Thanks, Cloaky! Coming from you that's awesome, since I'm the one who's been singing praises of Memoirs all this while.
New chapter! Bit of a parody on the opening of Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief, really.
And here's where my RAFsona really comes into play.
Chapter Four
Rose taught Austin how to use the shredder as they quietly made their way, unnoticed by the bopping, getting-totally-wasted crowd, to the back of the wedding hall. She also explained her other very handy power to him – altering her features, or her height, or her build, so she would look like someone else; a bit like the ingrained ability of the Morphamagi. She turned from a short, bespectacled brunette to a tall, willowy blonde as she talked.
“The only problem is that your clothes don’t adjust to your new fit. But hey, we were pretty weird to begin with,” she said.
“It doesn’t seem so weird, now that I see it happening,” Austin commented.
<Yeah, well, you’re pretty broadminded, which is good,> Saffa said from the air. <Ahh. There’s our lovely couple. Hawk eyes aren’t much use at night, but I can make them out from the kitchen lights.>
The back of the kitchen, and thus the trash area, opened out into the street behind the hall, a mostly residential one. Austin and Rose hid in the bushes of someone’s garden while Saffa ghosted over them, all of them watching the subjects with utmost attention.
“Okay, they look like they’re leaving. Time for me to spring into action,” Rose said. She slowly crept out from behind the bush, and walked calmly across the street, making it look like she had come from the house opposite.
She calmly stepped up to Mrs. Bennett, like Marco had done at Ocean World in #15: The Escape, flashing a big, toothy, airhead grin. “Hi. Do you know where I could find a phone booth around here? I’m new to the country, you see.”
Long Black Coat came up to her. “You shouldn’t really be walking around alone out here at this time of night.”
“Yeah, well, you see, that’s the thing, I’m lost,” Rose whined. “So I really, really need a phone…”
“Look here, young lady…” Mrs. Bennett began.
The silence of the night was suddenly pierced by the shriek of a raptor.
“Tseeeeer!”Saffa glided out of the dark like a bat out of hell, and streaked across Long Black Coat at a speed she never knew she possessed.
“AAAAHH!” he yelled, clutching his face. He turned to Mrs. Bennett. “That’s her! GET THAT BIRD!”
Mrs. Bennett stared up at the sky. “I’m coming for you,” she said. “You think I can’t see you, do you, now…”
The three teenagers watched in horror as Mrs. Bennett’s long, dumpy dress began to stick to her skin and turn leathery. Her tortoiseshell specs froze to rings on her now-leathery face. She began to contort, elongate, and grow a thin tail with dozens of sharp spikes on the end.
“Okay. The lady always gave me the creeps. Now I know why,” Austin muttered to himself.
As if that wasn’t enough, two giant, pterodactyl-like wings unfurled from Mrs. Bennett’s back, half leather, half covered in thick feathers.
Saffa was right above the transforming Mrs. Bennett (couldn’t really call her that now), watching her new form grow and grow till she was the size of an advertisement hoarding. She had a rather ridiculous face, pointed like a bespectacled feline. <Whoever the noob is who dreamed this up, he’s been watching too many cat videos.>
The creature suddenly looked right up at her! The blood-red eyes could apparently see very well in the dark. It smiled a grotesque smile. “Gotcha.” Its voice was like someone choking on paper.
A long, vicious tongue shot out right in Saffa’s direction, who immediately banked left, taken completely by surprise. She angled her tail to soar behind the monster – but nearly got impaled by its tail.
“Watch it!” Rose yelled. And caught a movement in the distance. Long Black Coat was leaving… very slowly. Like he didn’t want to miss the entertainment. She’d take care of him later.
“Who’s there?” the paper voice shrieked. Its missile of a tongue shot out at thin air. “Show yourself!”
“Oh, yuck, that’s beyond gross,” Rose hissed. “Saffa! That tongue. It’s covered in extremely sticky gunk. Like Fevi-kwik sticky. And it burns, slowly.”
<What’ve you got there, a Pokedex?!>
“No! Got some on my hand – whoa!” Rose dived right and fell flat in the mud, narrowly missing the spiked tail.
The… thing… decided not to stay on the ground any longer, and flapped its giant wings and powered itself into the air, covering much more distance in a second than Saffa could in ten, even with only dead night air to work with.
Saffa realized that even though she was in bird mode, her hawk form would not be of much help then. She reverted to her human form – but controlled the demorph, keeping her wings. She had done this quite a few times before, keeping her bones hollow enough to enable the large wings to fly and get a fair bit of drift in the air. If Cassie could do it, why couldn’t she?
“Your puny human form is only going to hurt you!” the creature jeered. “Perhaps if you give me what I want, I can make your end less – AAAAAHH!” it shrieked as Saffa flung a diamond into its back.
Her best weapon, and certainly her strangest, on for show now. She fired another round of thick, pointed, needle-like stones which caught the thing in its right leg. Saffa was ready for another round – but a swipe of the thing’s tongue caught her in mid-flight.
“Oh,
yuck!”
“Good-girls-don’t-throw-rocks!” the creature chanted.
Saffa could feel the saliva sticking to her wings like superglue. She couldn’t flap them however hard she tried. So she did the only sensible thing she could think of: demorph.
“You’re gonna crash!” Rose cried. Aaargh – there must be
something she could do!
Just before she crashed into it, Saffa grabbed a branch in a tree and held onto it for dear life, fully human now. The creature hovered close and flew toward her, swinging its tail.
“I have you,
now.”
Rose had run back to the trash area, looking for something useful. Trash, trash, more trash, broken plates…
She looked in the adjoining tool-shed and found garden tools, pipes, hoses, bottles of cleaning fluid plus two closed vats with taps attached, to pour the contents out or attach a tube. One was full of phenyl. The other contained a rather foul-smelling substance, with the words WARNING ACID FOR CLEANING USE ONLY printed on the front.
“This must be what they use to clean the floors and sinks and things with, I’ve seen Dad do it,” Rose mused. “Hm. I have an insane idea. Capable, maybe. But still insane.”
She began to push the acid vat outside the trash area – just as she saw Saffa shrinking in her tree.
