Greg Vs Raid 9-44

The sky cracked apart in front of him, air a white wake before he cleared the docks. Windows rattled for a second time today, a chunk of the city likely fearing a familiar threat, but Greg couldn’t give a single shit.

Faster! Red covered his body as he screamed inside his own head. Faster!

No roofs or hopping, he didn’t have time for anything like that. Nothing subtle or careful or patient, Greg burned as he forced his body past any normal level of reinforcement and drew deep on his wind as he took the sky as a red-and-white comet.

A comet carving a screaming line across Bockton Bay south-west in a straight line right toward a specific street in a very specific neighborhood. Somebody was going to get a real nice video out of this and a few other people were going to draw a line on a map from point A to point B because of this.

Dontcaredontcaredontcaredontcaredontca-

Immaculata went by underneath, its polished windows unharmed by Shatterbird’s downtown opera. The nearly-untouched suburban streets of Captain’s Hill roared underneath him, each road bringing him closer to where he needed to be.

His street.

The comet came in too hot, Greg barely aware of that a whole half-second before he touched down — leaving him just enough time to do nothing about it. Asphalt went flying, grains of black coming apart in rain as his body left a long rip down the street. Chunks of the stuff went up and into yards, the noise it made ugly to any ear.

Dust hadn’t even settled before Greg blurred to the front door, nothing unlocked and everything silent.

“Mom!”

Nothing came back at him from the foyer, Greg already inside as he snapped his head around the place. The kitchen was quiet too and that was fine, it was all fine. He was probably overreacting anyway, she could be upstairs, or in the basement or i—

“Mom!”

Channel 12 met him as he entered the living room, the television on mute as the emergency ticker crawled slow along the bottom of the screen. Everything was where it should be; couch cushions, TV remote, and even a mug was on a coaster on the coffee table — coffee still in it too.

Even that little ceramic frog in the corner of the wall, ugly as it was, was still there and still ugly.

No fight? A fight made sense at least, right? 

If it was trashed, there’d been a fight. 

But nothing was even knocked over; no glass anywhere to show a fight or a struggle.

“Mom! Mom, seriously…” The kitchen was empty, pantry door half-open like it usually was more than half the time. “Seriously! Just… just say something.”

He made his way to the dining room and stopped where he stood, eyes dropping down to the table where…

A… He blinked. A tape recorder?

An old little handheld tape recorder sat there, chunky buttons dead center on the table like some kind of placemat. The hell? Next to it, right there, a piece of yellow construction paper was folded in half; words written on the outside in dark crayon.

Letters uneven and one of them backwards, Greg frowned as he read it from where he stood across the room: WHERE YOUR MOMMY IS :) 

The smiley face had two smaller smiley faces for eyes.

Okay… 

He knew who that was from. No… Greg had known since the giggle and the time it took him to cross the city and all the not-thinking he’d been trying to do had only made it so much worse because he couldn’t not-think about it now with a fucking note in front of him with fractal smiley faces on it.

Greg forced his attention off the paper, refusing to touch it; hands at his sides as he made sure not to bring them anywhere near that piece of paper.

It’s obvious. Because it was, and too obvious on top of that. Literally cartoonishly obvious as it sat there like some big loud bait, a literal sign demanding he touch it. 

Blue eyes slid down to the recorder again. Like that isn’t suspicious, too.

Another piece of bait on the same table with the same setup waiting right there for him. For all he knew, it would release some sort of gas into his face the second he touched it, because honestly, who just carried around a tape recorder.

But — his eyes flicked up to the stairs — every single second looking was a second she was somewhere else with that monster.

Every second.

“...fuck.”

One finger was all he used.

One finger to press play, the tape hissing for a single second as the wheels began to turn. 

“Hi!”

The voice on the other end came out too bright and chirpy with just one syllable, clearly a little girl even through the distortion of cassette tape. “Ooooh, you’re Greg, right? Hiiiii! Your mommy is really nice? Soooo much nicer than I thought she’d be, ‘cause honestly I thought she’d scream and a lot of people scream… even when I haven’t done anything yet, which is especially rude. Anyway, she just went kind of quiet and asked if I wanted to come in.”

Greg’s hand hovered over the tape recorder, mouth half open.

“And she let me in and even gave me lemon squares out of the fridge! Nice and cold! I said pretty please, obviously, because you’re supposed to to, and she said—”

Blue eyes blinked as the little girl took a breath.

“—she said ‘help yourself, sweetheart,’ which was so nice of her, super nice to say, and they were so good with all the powdered sugar on top.”

“Come on.” His mouth twitched. “Give me something.”

“And I had four.” A giggle sounded out. “Anyway, your mommy told me where she keeps—”

Fingers trembled against the wood of the table, Greg fighting to keep himself from breaking the furniture.

“—the lemon squares! In a little plastic thingy with flowers on it? On the second shelf in the crisper. Weird place to put them, I think, but she said they keep better cold and also, you’re a little piggy so she needs to hide them.”

Greg’s eye joined his lips in twitching.

“By the way, she’s got sooooo many pictures of you. Sooooo sooooo many. She showed me a bunch of them. Like the one when you’re five and wearing little swim thingies? You know, the floaty arm ones? Water wings! Yeah, anyway, you were a crybaby in that one. That one’s my favorite.”

The tape kept on going and going, the girl talking about so much that Greg couldn’t even pretend to care about. Everything from the wallpaper in the hall to the way the couch was comfier than it looked and even how his mom had kept on asking her if she wanted to call somebody, an adult, anybody.

“Just s-say it.” Greg grit out through still twitching lips. “Tell me where I gotta g-go already.”

The recorder didn’t answer him, on account of the fact that it was a recorder, and Greg just stood there — hands still trembling — as he hoped the girl would give him anything.

“So, anyway, that’s about it! Bye!”

The tape clicked and whirred to a stop, leaving the dining room silent as it had been before as Greg stared with an open mouth. …no.

No.

No address. No demand. No give me this or you go here or anything he could actually do a fucking thing with. Just five or so minutes of a little girl talking about goddamn lemon squares and the only thing that he could even lok at for more was folded up just a few feet from his hand with three little smiley faces on it.

A trap.

It had to be a fucking trap.

But that didn’t stop his fingers from already reaching out for the yellow paper. It’s a trap. He knew that. A tra-

Greg blinked down as his hand refused to close, hand stuck almost in mid-air in the shape of a claw hand just inches from the paper. Wha…

He tried again, hand trembling as he tried to close it around the paper.

His hand moved about a third of the way further, fingers still twitching before they fully gave up and quit on him. That same numbness in his fingers itched up his wrist, muscles stilling like he’d slept on it wrong.

[Debuff Detected: Neurotoxin [Critical]]

No.

Greg’s eyes fell on the note again, the smiley face on folded paper looking back at him. I didn’t even… He hadn’t even touched it yet, had barely even gotten within a half-foot of it. 

A step back had his left leg refuse to work with him, Greg’s body fighting the instruction. That leg remained right where it was, as if it hadn’t gotten the message at all.

Then it completely disconnected and Greg realized he wasn’t upright anymore. Reinforce! Reinforcement! Reinf-

Nothing worked, his skill refusing to do a damn thing as the ceiling fell further and further away from him until — ngh — the back of his head met hardwood. The table jumped up as soon as he hit the ground, tape recorder rattling atop the table somewhere abve him.

+1 Resistance: Tox

His chest still worked, going up and down as his lungs worked with him despite everything else.

+1 Resistance: Tox

The ceiling stared back at him behind the translucent blue of his screen, ceiling white and pristine after Mom had it repainted just a year ago. Greg’s heart pounded, hard enough to sound like a drumbeat against his ribs, the hardwood stiff against his shoulderblades.

+1 Resistance: Tox

…m-move. Move. He couldn’t.

Even as he pushed with everything he had; body, mind, and all the energies that let him lift as much as Glory Girl, and every bit of it did nothing as he laid there flat on his back. Move. Move. Fucking mo-

Footsteps froze his thoughts to match the rest of him, little unhurried paces down the stairs and then on closer hardwood as they entered the dining room. Blue eyes moved to track them, the sight of polished black shoes with a little strap and buckle forcing a grunt from still lips.

Nononononononono-

The dress was blue, almost as bright a blue as his t-shirt; a neat little collar and a hem below the knee; covered with white ruffles and lace that somehow matched the head of blonde little ringlets that framed a pretty little face. All in all, Greg found himself staring at the ‘perfect little girl’ his mom always joked about as a little sister for him.

Bonesaw crouched down.

“Hi, big brother!”

More air was forced through his throat, Greg trying to yell as best he could. With his tongue refusing to cooperate, all he could hope to manage was a wet straining croak of a sound that might as well have been a light groan.

“Oh, goodie!” Another grunt spilled out of his unmoving face at the sight of that over-bright smile and too-wide eyes as Bonesaw’s face lit up brighter. “It worked. I was a little worried because you’re super-dee-duper tough, but the math was right!"

Greg’s eyes flicked upward, staring past the little girl to the folded note sliding off the dining table and floating down onto the floor.

Bonesaw’s gaze tracked his own, the girl’s eyes on the paper as she let out that same familiar giggle. “Oh! Oh no, silly.” A small hand picked up the yellow paper, the little girl patting it down on the dinner table. “That’s clean.”

Wh-what…

A delicate finger pointed to the tape recorder instead. “It was the button.” 

He stared at her and she smiled back. “Seee, you would’ve touched the note, right? Most people do because they’re all emotional and dumb. But you…” She wobbled her hand from side to side. “Well, maybe smart’s not the best word for you, but you’re smarter than most.”

The little killer rocked back on her heels, hands smoothing her dress as she beamed at him, a look of pure pride on that face. “That’s why I made this special for you! Big brother’s so big and tough, I had to be careful with the dosage. Just enough to get through your skin, but not too much that it would mess up the delayed onset.”

That same finger went to her chin, tap-tap-tapping it slowly. “I haaaad to make sure you had plenty of time to hear my whole message. At least before you noticed anything. It’s really rude to interrupt!”

Her fingers went up, mouth moving silently as she seemed to count something off, before nodding back at Greg. “Don’t worry. It’s just the ones you choose. Just your voluntary muscles, you know? Your heart and your diaphragm are fine cause there’s no point if you stop breathing or start seizing. I didn’t touch anything with your brain cause I need you awake.”

She leaned in again, curls bouncing around her face. “Well, not everything in your brain. I turned all the pain off.”

The smell of powdered sugar and lemon was strong as a curl brushed his face, another giggle loud in his ear.

"We're gonna have so much fun!"

+1 Resistance: Tox