She could only watch as another one grew out of the wall, making it clear she couldn't stop them. A hand on her shoulder turned her attention back to Sunset. "It's just a ghost..." she muttered. The look on her face, however, told a different story. Clara could barely make out her expression, covered in shadows and seeming to purposefully keep the light pointed away from herself, but there was the glistening of tears on her cheeks and her teeth were bared and gritted tight with rage. "We can't let it stop us..." she spoke almost in a whisper, barely restrained. Together, they continued walking down the corridor, passing the strange creature without acknowledging its presence. "Hey! Wanna see me KILL your best friend?" the flower taunted. Somewhere down the tunnel behind them, there was the sound of a gut-wrenching crunch and a strained grunt. "Wanna see me do it again? And again? And AGAIN?" It felt like every time they left it behind, it would grow a new face out of the wall to grin that foul grin at them. "If only, if only! Too late! Too late!" it sung at them, "You left your best friend to a horrible fate!" Occasionally, a vine would separate from the rest to lash at them, usually Sunset. The first few times, Sunset hardly so much as flinched, but she seemed to reach a breaking point after only a short time. "CUT IT OUT!" She roared, closing her fist around the vine and pulling. The act brought no satisfaction, however. The vine simply kept coming, growing out of the wall as fast as Sunset could pull it. She began working with both hands, casting the length over her shoulder as she pulled more and more out of the wall. Clara was tempted to let her expend her frustrations until she caught flecks of red among the black. Realizing what was happening, the rushed up and grabbed Sunset, wrapping her arms around from behind to stop her from ripping any more out of the wall. "Sunset! Sunset, stop! The THORNS!" Sunset fought her bear hug for a few seconds, but gave up quickly, letting her hands drop to her sides. The vine was still clenched in one of her fists, but a moment later it melted away to black liquid and dripped out of her hands and onto the floor. "S-Sorry, I just..." Sunset trailed off. "It's okay." Clara reassured her. "Let me see your hands." "I'm fine-" "Hands. Now." Clara put on her best 'strict teacher' voice, the one she usually saved for her more rambunctious students. Sunset sighed and held up her hands, palms open. Clara took a deep breath, trying not to cringe or look away. It could have been much worse, it looked as though most of the thorns had gone into and out of her skin without much resistance, leaving an array of bloody pinpricks rather than open scratches and tears. Clara sighed and reached into her pocket. "Here. It's not much, but I've got a couple clean handkerchiefs. Started carrying them after I realized not every time period has tissues. Should be enough to at least cover up those palms until we can get them washed and bandaged properly." Sunset only nodded and held out her hands for Clara to wrap the cloth around in a rudimentary bandage. "That was incredibly stupid..." "I know. I'm sorry." Sunset's voice had returned to barely speaking above a mumble. "What happened that could make a flower set you off like that?" "It's a long story," Sunset grumbled, looking away and reaching down to where she'd dropped her phone. "Sunset, we're in a TIME machine. Everything around here is a long story, I don't mind!" She seemed to debate with herself for a few seconds, clearly unsure whether or not she wanted to tell the story. Sunset shot a glare at the nearest flower before nodding further down the tunnel. "Well, it started when I woke up in the middle of the night and Missy was gone..." Clara knew it was completely inappropriate to smile right now, but she did celebrate inwardly when she realized that THIS story was going to be much more of a REAL story than the last one. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "We're lost." "We are NOT lost!" Noir argued. "Then where ARE we, Dad?" Noir couldn't stop himself from growling angrily as a fireball began brewing in his gut. "We are SUPPOSED to be at the main power coupling!" "And what is THAT?" A black-furred tail snuck over his shoulder, pointing across the chasm. Above them was the source of electricity for all of Noir's creations, and below was a one-way trip to oblivion, ready to accept the power core in case something went critical. On the other side, however, was what Noir knew she was pointing to. "The main power coupling..." "So, if we're not where we're supposed to be, and we're not sure where we are or how to get to where we're TRYING to be, then by DEFINITION we are..." Noir refused to give her the satisfaction of finishing the statement and acknowledging that she was right. "Well, if SOMEBODY hadn't insisted on having a jaguar body instead of a dragon, we could just FLY over there! Don't you have a floor plan downloaded?" "Well, unlike Isis, I wasn't trying to kiss your scaly butt! And I DO, but SOMETHING'S shifting around all the architecture, so it's useless!" Noir took a moment to spit a few curses under his breath. "Fine, I'll fly over, myself! Just stay here and-" "Oh, suuuuuure! Just go for a casual flight over a bottomless pit while some malicious entity is restructuring physical space! There's no way THAT can go wrong!" Noir knew why he'd programmed her to be like this. The Backup Autonomous System Testing Everyone's Tenacity was meant to be everything Isis wasn't, specifically so that any threat to Isis would be rendered moot. They were polar opposites, both in functionality and personality. Isis was logical, so Bastet was emotional. Isis was a multitasker, Bastet devoted one hundred percent of her processing power to the problem in front of her. Isis was cheery and helpful, and Bastet was... not. However, knowing the reasoning he'd used when putting the system together didn't mean Bastet was any less frustrating. "How's the medbay-" "The egg is FINE. It was the first place Isy quarantined." "Good..." Noir took a deep breath. "Are the repair drones still going rogue?" "Yup, and I think I'm starting to get a clue about what they're building in there..." One of the large cat's eyes turned to the nearest wall, projecting an image that sent chills down his spine. Tubes, paneling, and engines were being repurposed into a massive machine. "It looks like a giant water pump on steroids, but the moment I try to get the sensors to see inside, it gets overwhelmed by interference! Something's going on in there we can't see, and I've got a bad feeling about it!" "If my memory of indie video games is correct, that's an ink machine, and a BIG one..." Noir whispered. "With all of Isis's repair drones, they could probably have it up and running in under an hour!" "All the more reason to get the power turned off!" The ink running and pooling around their feet was beginning to bubble up, forming new, familiar shapes. In a matter of seconds, they'd formed into two new creatures. "EX-TER-MIN-ATE!" one shouted. The hulking Beowolf Grimm beside it growled in agreement. "Well, Dad, I've got the claws if you've got the fangs..." Noir narrowed his eyes, knowing he was about to put that fireball to good use. "You attack Isis, invade my workshop, disassemble my equipment, and now you come at me with cheap knockoff monsters?" He bared his teeth as the fire in his belly dissipated and electricity began to crackle across his scales. He settled low into a ready position as the static arced over his body, eventually sinking into the blue plates running down his spine. He made a point not to make any noise before he took off. He knew that this kind of all-out attack was unnecessary, but he was beyond the point of rationality. His home had been invaded and the few beings he cared about had been hurt. He only pushed off of Bastet's back. He flapped his wings once before pulling them tight against his sides. All around him was the energy he had dedicated to the attack, passing around and through him to protect his body from any kind of recoil as he turned himself into a living missile. To him it was only a few seconds, but to the rest of the world it was less than the blink of an eye before it was over. He was now hovering behind the fake Grimm, a huge hole having been blown through its chest when he flew through it. "Okay, that was actually kinda cool." "THIS IS WHY I DON'T LET ANYBODY INTO MY WORKSHOP!"