LotS/The Story/Lu Bu's Halloween/MonsterMash
Monster Mash
Lu Bu ran. Natasha Cybersmash ran alongside him.
The robot didn't relish his former foe's presence. His computerized memory banks never forgot anything. And even if they had been prone to that failing of organic neurology, her sneering words would have lingered in his mind.
"When I win the tournament, I'll sell that prissy bitch to the Centurians."
Anger welled up within him, finding purchase among his electronic impulses as they would have done in a human's soft, squishy biology. As always, such emotions raised questions. Existential ones, perhaps. But now wasn't the time. There were children in danger. And whatever he thought of Natasha, he knew she could fight. Her aid might prove necessary. Besides, she saved the girl. She cared about the kids...
Sirens blared in the distance, from more than one direction. The authorities had been alerted. But they were still far away when the robot and the sports star reached the park and heard the more immediate sounds of combat.
Something caught Lu Bu's eye. He glanced upwards, and saw a glowing shape ascend into the star-studded blackness of the sky. A shuttle... There was another shape in the heavens. It was smaller than the first, but the robot's mind calculated that it was a much larger vessel -- merely further off. His vision zoomed in, and revealed an absurd fusion. A mansion mounted atop a spaceship, built on the upper side of its hull to stand in the void as though it rested upon a windswept hill or some other such more appropriate location.
A Haunted House ship. There was more than one of them on the planet, part of the entertainment was which supposed to follow the trick or treating. The shuttle was flying towards it.
Lu Bu passed through the first line of trees. Beyond them was an open expanse of grass, lit by the moon, the stars, and the harsh glowing lights of another shuttle. This one's boarding ramp was down. And in front of it...
"I'll rumple you, street-scavs!"
The speaker -- a big, broad-shouldered bruiser -- possibly made good on his promise by smashing the crown of his head into a vampire's face. Lu Bu couldn't be entirely sure, however, due to an unclear understanding of what exactly the word 'rumple' meant in context. In any event, the vampire collapsed. And if the word was confusing, the voice and dialect were familiar enough.
"The Blood Alley Gang!" Lu Bu said. "They're abducting children!"
That burly gang member's flesh was rather greener and more rotten than when the robot had last seen him, leading Lu Bu to believe that he'd subsequently dressed as -- or else become -- a zombie. More likely the former.
"Help! Chou! Help!"
The cry came from a child. Two young boys were being dragged towards the boarding ramp in a mummy's powerful grasp. And Lu Bu realized that they were addressing the Blood Alley zombie...
"Phage your noosing meat!" he roared. "Phage it with crispies if you don't get the drek off the paeds! Aaarrrggghhh!"
He grasped his head with both green hands. Nearby, a werewolf glared at him.
"Psionics!" Natasha exclaimed.
She ran towards the children, who kicked and struggled in the mummy's arms. A woman dressed as a witch turned to her -- just in time to take a clothesline from Natasha Cybersmash's forearm. Even without her customary battlesuit on, it did the trick. The witch completed a 180-degree flip before landing head-first on the grass.
The Blood Alley Gang member -- Chou, the boy had called him -- must have been fighting alone. There were no signs of his allies. A single glance showed Lu Bu that the half dozen other adults there were enemies, moving in for the kill while he was incapacitated by the psychic attack. That meant the robot didn't need to worry about whom to hit...
He charged. A ghost glared at him, eyes flashing with psionic energy. But whatever powers she possessed, they rebounded from Lu Bu's mechanical mind. All she got for her pains was a metal fist in her face. Her jaw gave in with a crunch.
The ghost toppled. But Lu Bu didn't let her fall. Instead he grabbed her, lifted her up with the effortless power of his robotic limbs, and threw her at the werewolf. They tumbled on the grass together. Chou roared, free and furious.
Green fists swung. Costumed faces were battered.
Near the boarding ramp, the mummy lifted both children into the air -- one in each muscular arm. Perhaps he thought he'd be able to make a dash for the shuttle. Or maybe he figured they'd provide a good pair of human shields. Neither transpired. Natasha Cybersmash's sprint became a leap. The leap became a flying kick. Her boot became the last thing the mummy saw before he toppled backwards and crashed to the ground. The children tore themselves free as he went down.
The shuttle rose off the ground, its ramp still open. The pilot had evidently seen enough. It shot heavenward, towards the Haunted House.
"They twocked more paeds!" Chou yelled. He stomped on a downed ghoul's face, smashing a dozen assorted teeth -- some genuine, some part of the costume. "We need to baino after them!"
"We can get a ship at the spaceport," Lu Bu said. His metal knee struck the werewolf's testicles, and those organs suffered considerably for the experience.
"No chono, street-scav! No chrono!"
"I've got this one, boys," Natasha said.
They both turned to her. She held up a small device. A red light blinked on its surface. There was a roar of thrusters. Then a large green mass loomed overhead.
The ship touched down on the expanse of grass. Its boarding ramp shot out like a lizard's tongue. Natasha said something inaudible to the two boys, and gestured in the direction of the sirens. They ran. She bounded up the ramp.
Lu Bu and Chou followed, and found themselves in a lavish green and purple chamber.
"Welcome aboard the Cybersmash Cyclone," she said.
A great deal more swirled around Sun Xi's mind -- sights, sounds, and smells beyond reckoning. An indiscernible tapestry of existence that could only be understood though raw emotion and sensation. She understood enough. Jack's evil caused its share of harm on that lost world. Even as his body moldered in its soil, his soul became twisted into something infernal. Burning pumpkins grinned, scowled, screamed, roared, and raged at her from a myriad different images too brief and fleeting to envelop her. Ah... But one loomed larger than the others.
Mistress Sun allowed it to flow around her.
It happens in a pumpkin patch. Of course it does... His night is approaching. The festival Jack wrought through his deeds and death, celebrated each year since. The pumpkin is its fruit, its symbol. And it's connected to his power. Apocolocyntosis Flammea.
Pumpkins glare and burn.
The monstrosity rises. Jack, returned from hell, centuries of scheming brought to dread realization. An immense flaming visage, with gnarled, tangled limbs like roots. He roars at the heavens. He's come for the children. To kill them all.
But others won't allow that to happen.
This world is a place of monsters and evil. Yet also of champions and glory. Heroes come with weapons and esoteric powers of their own.
Jack is destroyed, hurled back into the hell he thought he'd escaped.
Sun Xi shivered as the echoes of his dark outrage tingled across her flesh. And then she sensed that the thread she had to follow no longer concerned that world. It had revealed what was important. The rest lay elsewhere.
Again she saw Jack's wandering tomb, teeming with its hungry malevolence, crash into that world. This time the vision continued.
Humans spread across the stars, taking their place among the other spacefaring races of the galaxy. They colonize world after world, first with old flags and then with new banners. In the midst of all this, settlers come to Jack's tomb-world. They give it a name. They make it theirs. And beneath the ground, or perhaps some realm deeper still, the malevolence grins.
Terraforming occurs. Human industry tames the land and binds it to mankind's will. A small colony takes root on the landmass where the tomb bit into the world. Neo-Americans, bringing with them all their ways and customs. Including their festivals. Halloween.
Living minds are manipulated by long-dead evil. Those of a religious persuasion might call it a demon. Others, whose thinking turns more to science and rationality, could perhaps speak of psionic echoes. But the results are clear enough, whatever explanation one might lay upon them.
A pumpkin patch is sown. Right above Jack's resting place.
That's where the murders take place.
Blood among the pumpkins. Crimson splashed across dark dirt and orange flesh. Poured into Jack's hungry maw. Murder grants him strength.
But fate has a sense of humor, however black and grim. The murders are ended by an even greater slaughter: war. Colonies burn. The pumpkin patch is immolated. That portion of the planet is abandoned, left to the ghosts and ashes.
Jack is thwarted once more. And yet he endures, lurking and scheming and dreaming of his revenge against the children.
Sun Xi's eyes flashed open. That planet, that neglected place upon its surface... Something was going to happen there. Something terrible enough by its very nature, but made into an even greater abomination by what it would usher in.
She had to prevent it.