longestnight_old | Everyone Loves the Sleigh

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Everyone Loves the Sleigh

They'd had a few days to get settled in. In that time, the Yetis and Elves had been nothing but welcoming, making sure the gang had a never-ending supply of treats, cocoa, and eggnog, as well as more wholesome food to nosh on. Even though they had work to do - and seemed to enjoy doing it - the Yetis had been helpful in getting them all settled in, into rooms specially designed to each of their specifications. If anything had a want or need of something, like new clothes, or a new pair of shoes, they'd been quick to provide.

Jack and Bunny had done their part to make the new folks feel welcome, as well, by showing them around and socializing, but they'd been in and out constantly during the last few days. Some of the times they'd come back in, they'd looked a touch on this side of ragged.

True to their word, despite the fact that they'd been busy putting out fires caused by Kuk and Its minions, they had reached out to a few contacts of theirs to see about helping the others get home.

That was why Jack was gathering them all up on the balcony in front of the globe.

"Okay, guys, we have some good news. We managed to get in touch with an ally of ours. We think she can give us more information about what exactly you are. Like...how much you were changed to be like us, how the mechanics of the world have changed to pull you in. It might give us some headway in figuring out how to get you back home. She wants to meet you."

[ooc: Bendytimed to after they negotiate Tony being allowed to stay at the Pole.]

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"I'll be right back!" Molly shouts at Nico, and takes off after Howard. Sure, he might be a jerk, but he totally dove under there like Chase or Victor would, getting a look at what he needs to do to fix it, and now he's off and if he's asking her to come he probably needs help.

Or just for her to punch anything that tries to eat him. That might be it, too.

"Hey, you know," she tells Howard as they run, "after we're done not dying? You better stop calling me Hat Girl."

"MOL--"

Nico gritted her teeth. If anything happened to Molly, she was going to kill Howard in his sleep; and that would probably take awhile because he was definitely the kind of guy who was prepared for people to try and kill him in his sleep. She'd crawl right under there and magic the suspension fixed if her attention wasn't already too divided between keeping her skipping stones from clocking someone on her side and trying to make sure none of the convert-kids-with-a-touch things veer off after Molly and Howard.

"HEY, YOU!" she shouted, hitting a fearling so hard that the rock turned to gravel. "Where d'you think you're going?!"

"Don't got time for your backtalk, girl." Howard tries to think of how theme parks are laid out. He's been to Six Flags, Knott's Berry Farm, and Disneyland more times than he can count. Where are the gift shops, usually?

Near the exit, where people can grab a souvenir before they go. He points and runs down a path and stops as he sees another small building, this one locked. The gears turn in his head. Most theme parks have fireworks. Cables and lights for stages and performances. Places where the face-painters and caricature artists and balloon-sculptors keep their supplies.

"Can you break down a door?" he asks Molly.

Nico's not even out of sight, and he can see her providing cover.

"Piece'a cake!" Molly says with a grin, and grabs the door handle. She pulls, and it doesn't even look like she has to try very hard (though she notices it's a little bit harder, huh) before it pops off in her hand. She doesn't toss it away just yet, because maybe she can use it to whack Fearlings if they try to attack, but she does step aside for Howard to get in.

Howard rushes in and starts sorting through things. Perfect! Fireworks, costumes, spotlights, foodcarts, everything necessary for an amusement park. An old amusement park, but still.

"Hat Girl, I need, um, find me a tube of something. And something to tie with. And something elastic. Go go go!" He starts to rummage through things.

"Molly!" she corrects, but as she's doing things. "Does the tube need to have anything in it?" Probably not, but hey, she wants to make sure.

There's a coil of thin rope, that they probably used to rope off areas, and she grabs that. Something elastic... Oh, wait, she found those epic rubber bands earlier! They haven't even dried out and gotten breakable yet! She digs them out of her pocket. "Will these work for the elastic stuff?"

"I don't care, Hat Girl. Empty tube, hollow, need- yes, that's perfect." He grabs the rubber bands from her, and the rope. "Okay, tubes and then let's go."

"Ummm..."

There, tubes of some sort, attached to some sort of cart or stand. Probably meant to hold something up. Or, as they now are, being ripped off by a 12-year-old who's stronger than the Hulk.

"Here! How about these?"

"Great, awesome, you carry, let's go!"

Thinking himself both crazy and stupid for running back at the sleigh when he could just cower in this store room, he starts to sprint back for the vehicle, hoping Nico gives him enough cover to dive under it.

"Oh, thanks!"

But Molly doesn't hesitate to scoop everything up and run after Howard as quickly as she can - which isn't as fast as he's going, or as fast as she could be going if she weren't making sure she didn't drop anything.

Yep, there are rocks bounding aggressively around the door, though they explode outwards as Howard and Molly emerge.

"That's right, pay attention to me!" Nico shouted at the Fearlings. "Pay no attention to the in-coming pit-crew! All your beady little eyes on me, or I'll make you regret it!"

Molly was still okay. Good. Now she just needs to keep the monsters distracted while Howard puts the sleigh back together.

Ugh, next time, she was going to demand sturdier transport.

Shawn is finally making progress toward the sleigh again, ducking, running, and dodging the fearlings now rather than trying to beat them off.

As he approaches the corner of a building, speeding up at the sound of voices ahead, his vision abruptly blurs and is overlaid by a grainy image.

—somewhere new, but still the amusement park. A stretch of old wooden roller coaster curves over the path that Molly and Howard are taking back to the sleigh. Something dark surges up against the support struts. The wood creaks, gives, and a section of track comes crashing—

Just as suddenly, Shawn's sight returns to normal and he narrowly avoids smacking face first into the side of the building.

"Wh- What?!"

He stumbles around the corner and is greeted with a now-familiar sight. The same stretch of coaster, still intact. His training kicks in as he identifies all the important elements of the scene—the sleigh, the tracks, the running figures, the mass of fearlings swarming toward the struts, Nico's attention focused elsewhere—and they click into place in his mind. What he just experienced was totally nuts, but there will be time to panic about that later. For now he's barreling towards the sleigh, arms flailing, and shouting as loud as he can:

"Move! Out of the way! TIMBER!"

Molly almost stops entirely to look at the new guy, what's-his-face, running towards them, and--

She's smart enough, when she hears something creaking out of her field of vision and someone's shouting for her to move, to fucking book it, and she puts on as much speed as a 12-year-old in reasonable shape can be expected to. It's not much, but it's more than she would have otherwise.

Hopefully, it'll be just enough.

Howard's a fast runner, even faster when he's not laden down, and so he's a good twenty yards ahead of Molly when Shawn starts shouting. He doesn't think, doesn't consider the fact that he's already decided he doesn't like Shaun, doesn't even blink; he only reacts. He looks up, sees the danger, and throws himself to the side.

It's just barely out of harm's way. A few pieces of roller coaster shrapnel and dust cover him as he rolls back to his feet. A splinter that went zipping past left a shallow gash under his eye, and it starts to bleed. His palms and wrists are skinned from the ground.

"Hat Girl!" he yells, although he doesn't stay to see if she made it out. Instead he has to stay focused, and that means baseball-sliding under the sleigh and hoping she follows him with their supplies.

Molly yelps, and does get whacked in the back of the legs by a small piece of the falling timber on the edge of the crash, sending her sprawling for a moment. But she's both okay and back on her feet within seconds, grabbing Howard's supplies and scrambling towards the sleigh again as fast as she can.

When she reaches the sleigh, she dumps Howard's supplies on the ground without ceremony.

"It hurt!" she calls to Nico, looking a little shaken. "When I got knocked down, it hurt!" It shouldn't hurt when she's got her powers going, should it? It wasn't enough to slow her down really, but it wasn't quite the same level of untouchable that she was used to.

"We'll figure it out when we get back to base!" Nico answered, trying to keep her voice steady so Molly wouldn't freak out more. It was definitely freak out-worthy, but now wasn't the time or place. "Stick close to the sleigh in the meantime, I've got you covered. Help Howard, he might need a second pair of hands!"

In the meantime, she can put the remains of the roller coaster to good use:

"'Coast guard!"

The pile of wood and metal cracked into pieces before resolving itself into half a dozen large golem-like creatures that immediately set about intercepting Fearling attacks and trying to open paths toward the sleigh for the others. She felt her grip of the skipping stones spell loosening and released it, filing that away as another thing to work on when they got back to the Pole. The roller coaster golems were plenty to control right now anyway.

"Yeah, getting knocked down tends to do that," Howard says quickly. He holds a hand out. "Give me some wire or string or something, Hattie."

He can see it laid out in front of him, not visually but in his head, a glowing pattern of what's missing. As he gets things in his hands, it's like finding puzzle pieces, except sometimes the picture he's making rearranges. Necessity gives way to different requirements as the possibilities change and new avenues are explored.

"Keep stuff coming, Hats."

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