Insanity Reaches a Boiling Point: Meatlings

[NPC]

It was one of those quiet, still days. Most of the Shifted that actually lived in the houses proper didn't have the spare money to purchase an automobile, and it seemed that the vehicle was one of the few things large enough not to Shift. So even the standard hum of a car drifting lazily down the street was not to be heard. Oh, there was still the twitter of the bird here and there, and the seemingly lazy stretching feeling that came from the silence. Beaming sunshine bathed the neat little rows of housing, which really only increased that lazy bit. All in all, it looked like a peaceful, uneventful day....

You know, except for the army of Meat People ransacking the houses.

The Meatlings were vaguely humanoid, in that they had arms, legs, and what appeared to be faces. There were eyes, there was something that strongly resembled a mouth, and one or two had what looked like... eyebrows. Those open mouths demonstrated a distinct lack of teeth, with only the barest handful of what really looked like fangs sticking out. This was hardly surprising when you got close enough to, well, smell them. See, the Meatlings.... smelled like meat, more specifically, they smelled like the canned meat that sloughed out of cans with wet splotching noises. That same splotching noise seemed to come from one or two whenever they walked, though, thankfully, many of them had hardened to the point where there was decidedly less squelching than there would be originally. Their square bodies, and yes, they were most certainly rectangular/squarish as opposed to, well, humanoid, looked to have been baked slightly.

That was probably because of the fires.

You see, the Meatlings were, well, pillaging and plundering, as Meatlings do best (everyone knows this). And as Fate would have it, they had elected to light at least one house, House 4, to be specific, one fire. Thankfully, they weren't very good at it. The fire was rather on the tiny side, and didn't seem to be doing major damage. But the Meatlings were generally good at setting other things on fire, and smashing; they were doing a decent job of smashing things.

Strangely, there didn't seem to be any suits in the area. Surely some Shifted would show up soon, but as for the mysterious guardians, they were mysteriously absent. The Meatlings were, for the moment, going unchecked. Hence the burning and the near-pillaging.

And they seemed quite pleased with that situation too....

[Deleted]

Megs let out a yawn as he walked down the stairs. The haze of sleep slowly lifting. He had managed to shower and get dressed. No work today so he went with the more casual attire of dark jeans, a black AC/DC t-shirt, and a pair of leather boots. He headed for the kitchen and the fresh pot of coffee on the counter. Hmm the best part of waking up. He grabbed himself a mug, added a couple heaping spoonfuls of sugar and a bit of cream. Taking a whiff of the dark liquid he noted another smell besides coffee. It smelled like smoke. Hearing a rustling behind him he assumed it was his roommate and spoke up. “Something burning?”

When no answer came Megs turned and came to face to face with some sort of meat creature snapping its jaws. Eyes sprung open in surprise and he instinctively grabbed a nearby frying pan. Swinging the object he managed to smash the meat creatures head into the fridge with a rather loud and disturbing splat. Chunks of meat and juices splattered any nearby surface. He heard the shatter of glass as another meat creature came clamoring through a window in the living room. Frying pan still in hand Megs ran to the room, jumping over the couch, and swung hard. Sending the second creature splattering to the wall as well as leaving a rather sizable dent in the plaster. Looking out the window he saw the horror that had befallen his new little community. Meat men were reeking havoc. His eyes narrowed in determination. Well not if he had anything to say about it.

He hurried out to the garage only to see a meatling lighting up a fire in the corner, the smell of cooking meat lingering in the air. “Hey!” Swinging the frying pan he knocked the creature away and stomped out the small flame. The creature let out an angry mewling sound at the interuption launching itself onto his back. “Get off me!” Megs angrily slammed himself back against the wall feeling the sensation of meat squishing behind him. He slammed back again and again juices seeping through his shirt until the creature released its hold splattering to the floor. He needed a plan and fast. Green eyes settled on something on the workbench. “You like fire! I’ll give you fire!”

As the meatling rose up from the floor Megs grabbed the flame thrower. Yes he had made a flame thrower. Don’t judge. Good guys can make flame throwers. He took aim and fired. Literally. A ball of flame engulfed the creature and he held it there, held it there until the smell of cooking meat was replaced by the smell of burnt meat. He finally cut off the flame revealing one crispy critter. ”Now get out!” He kicked the burnt meat man out the door and slammed it shut. He briefly took stock of the badly charred wall and ceiling. “Oh well place needed a new paint job anyway.”

No time to rest now he headed to the other side of the garage flinging open a metal cupboard he pulled out a black leather duster and quickly slipped it on. Followed by a pair of leather gloves. “I have a feeling this is going to get messy.”

[Marceline Abadeer]

Someone was judging. In fact, Marceline was Miss Judgy Pants. This was less judging in the harsh, puritanical, how-dare-thou-create-such-an-abomination sense, and more judging in the "on a scale of one to ten, I'd give the awesome flame spitting machine of death about a seven" sense. Marceline hadn't heard the ruckus of the invading Meatlings at first. She'd been busy shredding in her house, practicing for various gigs. Sure, she'd occasionally drift toward the town during the day, but most of her music-playing stuff came during the night. so Marceline practiced during the day, well, practiced, wrote, and played an unusually high amount of video games (she had been doing this for centuries, after all).

Which explained why the ex-vampire queen was standing on her porch holding what looked very much like a red axe over her shoulder. Marceline calmly sipped at a glass of red Kool-Aid, watching the scene unfolding before her with an almost bored look. Whenever a Meatling got close, she'd just sort of lash out lazily with her guitar. She certainly wasn't moving to attack them, so much as keeping them generally away form her. Considering that there were much more fun areas to be, well, there you go.

And this explained how she'd noticed the flames spitting out of Megs' garage. Somehow, Marceline was not surprised. "There's some heading for the roof!" she called, gesturing in a sort of absent minded fashion. "And I'd give the charbroiling about a seven out of ten. Nice flare for the dramatic, but they seem to like it," though by now, Megs had probably already backed into his garage. Marceline shrugged, looking out over the Meatlings. Someone would have to do something major, or else they'd really cause trouble. Should that someone be Marceline? It sounded like so much work.

[NPC]

The Meatlings were cursing their Fate. Why must they be so delicious? Why must the Shifted be so interested in stopping beings made of living food whenever they appeared? Why must they encounter some of the most effective beings in all of Tenebrae? For the crazy man with the glasses and the flamethrower was most unpleasant. The pale one was right: the Meatlings did enjoy being cooked... to a degree. A little cooking seemed to add vigor to them, making them move quicker, with decidedly less suction action. A lot of cooking turned them crispy, giving them a layer of armor that served to protect and shield. However, an extreme amount of cooking, which is what many of those closest to Megs received, rendered them unto ashes.

They also were aware that they could not approach the pale one. At least, not in the small groups they'd been doing so far. She was proving far too effective in smooshing them.

However, the Meatlings weren't the best of planners. Right now, they knew enough to pull away from Marceline's and Megs's homes, but beyond that and the looting, they didn't seem to have much of an idea of what to do. They actually massed as best they could... for a few seconds. Then a few splinter groups headed off, purposefully avoiding the two houses in favor of others.

One, that just so happened to be on fire for reasons best left unasked that may or may not involve a flamethrower, had taken to throwing itself against a house repeatedly. This was resulting in the house slowly starting to catch fire in a more alarming and serious manner than before, though the efforts weren't exactly the most effective means possible.

[Deleted]

Megs thought he heard a voice calling and glanced back out. He saw the flame engulfed meat creature slamming itself repeatedly into the neighbors house. “Oops.” Looks like they need a new paint job too. Guess the flamethrower was not such a good idea after all. He grabbed a fire extinguisher and headed out, shoe crunching through a brunt meatling on the ground. He took aim and sprayed putting out the creature and then the rest of the fire before it could do much more damage.

Satisfied that at least that little problem was taken care of he took are relieved breath. Taking said breath he noted the smell in the air. A smell similar to cooking burgers. Why if one were to close their eyes and take a deep breath they may think a mouth watering cookout was underway. A light bulb went off in his head. Yes, a nice tasty cookout with lots of tasty food to eat. Of course he would not be the one doing the eating. A mischievous smile crept onto the intrepid heroes face as he rushed back to his garage. Noticing a familiar figure standing on their porch along the way. “Ollo, Lady of the Field!” Megs called out before once again disappearing into his own home.

The sound of a machine coming to life soon followed. The garage door sliding upward making way for Megs and one of his most recent constructs. A slightly modified lawnmower complete with large hose and back compartment to collect all those pesky grass clippings. Or in this case meat clippings. Megs stood proudly atop this yard machine while the garage door descended behind him. “Alright you food monstrosities! Prepare to be meat mulch!” He plopped down into the seat, threw her in gear, and floored it aiming for a clump of meatlings in the street.

[Marceline Abadeer]

Weird, but the Meatlings seemed to be leaving Marceline alone. Which suited her just fine: she still wasn't keen on getting involved if she didn't have to. She moved to the edge of her house, perching on the edge of the sidewalk and watching as the chaos unfolded in front of her. Lots of burning, and the smell of cooked meat began to waft through the air. Still not Marceline's thing. Looked like the nerdy dude had a pretty decent handle on what was going on too, or at least, he'd noticed the flaming lemming.

Then came the lawnmower, and Marceline had to laugh, and laugh hard. Megs looked utterly ridiculous atop the modified machine. And why the heck did he have something like that anyway? Was he planning on shredding through an invasion of choppable people or something? There were just too many questions. But one thing was becoming perfectly clear: this was turning into a fracas of the highest order, and looked to be just too much fun to sit out on.

"Y'know," yelled Marceline, projecting her voice over the lawnmower with a performer's practiced ease, "I'm thinking you can't have all the fun, Nerdy Guy," Marceline grabbed her axe, shifting it before her. Her hand raised, then lowered, letting out a wailing note. Nothing magical or impressive happened, nothing but sweet, sweet music. Then Marceline yelled loudly, flung her guitar over her shoulder, and charged at the nearest Meatling, looking very much like some kind of Gothic berserker (and we mean Gothic in the sense of "look at that moody teenager" not in the sense of the French barbarian. Normally, I wouldn't feel it necessary to explain, but hey, normally there weren't Meatlings, axe-guitars, and riding lawnmowers of death involved).

[NPC]

What had started as a joyous raid was now turning into something like a battle. The Meatlings, which had managed to set fire to at least two houses now, suddenly found themselves at the end of an attack. The Nerd and the Goth had suddenly turned from defense to offense, and, worse, they were good at it. In fact, the Nerd was really good at it, cackling atop the lawnmower and such. Several Meatlings, pretty much all in that initial clump, went under the spinning blades. Meat splattered a few houses. There it did squirm and squiggle for a bit, before laying still. A couple other Meatlings thought it would be a brilliant idea to attempt to tackle the lawnmower. In other words, it went like this:

Meatling used Tackle!
...it's not very effective.

And there were a few more clumps of meat flying through the air. As for the Goth, she was proving to be somewhat scary, what with the glee and all, but not nearly as intimidating as the lawnmower. The Meatlings knew enough to regroup though, in some cases, quite literally. While they couldn't reform after being splattered by either axe or lawnmower, they could pick up pieces of their brethren. The Meatlings remaining had learned from their fallen brethren, and were literally absorbing the bodies, becoming bigger.

Oh, and that one dense, flaming one was totally done. Turns out fire extinguishers were super effective.

[Deleted]

Megs heard Marceline’s voice over the buzzing of the blades and rolled his eyes at the Nerdy Guy comment. “Suppose I can share. After all nothing beats hampering the evil deeds of meat people.” He felt the mower jump as a particularly plump meatling fell prey to its spinning blades.

Exciting as this little joyride may be his buzzing mind was taking notes. Making order of the chaos, searching for any signs pointing to his foes true weakness. He noted the charred lump of meatling trampled by his garage. Meatlings gathering clumps of their chopped brethren adding the mass to their own. Well the bigger they are the harder they fall right? Megs was not going to let size intimidate him. No he was in this until the end whether the meat men liked it our not. When he saw the one he had extinguished unmoving on the ground he wondered if that could be it.

He also noted house four seemed to have suffered the brunt of the meatlings fire obsession. Had yet to meet whoever was living at that particular house. “If you have an extinguisher handy we can take this party to house four!” Megs called to Marceline. Thankfully he had brought his own along for the ride and fired at a passing meatling wanting to take note of the results. Couldn’t hurt right? If nothing happened he would continue his meat chopping joy ride to house four and focus the extinguisher on the flames there.

[Marceline Abadeer]

A splatter of Meatling chunk sprayed Marceline's face, painting the white with red. The repressed vampire queen couldn't resist licking at the nibblets of it, enjoying the red, meaty flavor, if nothing else. Strangely, raw meat never bothered Marceline, at least, not the same way it bothered other people. Usually bloody stuff actually tasted better for vampires, and, to Marceline's surprise, that much had more or less transferred. She would likely get a stomach ache if she went around chowing down on the Meatlings, however. Better to keep bashing them with her axe, even if cleaning it out would be a pain later.

Marceline had just managed a backswing, cutting another in twain when Megs called. Marceline looked across the field of destruction to where her co-destroyer was doing a decent job of cutting them up. He'd also pulled out a fire extinguisher, and that had been what he'd told Marceline to get. She paused, staring, blinking. "What would make you think I---" she began, before lowering her arms to her sides and blinking. "No, wait, I actually have one! Brand new and everything. Gimme a sec," with that being said, Marceline turned and darted back into her house.

Normally, she wouldn't have bothered with a fire extinguisher. Sure, she set things on fire fairly regularly, but that was usually on purpose, and it usually meant that she wanted the fires to happen, not, you know, the opposite of that. However, after the whole incident when she'd lit her fridge aflame, the Powers That Be had decided that she needed a fire extinguisher. You know, so she didn't "accidentally" burn down half the neighborhood. Marceline just needed to remember where she put the stupid thing. No, wait, they'd put it somewhere. There! In the kitchen! Marceline yanked it from the wall, storming back toward the battlefield, a manic glee giving her face a decidedly demonic look.

[NPC]

Oh the fire extinguishers were most unpleasant. The Meatlings froze just a little too well, truth be told. They were, after all, made of meat, and as any shopper knows, meat exists in abundance in freezer sections. Worse, the stupid Meatlings didn't immediately realize that being frozen was not pleasant. One or two got caught directly in Megs' initial blast. They froze within a few seconds, and then the chopped blades practically shattered them. The other Meatlings could technically pick up the pieces, but they were jagged and decidedly less easy to deal with.

However, there were still only two Shifted fighting against a lot of Meatlings. While Marceline and Megs were doing amazing, and proving that in small bunches that the Meatlings weren't much of a threat, they still weren't enough to salvage things. House 4 now blazed quite merrily, and House 6, which was right next to it, was starting to catch as well. House 2 wasn't doing so great either, mostly because a handful of Meatlings had started merrily raiding. And it was most definitely merry: there was dancing involved. House 7 was beginning to have troubles of its own, mostly in Meatlings beginning to throw globs of themselves at windows and such. Not exactly the most effective tactic, but as already suggested: the Meatlings were sort of stupid.

The larger Meatlings, however, began rallying. They grouped sort of naturally, pulling themselves together and forming something that was looking disturbingly like a combat formation. Either that or they were beginning to transform into a giant Meatling monster, but wouldn't that just be silly and totally not even a little possible?

[Deleted]

The results of his extinguisher experiment was quite pleasant.It seemed to be very effective against the meatlings. One small problem still remained. There was only two of them, only two fire extinguishers against a mob of meatlings and several flaming houses. Man didn’t this town have a fir department and where exactly were all the neighbors during all this commotion? Still sleeping through the noise or too afraid to get involved? Well time to rally the troops if this thing was ever going to end.

So Megs slowed his riding machine and stood up on the seat, taking a deep breath he yelled out as loud as he could. “ALRIGHT TENEBRAE RESIDENTS TIME TO TEAM UP! GRAB YOUR EXTINGUISHERS AND COME ON OUT! LETS GIVE THESE MEAT MEN SOME FREEZER BURN!” Just in case that did not get their attention he looked to the axe swinging Marceline. “Hey Marceline! How about belting out a tune to encourage our neighbors?”

[Marceline Abadeer]

Marceline charged into Meatlings with a fearlessness that was certainly reminiscent of the origins she so often downplayed. She pointed the nozzle of her extinguisher at one, hosing it with the stuff. In one smooth motion, she reached up, yanked her axe off, and twirled it, smashing the Meatling to pieces. It was sort of like dancing, really. Point the extinguisher, push the nozzle, wait a sec, then twirl with the axe. Marceline was beginning to feel pretty darn confident too, as the frozen pieces would inevitably start piling up.

Still, Marceline caught Megs' yell over the din. She turned to look at him, the feral look still lighting her eyes. In fact, the black of her pupils had swollen, seeming to drive most of the color and white. The words seemed to seep, and Marceline cackled.

"Sure, why not?" she yelled. Slinging the extinguisher about her waist, Marceline drew down her axe. She took a few steps back, wanting to put some distance between herself and the creatures before she started. Once she had that distance, her hand flew to the strings, the rich sound filling the area almost immediately.

"WHAT, WHAT, WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR!?
AN INVITE?
RSVP, COME OUT, C'MON OUT
AN' FIGHT!
WHAT, WHAT, WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR!?
AN INVITE?
RSVP, COME ON, C'MON OUT ---
AN' FIGHT
TWO PEOPLE AREN'T GONNA DO THIS ALONE
AREN'T GONNA FIGHT FOR ALL YOUR HOMES
SO WHAT, I SAY WHAT, ARE YOU WAITING FOR!?
AN INVITE?"

She belted at the top of her lungs, blaring the music. You could almost swear you felt a band rocking out with her, despite only having the rough acoustic guitar. It would definitely get attention: if it was one thing Marceline was good at, it was that. Well, that and flirting, but the latter wasn't really helpful in this particular situation.

[Helena Bertinelli]

Helena had been out on a jog. She'd run out into the park, headed around the lake, and even taken a detour through campus. Honestly, since arriving in a town where crime is nearly nonexistent and midnight jaunts are frowned on, Helena had gotten both bored and slightly out of shape. She did her best, but it was hard to keep in fighting trim when there was nothing to fight.

She was just coming up on the houses when she heard a loud ruckus. She sped up to a run, wondering what in the world was going on. Just as she rounded the corner she saw the meatlings, a man riding a lawnmower, and a pale girl playing an ax guitar. She slowed down abruptly and stopped, taking in the scene. "What the hell?" she said quietly. "Did I somehow get back to Gotham?" But no, there was her house at Tenebrae, under assault by giant meat men. There was no time to think of a real strategy. She needed to get to her house, grab her weapons, and stop the damage from getting any worse.

She ran forward again, dodging the meat men and heading straight for her house, luckily one of the closer ones on the street. She ran up the stairs and flung open her closet. After grabbing her crossbow, arrows, utility belt, and staff, she ran back downstairs, battling one meatling that was in her living room and smashing her television. "You'd better be paying for that," she said as she swung her staff through its head.

Outside, she looked to see what the other two were doing. Seeing the pieces of frozen meatlings on the ground, she decided to abandon her initial plan of flaming arrows. In fact, she was beginning to regret teasing Green Arrow for all of his weird arrows all these years. However, she might be able to do something.

"You there!" she called out. "You with the ax! How much juice you got left in that extinguisher? You think it'll blow?" She loaded a steel bolt to her crossbow, holding it in her left hand while she fought off meatlings with the staff in her right and a few well-placed kicks.

Glancing around at all the meatlings, she saw an area where they were beginning to grow denser, either getting ready to attack or...evolving. Ew. She pointed toward the area with the crossbow. "Throw it that direction. I'll shoot."

She desperately hoped this would work, since she couldn't think of anything better. Strategy was not her thing any more than working with others.

[NPC]

The yelling and belting of song had the unfortunate side effect of attracting more Meatling attention. One of the largest seemed to especially appreciate Marceline's voice: he stopped mid-rampage and just stared at the pale girl as she shredded on her guitar and belted her song. A few of the others were more interested in Megs and what he had to say, working their way closer to him, drawn by the noise. For the most part, however, they were more interested in ransacking and pillaging, which, given that they were Meatlings, mostly meant slapping against various things. They were finding, however, that a light cooking helped. Which meant that their tendency to set themselves on fire was increasing at an alarming rate.

For the most part, they ignored the slightly older woman when she arrived. After all, Helena was neither singing nor yelling nor wielding a fire extinguisher. She also wasn't on fire. So, therefore, she was of absolutely little interest to the various Meatlings who were rambling about. Even the one in her house, which was busy trying to see if it could use the TV to set itself on fire, didn't really pay her much attention. Which really didn't work out for the poor guy, what with getting a staff straight through the head and all. His remains squelched all over Helena's apartment, burbling and popping as these things do.

There was definitely a large one developing outside. He seemed to have figured out that picking up dead ones worked, as did the whole setting things on fire. Thankfully, only his hand seemed to be on fire. Unthankfully, that hand happened to be roughly the size of Marceline.

[Deleted]

Zuko had been further across Tenebrae when he had seen the signs of smoke starting to billow up in the sky, coming from a direction that he hadn’t been before. It was a small wispy trail at first, and it made him suspect that someone, possibly a traveler, may have created a campfire out in that direction. He glanced at it for a short while with an unreadable expression on his face before slowly losing interest and preparing to turn away. That was of course, before the smoke began to increase.

He jolted his attention back to houses and narrowed his eyes. It was becoming clear to him that this was no ordinary fire; this was a large uncontrolled fire created by some powerful force. To any other person it might just mean the danger of a fire, but to Zuko it meant Fire Nation soldiers, and that the Fire Nation might just possibly be here and attacking. He knew he had to lie low from them, seeing as he was now wanted for declared treachery, but at the same time he hoped to get a closer look. Where there were Fire Nation soldiers, there could be others he knew; like his uncle or the avatar. They might have captured them already for all he knew, and he couldn’t let that happen. 

The boy crept his way silently to the houses. He chose to keep his distance from the scene and hide under cover behind bushes and trees to avoid being spotted and targeted in case a soldier were nearby. He had just ducked down behind a large cluster of rose bushes that stood out near the corner of a house when he moved a branch to observe what was going on. Close by all he could hear was the deafening grinding sound of some sort of machinery. What it was, he could not tell, but he could just see glimpses of the strange contraption being driven wildly in circles and odd directions, right before it stopped and the man on it started yelling. That wasn’t the strangest thing though, and the moment he caught eyes on the machine he instantly shifted his gaze at the strange moving creatures who were flooding the area. Weird humanoid creatures that lacked flesh or fur and squelched around as they walked. They smelled strongly, and with what Zuko could recognize as some kind of meat.

“What are those things?!” Zuko commented to himself in slight disbelief as he watched the chaos erupting. Now that he had a closer look, he didn’t see any Fire Nation soldiers present; just three people. It appeared that the meat creatures were the ones setting the houses on fire on their own accord. Grr, what a waste of his time! He was getting tired of being misled in this strange place and of being lost, and now looked like a good of a time as any to get some of his ever-raging frustration out.
The boy leapt out of the bushes and charged forward, no longer caring if people saw him or not. "Yaaahh!" He angrily yelled out and reached behind his back as he drew the two Dual Dao swords from their sheaths. In a flash he began wildly cutting and slashing at the Meatlings in a frenzied rage. He really hadn't noticed that they could put themselves back together when they fell apart, but he hacked at any of them that moved beside him anyway, whether whole or not. In fact, he was so busy lashing out, that it was probably best that no one else was beside him at the time, unless they wanted to feel the ready edge of his blades as well…