• Published 31st Aug 2017
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Delinquency - Daemon McRae



The Rainbooms aren't CHS's only defense against the supernatural. Unfortunately, the alternative spends more time hanging out in abandoned buildings and landing themselves in detention than is normal for any teenager. At least they enjoy their work.

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Level Nineteen: Not Even My Final Form

Level Nineteen: Not Even My Final Form

Mankind has become so obsessed with fear that they have built entire corporations on it; giant, living engines feeding on the emotions of the populace, depending on their fear of the great “What If?” to keep lining the monster’s pockets. News outlets, insurance companies, even government entities function only because of the fear they instill in us of what would happen if they didn’t.

Some companies celebrate fear, through the creation of horror movies, scary stories, and comics with disturbing imagery. Creating a falsified fight or flight response in people to give them an enjoyable, safe adrenaline rush that they can walk away from whenever they want. If that story’s too scary for you, you can always put it down. Millions are made because some people enjoy being scared, when there’s no real danger present.

But at its core, fear is something much more dangerous than we believe. Sure, in an unlit theater, watching some horrible monster drag someone down a hall, you feel your heart race in your chest, you breath heavy, even scream. When the monsters are real, though? The narrative changes completely. Yes, you can still hear your heartbeat in your ears. Your breathing becomes ragged. You might even scream. These things are near constants. It’s our natural response. Yet it becomes very hard to just put the book down and walk out of the room if the monster’s not on the page.

Some people, however, respond to fear very differently.

“And who the rocket manger Christ fuck are you?!” Rubble shouted, taking a defensive posture. He’d already pulled a knife out from somewhere, and was holding it in front of his face as if trying to hide behind it. Or hide the monster.

“Hey!” Sonata shouted. “That’s MY line!” she growled, from a safe distance. The girls were quickly backing away from the creature, Siren and Rainboom alike.

“|\|0w no\/\/ c|-|il|)r3n, lət”$ NȍϮ Ϝϊgӈ†,” the Beast growled condescendingly. It’s voice deepened and pitched at random intervals, sometimes in the same vowel, making it difficult to track its words. The general tone of superiority, however, was hard to miss.

“Nah, LET’S,” Rubble barked, and lunged forward. The creature swung a lazy arm, faster than should have been possible, to knock him aside, only to find there was nothing there, as Rubble ducked low and dug the knife into an orbiting eye on its waist. He leaped back and swung his leg around, aiming for it’s head, which was almost immediately proven to be a bad idea.

Rubble barked in pain as a great mouth opened, nearly the entire surface of the side of the monster’s head, and clamped down on his ankle. Another mouth opened only inches from it, and said, in an approximation of Cinch’s voice, “Ⓣhᾀ₮ ₩⅍ i‼ ạdvʪeD.” The eye he had stabbed reformed and twisted into another mouth, which simply spat out the blade.

“Yeah,” the boy flinched as his leg twisted uncomfortably in the massive jaw. “Starting to see that.”

“Ŏh, ԍᴑְod, ᴉᴛ ᶗan bè ȚȃǕʛɧt,” the extra mouth drolled arrogantly. Then the Beast whipped its entire body around, heaving Rubble across the room with all the finesse of a crash test dummy. His back hit a pile of sheet rock with an uncomfortable crack, and he stopped moving.

“RUBBLE!” Dusty and Treble shouted. Spooks just looked on, aghast.

“Ŋʘw ϺΔyᴕᴇ ᴡᴲ cᶏᵰ ḥằvέ a ₵ivⱡⱢῘzeḍ ᴄoὭѶеЯϨΑΤίȍΝ,” said the monster.

Spooks’ face grew dark, and he stepped forward. “How about you talk to us in your inside voice, and we’ll think about it.”

The creature, if it could raise an eyebrow, might have. Instead, all of its wandering eyes focused intently on the gangly young man standing in front of him. The many mouths chattered in clicks and shrieks, as if talking amongst themselves, then swiftly and fluidly merged into a single, wide maw that threatened to split the head in two. “VERY WELL,” it agreed, in a great, booming voice. Not to threaten, but as if it didn’t have any other settings. “LET US SPEAK. YOU PRESUME TO KNOW WHAT I AM AND WHAT I WANT.”

“False,” Spooks snapped, glaring daggers at the invader. “We have no idea. Everything is best guessing at this point. My grandfather might have, he might have even been right. But I’ll never know. Truth be told, the only thing I know about you is you scare the fuck out of us.”

It tilted its head, the top half dangling sickly onto its shoulder as the mouth opened. “INTERESTING. YOU APPEAR TO HAVE NONE OF YOUR PROGENITOR’S ARROGANCE. PERHAPS YOU WILL LIVE LONGER THAN HE.”

This took Bones back a step. “You knew him?”

The creature’s head tilted the other way, the top half flopping about as it spoke. “ONLY OF. I HAVE NEVER ENCOUNTERED HIM PERSONALLY, BUT THERE IS A… STINK ABOUT YOU THAT SOUNDS LIKE THE STORIES I HAVE BEEN TOLD. HE WAS A GROWTH. A MALIGNANT TUMOR IN FATHER’S SIDE.”

“HOLD up,” Dusty interjected, waiving his hands. “You have a DAD?!” he asked loudly, stepping forward to stand beside Spooks.

“WHY WOULD I NOT? ALL EXISTENCE SPAWNS FROM OTHER EXISTENCE. AND ALL EXISTENCE DIES TO FEED OTHER EXISTENCE. LIFE ITSELF PERPETUATES THROUGH LOSS AND SELFISHNESS. OF COURSE, SOME LAST LONGER THAN OTHERS,” he said with a wide, sick smile, looking around the room.

Dusty looked ready to say something, presumably stupid, when Treble climbed aboard the conversation. “You said something like ‘We presume to know what you are’. Does that mean you were going to correct us? Tell us what’s really going on?”

The sound the Beast made as it laughed could have driven a pure and righteous man to suicide, if gone on too long. The boys recoiled into themselves, as well as the girls, though they had since backed into the open yard. Even the distance they’d put between themselves and the monster wasn’t enough to curtail the horrible noise. It sounded like a loved one telling you to jump. “YOU WISH ME TO TELL YOU THE TRUTH? TO SHARE WITH YOU THE LAYERS UPON LAYERS OF REALITY ONE WOULD NEED TO PEEL BACK FOR THEIR FIRST GLIMPSE AT THE LIGHT IN THE CENTER OF THE WORLD? OH, HOW I WISH I COULD. IT WOULD BRING ME NAUGHT BUT ECSTASY TO WATCH YOU WITHER AWAY UNDER THE PRESSURE OF THE TRUE NATURE OF THE WORLD YOU SO DESPERATELY PROTECT. UNFORTUNATELY, I AM NOT HERE FOR SUCH MENIAL PLEASURES. IN FACT, I AM HERE FOR ONE REASON: ALL OF YOU.”

“Oh yeah,” Rubble groaned weakly from the pile of drywall he’d been buried under. “Well, we ain’t going down without a fight.” It would have sounded much more threatening if he handed sounded so weak and muffled.

The boys let out a collective sigh as they saw their friend still alive. The Beast, however, simply laughed again. Quieter, shorter, but still awful to the ears and mind. “SUCH SPIRIT. YOU WILL NEED IT. NO, I IN FACT AM NOT HERE TO… ‘TAKE YOU DOWN’. THIS, THIS CHARADE,” he gestured grandly about him, as if on stage. The many hands on and in his arms rolled sickly in sockets that shouldn’t work. “THIS WAS ALL TO GET ME WHERE I AM RIGHT NOW. IT TAKES A SURPRISINGLY GREAT QUANTITY OF ENERGY TO GET ME THIS FAR. OF COURSE, THESE MISGUIDED FOOLS,” he gestured at the cowering masses of cultists, crawling about on the ground, trying to scurry away from the terrible noise, “SHOULD BE THANKED. THEY DID MAKE MY JOB… EASIER. MY TRUE PURPOSE IS THIS: AS VANGUARD AND MESSENGER. I AM MERELY HERE TO… SCOUT OUT THE LOCAL TALENT. AS MUCH AS I HATE TO ADMIT IT, AM LOATHE TO, IN FACT, I MUST ADMIT THAT YOU ARE, INDEED, TALENTED. YOU WERE… PREPARED FOR ME, INSOMUCH AS YOU COULD HAVE BEEN. OF COURSE, AS YOU CAN SEE, IT DID NO GOOD, BUT I AM… INCONVENIENCED. AND BORED, NOW THAT I HAVE REACHED THE END OF MY TASK. WELL, ALMOST.”

Spooks raised a defiant eyebrow, trying to decide which part of the Beast’s body to glare at hardest. “What else do you want?”

“WANT? CHILD, I WANT TO EAT YOUR WORLD. I WANT TO DESTROY EVERYTHING I SEE BEFORE ME. BUT WHAT I WANT DOESN’T MATTER. WHAT I AM TASKED WITH, DOES. I HAVE ONE LAST THING TO DO, AND THEN I WILL LEAVE,” it explained.

“Leave?” Dusty asked, incredulously. “Just like that?”

It nodded. “YES. I HAVE ORDERS. FROM FATHER. MY LAST TASK IS THIS, A MESSAGE, TO YOU AND YOUR FRIENDS: WE HAVE SEEN YOU. WE HAVE FOUGHT YOU. AND WE HAVE FOUND YOU WANTING. MORE OF US COME. IN WAVES, IN DROVES. WE ARE BUT THE HERALDS. THE ADVANCE GUARD. FATHER IS COMING. FATHER IS WINNING. FATHER HAS ALREADY WON.”

With one last, terrible shriek, the great maw opened as far as it could, until it literally cut off the top of the head. Soon after, the Beast crumpled to the ground, falling into itself in a pile of mouths and eyes and hands and feet. The assorted appendages rolled, skittered, flopped and leaped across the floor in sick procession, finding their hosts and owners. Within minutes, the cultists and adults and teens were whole again.

Of course, Treble had found a corner to heave into first. “Oh god why is it always body parts with these fucks?!”

--------------------------

The cleanup was almost as bad as the night itself. Half of two walls were missing, the room was a war zone with half a floor, the decorations, tables, and equipment had gone to pieces, scattered across the gym like confetti, and nobody even wanted to think about what the halls looked like.

EMTs had arrived several minutes later, in droves. Many of those who had been eaten were still in shock, but with no physical damage. Some had been fortunate enough o pass out and block out the entire incident. Blankets and hot drinks were distributed, a disaster tent set up, and a rather sizable cleaning crew established. Also someone from the zoo had come by to get Fluttershy to find the tiger and bring it back.

Aria had a rather decent knock on her head, and a concussion she was adamant “Wasn’t a big deal.” Her sisters disagreed, as did the Ems she’d punched trying to get them to leave her alone, and so she begrudgingly waited in the back of an ambulance to go to the hospital, with Adagio and Sonata in tow. Rubble was already on a stretcher, and the boys watched morosely as they lifted the bed into the back of another ambulance. “I’ll ride with him,” Dusty volunteered. “Keep your phones on. You two will probably need to stay behind anyway to answer a bunch of really uncomfortable questions neither I nor blockhead here have the brain cells or patience for.”

Treble chatted with him briefly, as Bones stopped a passing Tech. “Any idea what’s up with him?” Spooks asked, nodding hid head at the ambulance.

The EMT sighed. “Well, there’s no damage to his spine, though he’s probably got a few broken ribs. Not to mention a concussion of his own. Just glad he’s not trying to punch his way home,” he said, nursing a bruise on his lower jaw. “His foot, though… whatever bit him, it took out a huge chunk. Someone said there was a bear in the school, is that what did it?” When Spooks hesitated an answer, the EMT raised his hands. “Nope, don’t wanna know. I’ve heard the stories about this place. Just… we haven’t confirmed it yet, but I’m pretty sure his entire Achilles tendon on that foot has been torn in half. Not to mention the bite marks IN his ankle bone. I could fit a pencil into a hole in his fibula.”

Spooks flinched, and looked glumly over his shoulder as they closed the door to the ambulance, Dusty waving at him through the window while he patted the knee of an unconscious Rubble. “He’s never going to use that foot again, is he?”

“Probably not,” the EMT sighed. “Sorry kid.”

Treble walked up to Spooks as the ambulance peeled off, and patted him on the shoulder. “Hey, he’s gonna be ok, right? There’s all kinds of medical shit for that. At least he’s got the whole damn leg.”

Bones sniffed loudly. “Yeah. Yeah, we’ll see.”

“Aw, dude, don’t cry. If you cry I cry and then we’re just a couple bitches on the front lawn,” Treble joked, half-heartedly.

Another loud sniff, and Spooks stood up straighter, looking around. “Where are the Rainbooms? We need to talk.” He grazed the crowd with his eyes, and found a colorful assortment of teenage girls standing around the medical tent, offering help to the Beast’s ‘victims’. Twilight and Applejack had already started cleaning up the mess, moving the debris and glass into large manageable piles. Some heavy machinery would probably show up in the morning, taking up all kinds of space. Spook’s heart twinged as he wondered if Rubble’s uncle would be working the site.

Treble gripped him by the shoulder and led him to the medical tent. “Come on, you look like you need a blanket and some free food.”

“Everyone needs a blanket and free food. It’s October,” Spooks noted, his own weak attempt at hmor. It didn’t go unnoticed, as Treble managed half a smile in response.

“Hey guys!” Pinkie shouted. She waived wildly at the approaching boys, as the rest of the girls turned or looked up and noticed their approach.

Sunset ran around the table to meet them. “What the hell happened in there?! Why is Rubble in a damn ambulance?!”

The boys looked to each other, and explained the events after the girls had backed off into the lawn. There was a bit of confusion as they started talking about the Beast’s ‘explanation’.

“Whoa whoa whoa,” Rainbow interjected. “What are you talking about? We didn’t hear it say a word after Spooks started talking to it. There was that creepy like, multiple voice thing it was doing, then it just started flapping its head around and laughing like a demon!”

Treble and Spooks looked to each other, then at the girls. “You didn’t hear anything it said about it’s Father, or anything like that?” Treble asked.

The girls all traded worried looks amid a chorus of “Nos” and “Nuh-uhs”.

Spooks smacked his forehead. “I fucking hate telepathy.”

END PART ONE

Author's Note:

This is the end of the Beast Arc. There's a LOT more to this story, so don't worry. Next is a brief interlude, then the next Arc kicks off!

Also, this is now officially the longest story I've ever written, and has broken 50k words! Yay!

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