Leaping OVER the Friendly Bottle, she landed right among the creature's writhing tentacles and teeth. A green ichor burst forth, covering the pale blue hero. "Here I am, ugly!" Golem rasped, ripping one tentacle clean out of the main body of the creature and throwing it across the street.
Awe, man! Joey thought, watching the epic battle from the now faceless bar. He watched the heavy, scaled tentacle land across the street. My car!
The creature wasted no time responding to the threat, encircling Golem in two tentacles and producing sharp-fanged mouths with which to bite into Golem's dense flesh. Golem screamed, more in anger than pain. This damned thing will have a tough time chewing through this hide! She thought. Exerting all her muscles, Golem slowly stretched out the tentacles until she had enough freedom to grip them solidly, and she began rending some flesh as well.
Joey looked on in horror as a new, smaller creature coalesced in the blood dripping from the tentacle across the street. Right on his car. Joey looked down at his Maggie, who he'd been helping tend to her fortunately minor wound from the wall collapse. "Right back."
Running to the ruined entrance, Joey shouted, "Hey, Golem! Check across the street! I think that's another one!"
"Eh?" Golem scanned the area until she saw what Joey was talking about. Dammit! If these things popped up every time she did some damage to the first one, Chicago would be overrun. Golem saw now way around doing some damage. The thing responded to punches about like the tire on a large bulldozer would. She had to be able to draw blood just to fight the thing.
Golem was momentarily distracted by a particularly large set of fangs coming toward her. As the maw opened, she leaned her neck back as far as she could, then head-butted the fangs with all her might. The teeth shattered, sending shards everywhere. Great. Hope that doesn't make more monsters, too, Golem thought grimly.
It didn't take long for sirens to register in the distance. 9-11 had been called immediately after the wall fell. Need to try to wrap this up, Golem thought, but she had no idea how she would do that. Continuing to tear into the beast, Golem realized that she had another problem. Not only was it seeming to make baby doomsday monsters every time she ripped an arm off or popped an eye, she was starting to feel weaker, ever so slightly. And as this continued, she felt the pain more and more from the vile bites the creature was producing.
Golem started to have an uncomfortable feeling that this thing was somehow draining her powers. And if that was the case, it wasn't a question of IF but WHEN she would lose this battle. Golem was snapped out of her thoughts as fire trucks pulled sideways in the street a block away, out of reach of the creature. Emergency personnel were trying to figure out the safest way to get to the injured.
"Back door!" Golem shouted as a long tentacle with teeth on the end of it attacked her from above. "That one's new!" she growled back at the creature, punching it in the teeth. Still, though she'd defeated the attack, she felt pain shooting up her hand as the thing bit into her fist. Golem began to think the end-game of this creature's feast was to break her corpse open like a fortune cooking and suck out the remaining power. Shaking her head, the blue warrior continued to battle on.
Inside, Joey helped Maggie to the back door, where fire and rescue had been able to get several EMTs with first aid equipment and stretchers. A young tech examined Maggie's injuries. "Doesn't seem too bad. Here, let's get some disinfectant spray on that..." Joey, the tech and Maggie all looked up as a loud whining noise approached from the sky.
With a sudden surreal intrusion, one of the fire trucks from up the street came arcing over the buildings, slamming into the apartments across the street and devastating the upper floors. The sound of gunfire now filled the streets. "Bloody hell, what is this World War III?" Joey commented.
An instant later, Golem came flying over the building, landing beside the firetruck. Standing up, she shook off the pain. She was getting worn down by this fight and whatever draining effect the creature's bites had on her. Standing in the rubble, Golem made sure all the fire-fighters were out of the truck. She had to get this thing off this building. There were probably people in the damaged sections, and the second floor could completely collapse onto the first if she didn't get the weight off of it.
Dropping into the alley below, Golem leaned into the kitchen window of the apartment right below the fire engine. A startled man who'd been listening to the carnage outside looked up, expecting the building to come down. "Is there anyone else in there?" Golem asked.
"Uh, no," the man replied, still startled. "Then get the hell out, now! I've got to bring this wall down!" Standing back in the alley, Golem waited as the man grabbed his cell phone and a few precious things and hoped to the higher powers that insurance would cover a super-hero battle before ducking out the front door. Once she was sure he'd exited, Golem looked very carefully at the point where the outer wall met the edge of the ceiling/2nd floor. She'd only done this once before, and she had to aim it just right.
Moving her arms back as far as she could so that her body with outstretched arms formed a letter t, Golem took a deep breath before slamming her hands together in front of her as fast and as hard as she possibly could. With her massive strength, the effect created a shockwave, which caused a controlled collapse of the ceiling. The fire engine dropped to the first floor on its end, partially in man's the kitchen, partially in the alley.
"That's step one," Golem said to herself. Now, moving around into the kitchen, she pushed as high up on the engine as she could, causing it to flip completely off the apartment building and across the alley, its front end barely damaging the larger brick buildings on that side.
"Wow, I had no idea she was real," Maggie's tech said as he finished bandaging Maggie up.
"Hell, yeah, she's really," Joey said. As he watched her work, Joey was becoming more proud of his hometown hero.
Golem leaped back over the building to find the street now writhing with no less than six of the smaller creatures, plus the one "mamma".
"Golem, I was beginning to think you'd left our dance," the disembodied voice of the creature echoed. "I was about to start feasting on the flesh of these lesser ones!"
"No, we're just getting started!" Golem cannon balled into the creature, knocking it back off its position on the sidewalk and into the street. But as Golem got her footing again, she realized she was out of breath. Suddenly, two of the smaller creatures surrounded her in tentacles, and she found it difficult to break the grip.
Looking up the street, Golem saw a commotion as someone broke the police lines; a dark-haired man with a guitar was striding toward her. Is this idiot the last person I'm going to save? She asked herself in her head. Barely dodging out of the creature's way, the man began to play. Somehow, his electric guitar was amplified so the whole street could hear, even though it wasn't hooked up to an amp.
Billy had to think fast to come up with a song to cheer this blue battler on. She looked weak, but she and he were obviously the only ones that stood between this Green Demon and complete destruction. Everyone who could see the scene stopped to watch as he began to play.
The notes of The All American Rejects' "Move Along" filled the street, and suddenly, weirdly, Golem felt a surge of strength. It's as if the energy was flowing from the man's guitar directly into her. With her newfound power, Golem ripped the small tentacles from her body as if they were string and turned to face the main body of the creature.
"That was the bell. It appears it's time for round 2!" she snarled, and leapt back into battle.
