The sky is just starting to begin to grow light as the sun sends its first few rays through the grimness. The waking world is silent as Diana sends a mental message to Jae.
“Love, wake everyone up…quietly…”
Just as she gets the conformation from her husband that he got the message, there’s a brilliant flash of light, and suddenly Ed is floating up in front of them, looking angry and more than a little crazy.
“You think you can defeat me that easily?!” His formally haughty tenor is now more of a mad, cracking soprano. His blue hair is tangled, and somewhat puffed out. His clothing, so meticulously neat before, is stained and disheveled.
“Bub, ya look like ya got a few screws loose up in the ol’ noggin’,” Wolvie snarls.
“I’m perfectly sane, you hairy savage!”
With that, Ed hurls a ball of energy into the group. They scatter in all directions.
“Yeah, right. You weren’t playing with a full deck even before Storm fried your circuits, ya Backdoor Boy wannabe!” HLM wisecracks as she rolls gracefully to her feet.
Meanwhile, Storm takes to the air, and is about to attack the crazed reality skipper, when she suddenly finds herself in a headlock by the monster.
“Storm!” Wolvie shouts, as he, HLM, Raph and Jae watch helplessly as their friend struggles to get free.
No one notices Diana, in her spirit form, come up behind the struggle until she plunges her ethereal hands into Ed’s skull.
The villain’s grip on Storm loses its tenacity, as his eyes open impossibly wide, and his jaw drops. Behind, and slightly above him, is Diana. Her features are tense as she focuses on what she must do.
This unlikely duo glow strange and sickening colors. The gruesome light show continues for about ten minutes, which seems more like ten eternities, before they both go limp.
Storm catches Diana even before she starts to fall, and HLM catches Ed before he can crash into the ground. Her eyes glow brightly as she looks at their nemesis.
“Holy shit,” she mutters in amazement.
“What?” Jae asks, looking up from checking Diana with Storm.
“Well…’cording to what the energies’re saying, Diana more or less took his mind away from him…”
They all look from Ed to Diana in shock.
“Damn, never wanna piss her off,” Raph mutters, as HLM brings Ed to a tree and sets him under it.
A warm, foul smelling breeze flows over them unexpectedly.
Everyone covers his or her noses and looks around.
Diana even stirs a little, even though she’s so obviously exhausted.
“What the hell is THAT?!” HLM shouts, pointing to a huge shadow.
As the shadow nears, the group is able to identify huge teeth in a drooling mouth. From the mouth reeks the smell of rotting meat and rancid water. The mouth is set in a hairless face that not even a mother could love, and the face is on a head mounted on a ridiculously skinny neck. In contrast to the massive body, the wiry arms and legs would look comical if not for the nasty claws at the ends of the fingers and toes.
“Looks like a cross between ET and a really really big gremlin,” Jae murmurs, picking up the limp Diana.
The thing screeches and makes a grab at Storm.
Reunions Index
Chapter Seven
Chapter Nine