Soaks hurtled towards the open kitchen doorway behind him, using his powerful draconic-legs to spring himself further away from Clang and Miss Toontastic's dogged pursuit.

Clang thundered forwards, his pseudo-metallic body slow but powerful and, thanks to the gold-like substance of his new body, ineffectually drenched in Soaks's latest spray of rainbow-hued acid.

Miss Toontastic strategically stayed close behind Clang, though she could have easily darted forwards on her springy legs.

This was as much as I had time to pay attention to at that moment, because, through my own orders to Clang and Miss Toontastic, it was up to me to take on both Lure and Chips.

With a series of hefty crashes Lure charged up the mansion stairs with me in her hulking grip.

SNAP! SNAP! SNAP! SNAP!

I was used like a battering ram up the remaining staircase bannisters.

CRASH!

And then Lure had slammed my whole body into the wall at the top of the stairs. Whilst the Slip-suit soaked up the vast majority of the damage, it couldn't completely protect my unchanged self beneath. Pain climbed up my back and gripped my body like a jolt of electricity. I wanted to throw a punch, or slip out of Lure's grip, but my body and by extension the Slip-suit refused to respond.

Had Lure the sense to chomp down on my head at that moment she could have. Instead, thankfully, she let out an ogre-ish bellow and threw me across the upper hallway into another wall.

CRASH! DOCK-DOCK!

I landed on my hands and knees on the floorboards. I was so dazed I wouldn't have been able to remember my own name in that moment.

Lure had no intention of relenting. She cried out again, and charged at me with a berserker's rage.

On pure instinct I jumped upwards, spun round, and clung to the ceiling using the Slip-suit's adhesion.

CRASH!

Lure's head and arms were buried into the wall she had thrown me into before, though she wasn't dazed or hurt from the impact – and was quickly pulling herself back out of the hole she had created.

In the precious few moments I had to observe Lure from the ceiling, the power gave me back my senses, slowing everything down to a crawl like it had before.

Chips had been attached to Lure's back the entire way up the staircase and remained unharmed there when she had charged into the wall.

There came a sudden hissing-cry from elsewhere in the mansion. It belonged to Soaks. I couldn't tell if it was a cry of victory, or defeat, or otherwise.

"We need to go help Soaks!" Lure bellowed, looking at Chips who was still perched on her right side.

Crap, I thought, I need to keep their attention on me.

"Yeah!" I said, using the deep resonance of my voice, "You better run along, your boyfriend needs all the help he can get!"

Chips hardly paid attention to the taunt at all. My guess was he had undergone the eldritch transformation into the creature he currently was too many times and had lost most of his sense of self as a result.

Lure's reaction on the other hand wasn't angry at the taunt, instead she was borderline confused – perhaps even flattered. She cocked her huge head to the side, her big fishy eyes wide and staring up at me.

What an awesomely ugly sight she was: Her head, which looked like a confused angler-fish with long seaweed-like hair, looked grotesquely at odds with her huge giant baby-doll-like body. It was as if she were some creation hodgepodged together from a demented child's imagination.

I noticed then her left foot in particular had turned a shade of green. What's more, the smell coming off that foot was eye-wateringly awful in its pungency.

What the heck kind of use of the power creates a thing like this? I thought to myself.

My taunt didn't seem to have the intended effect of keeping their attention on me, because Lure, with Chips clung to her back like some symbiotic barnacle, turned and started towards the staircase.

"You know," I said, "I can't decide what's worse – how much you stink! Or how bad you look!"

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

It really wasn't the best taunt, but boy did it work to get Lure's attention again. She turned back to me, her fishy eyes turning all-black and menacing.

"Are you even using the power right now?" I said, adding fuel to the fire, "Or is this the real you?"

Lure took a lumbering step forwards.

"I've put up with bullies like you all me life," she bellowed, "In 'Div d'ay tried treatin' me the same way."

She took yet another lumbering step. Bizarrely, where her huge stinking left foot landed, a strange corrosion took hold of the floorboards, dissolving the wood there as if time were being rapidly sped up, adding rot the way Soaks's acid had burned into the ground before.

"Soaks taught me I can be bet-ter!" she bellowed, "Soaks taught me how to stand up for me-self!"

Neither I, and certainly not Chips, expected Lure to throw him off her shoulder at me as if he were a baseball – but she did.

Chips's screech changed from one of confusion to one of attack, his appendages opening wide like huge bone-fingers ready to stab.

My taunting had worked a little too well, because I had to crawl and leap backwards along the ceiling at a frantic pace to avoid all of Chips's bone-limb-appendages from spearing into me.

SHOK! SHOK! SHOK! SHOK! SHOK!

Chips divided the use of his limbs between stabbing for me and clinging hold of the ceiling to keep himself perched upside-down as he gave chase.

CROMP-CRASH! CROMP-CRASH!

Lure was bounding along the hallway jumping at intervals with closed fists aimed at me. She narrowly missed the first two attempts, driving her fists into the ceiling and pulling away huge chunks of debris each time.

Whilst I was staying a fraction of a moment ahead of their combined assault, I was rapidly losing hallway behind me to escape to.

When I reached the end of the hallway I looked upside-down through the broken and slightly hazy window-panes there to see a small army of Pied Piper officers outside who were all armed to the teeth with heavy weaponry.

Escape through the window was a death sentence. But staying in the hallway with Lure and Chips hot on my heels was just as bad.

I threw myself out of the window, breaking through the glass and the wood between the panes.

None of this hurt, save for the aftermath of being thrown around by Lure before, though I felt some of the glass attempting to cut through the Slip-suit with only superficial effect. I kicked down on the window frame and bounded upwards outside the mansion.

It took the Pied Piper officers less than three seconds to start shooting.

Although it was just midday, a strobe-like effect, like being at a concert with flashing lights, lit up the ground below.

The worst aspect of having my perception of time slowed, was seeing how fast the bullets dove after me anyway. I ran full-tilt, and then some, upwards along the outer mansion wall. Bullets tore up the section of wall just beneath me in one huge destructive wave that was soon to outpace me.

I needed to get back into the mansion. And I needed to make sure Lure and Chips weren't able to return back to Soaks any time soon.

I couldn't turn back because of the hail of gunfire in my wake. So I kept on ahead, going up until I reached the mansion roof and leapt the last of the distance.

With the way I had I jumped however, there wasn't going to be time to slowly climb my way over the edge of the mansion roof – the bullets were roaming in much too fast for that.

I reached for the edge of the mansion roof despite being more than an arm-length away and the momentum of my movement upwards making the distance greater with each micro-passing-of-a-second.

Please! I thought, desperately. Had I really come this far to be shot down by Peeper officers like this?

A bullet whizzed past my left ear, and another tore away at a layer of sinew at my right thigh, a hair-width from drawing blood from my actual thigh beneath.

And there were at least a dozen more bullets which were on target sailing through the air faster than I was currently moving.

Reach! I thought, desperately.

Using what tiny inspiration came to me then, I let the Slip-suit at my right arm unravel as if into pink-hued ribbons. My real arm beneath felt the wetness of the falling rain smothering it along with the crisp chill of the open air.

The Slip-suit threads darted forwards and stuck to the top-part of the mansion wall. It was the purchase I needed to yank myself forwards and to then, upon landing at the top of the wall, to roll sideways along the diagonal roof.

The sound of the bullets landing atop the mansion wall, and the rest passing by in the wake of where I was a micro-second before, met my ears. The bullets, combined with the heavy falling rain, was an immense drumming that, inversely, told me I was very lucky to be alive.

There wasn't any time for a reprieve because a roaming Pied Piper helicopter above caught my attention a second before the gunner at the side of the copter began to fire at me with a heavy-gun.

I got to my feet and jumped in the same motion, the heavy-gun fire whipping up the manor roof tiles by my side. Using another mad bout of inspiration I dove forwards, rolled once, and then jumped up so that my body struck the underside of the helicopter – and the adhesion at my hands and chest took care of the rest.

The bullets being fired at me from the Peepers below stopped for fear of hitting the helicopter, and the heavy-gunner at the opening of the copter's side-door ceased because they no longer had an angle on me.

I'm on the helicopter's freaking underside! I thought, madly.

The helicopter, perhaps in an effort to shake me off, soared upwards, the sound of its rotor blades almost deafening.

In no time at all the helicopter reached the other side of the mansion, and was going to continue on ahead. Below, within the manor grounds, was yet more Peepers with their weapons raised and vehicles parked in a barricade as if whatever was going on inside the manor was a hostage negotiation in progress.

The sinew at my right arm had automatically twirled itself back into place, having re-gloved itself, before I had impacted the underside of the helicopter.

I used the opportunity the helicopter presented and kicked off back towards the mansion, going through the broken window panes where Clang, Miss Toontastic, and I, had first stood when spotting the Sub-Divisioners first approaching the manor gates before.

CRASH!

I landed, rolled, stood to my feet, and started running towards Lure and Chips, who were several paces away from the window I had leapt out of before – perhaps for fear they would be the Piper's next targets. Lure and Chips had heard the crash which had announced my return, and they turned around to see me.

Somewhere else within the mansion came the sound and after-shock of a sudden fiery explosion.

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